Aussie Bloggers

The Aussie Bloggers Blog and Forums were officially launched on the 21st of January 2008. Monday marked our six month birthday, and we thought we would like to give you a present.

Our moderators and administrators were given a short story, and asked to fill in the blanks. The results have been combined into The Lazy Bloggers Blog Post Generator.

I have seen it said around the web that a blogger should never write a blog post that apologises for not blogging - no matter how long it has been, no matter what happened to get in the way of blogging, you should return as if you never left. And now you don’t have to write the post - you can let the blog post generator do it for you. All you have to do is use the drop down boxes to choose the text you want, then click on the create your blog post button. Just like this -

Holy Snapping Duck Do! I just had a terrible scare when I thought I have not updated this since Hammertime was in the charts… You would not believe how hard it is being waited on hand and foot and generally lounging around. I prostrate myself in sorrow and beg thy forgiveness..

I am absolutely consumed with setting fire to people wearing Crocs watching Dexter just generally being a biatch to my local police, my day is a magical flight from the first cockadoodledoo from the rooster to 11pm at which point I fall asleep on the couch. I am putting money aside so I can run away. I need a nap.

I absolutely, positively promise to update at least once a week. Honestly! Don’t hold your breath though, you’re likely to turn blue..

So, let us know if you have any problems with using it, we have tested it across a large range of browsers but this is the first time it has been available to all and sundry.

I’ll be back later today with another post which gives you some new options for blog badges, and also with links to posts people wrote about us, so make sure to check in later - for now feel free to let your blog readers know about the generator. Enjoy!

(Update - We seem to be having an issue with Internet Explorer browsers and the generator. We are trying to fix this issue, but while we do that, maybe you’d like to download another browser? Perhaps Firefox, Opera, or Flock? Because just quietly and in my opinion, Internet Explorer sucks. No other browser requires so much effort on the part of web designers to make things work with it. Including this blog, which actually has two sidebars, but can you see two? Not if you’re using IE, you can’t.)

(Update on the Update - we think the internet explorer problem is solved. But I still think you should get a different browser. I’m just sayin’.. )

Trust (noun)

1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2. the obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed: a position of trust.

Source:Dictionary.com

Recently I wrote a post on my own blog about my daughter, Daisy as she is known on my blog, and the ongoing effects of problems my daughter had with her Kindergarten teacher (for NSW, the first year of school). Three years down the track Daisy still has issues with confidence and self esteem, among others.

The comments that people made about that post were heart-warming, encouraging and supportive, as well as some that said that they personally had similar issues either for their kids or themselves.

One of the comments was from Anonymous. But this person chose to leave an email address in the required field that is linked to their blog. So, I know who it is. And the comment was one that tore at my heart strings because this person had suffered a similar thing at school, and now as an adult is still coming to terms with it.

I am blown away that this person that I hardly know in the blogging world has placed that much trust in me. Trust that I will not ever betray.

Much has been written recently in the blogosphere about how much we do or don’t reveal about ourselves while we blog, so how do we as readers decide who we can trust? And how do our readers decide that they can trust us, especially when its a blogger that we haven’t become familiar with. Thank you Anonymous for placing your trust in me.

For me, trust has to be earnt and is not something to be taken lightly. Maybe I said something in that post that Anonymous felt comfortable enough to leaving details that I would recognise.

Have you had someone leave an anonymous comment on your blog but with other details that mean that they can be recognised??? How do you feel about the trust that they have placed in you? Have you ever thought about trust and blogging? I guess I hadn’t really until I saw that comment.

Apologies to Douglas Adams.*

But it’s true! Every time I visit the Aussie Bloggers Forum I shake my head at all the people who twitter and stumble and friendfeed and plurk.

How do you find the time?!

I struggle just to keep up with my reader list - admittedly it is lengthy - and blog - which I try to do every day - or rather feel compelled to do every day.

To spend time following twitters and plurks and whatever else seems impossible!

I gather it results in more traffic to your blog. Does it? How much more traffic?

Does the time you spend twittering/plurking etc take time away from blogging or does it inspire you?

I’m a simple soul. I blog. I comment on other blogs. I work. I say hi to my kids on the way to the computer nook. I sleep.

For me, the joys of twitterhood and plurking are heights to which I can only imagine.

In a perfect life.

You know the one, where actual life doesn’t get in the way.

Yes I can feel my bum slipping…

What?

Oh I see. That’s middle aged spread is it?

*Zaphod: “Hand me the Rap Rod, Plate Captain!”
Waiter: “I’m sorry sir?”
Zaphod: “The phone, waiter, the phone. Gee, you guys are so unhip it’s a wonder your bums don’t fall off.”
Waiter: “Our whats, sir?”

A question posed by a new blogger in the Aussie Bloggers Forum inspired me to write this post. What is the best way to find blogs that cover a particular topic or niche? You may wish to do this for various reasons: to read for learning and leisure, for study and research, for business purposes or to connect with others that share your interest areas.

Static websites may satisfy your needs but there is a wealth of valuable knowledge and information to be found in blogs sites. How can find your way through the maze to those that are relevant?

Search engine searches can be useful, especially if you provide specific enough or advanced search criteria, but this is not always satisfactory. The results may be littered with advertising sites, forum posts with no replies or highly rated sites and blogs that mention the topic you are searching for but do not specialize in it.

A more targeted way is to use specific blog search engines such as Google Blog Search or set up Google Alerts to email you when your specific search words or terms come up in its results.

Specific blog search sites - Examples:

• Icerocket
• BlogScope a University of Toronto project that displays results based on popularity curves, identification of information bursts, related terms, and geographical search.
• Blogdigger
• Twingly which is a newly launched site, currently concentrating on indexing European blogs and aiming at spam free search. (We can only hope it succeeds)

Search for RSS feeds using directories on feed sites. Example: Bloglines where results also show the number of Bloglines subscribers next to each feed.

Social bookmarking sites such as reddit or del.icio.us

Some blog/web directory sites have higher quality listings and variety. Examples:

• Eaton Web where blogs are ordered according to “perceived strength, momentum and overall quality” using a range of criteria.
• Blog Search Engine which aims to focus on high quality blogs.
• BlogFlux which has a big range of categories.
• Blog Hop
• Technorati which indexes blogs and ranks them by the number of incoming links they receive.

Social Networking Sites that have good directories, helpful search functions and ways to connect with other bloggers:

• BlogCatalog
• StumbleUpon
• MyBlogLog - not the best for search but good for networking.
• Ning which is a blog platform as well as a networking site has groups that cover a wide range of topics.

I must mention my own favorite site here which combines bookmarking, web annotations, directory listings, search functions and social networking - diigo. You can join communities based on favorite sites, interest areas and link sharing. Because you are able to clearly specify your interest areas, I have found that any links sent to me by group or individual contacts have been good value.

For some of the more popular niches there are specific networking sites and listings. Art, Photography, Crafts and Parenting spring to mind here.

One of the most effective ways is by personally recommended links. Once you come across a few blogs you respect, you will no doubt also find useful links in their blog posts as well as in their blogrolls. Participating in a blogs comments will lead you to other bloggers who share your interests. Joining active forums which cover topics you wish to follow can bring you resources too.

This naturally leads me to thanking those who participated in an Aussie Bloggers forum thread and shared their own knowledge on this topic:

Kathie Thomas author of Virtual Assistant - The Blog about our industry

Evan of Wholistic Health

fern who is Not Nigella

Gaida and her Lifestyle Discoveries

Mei who teaches us about Smart Online Shopping

Of course if you are looking for Aussie Blogging sites then you are in the right place already

Blogging is, I think, a two-dimensional operation in more than the obvious ways.

Sure - text, pictures and videos are necessarily two-dimensional. But what about the picture inside your head? You may know what a blogger had for dinner last night, but do you know how he treats his friends? You may know the ins and outs of a certain shall-remain-nameless person’s shoe collection, but do you know her heart?

That’s a big statement to make, you might say. Sure, there aren’t enough words or minutes in a day to share everything, but does everyone really hide a huge chunk of who they are?

I think so. I honestly do. There are too many good reasons to do so. Friends and family who read the blog, and could be hurt by some disclosures. Concerns about identity theft. Not wanting abuse from complete strangers who trawl the blogosphere searching for people’s vulnerabilities. Cyber-stalkers. Haters. Trolls. Just plain pains-in-the-arse.

Does that make blogging a bad thing, or a dishonest one? Nope. I think any sharing of information – be it personal or impersonal – is great. Just never make the mistake of thinking that you know someone inside and out from what they post on a blog. Because your picture’s two-dimensional, and there’s a whole ‘nother side to them that you’ve never seen.

As much as I enjoy blogging leaving it behind for a few days for a winter break with the family is even more appealing, We are not wandering far and the weather may be cool but a cosy house among bushy hills, close to the ocean is certainly appealing. My two boys are now grown and, although still living at home, tend to go their own ways, even within the house; usually to their TVs or PC’s. Our paths often only cross at feeding times.

This weekend we are going to have our “quality time together” winter break. Winter is good time for us to go away together as we are more inclined to stay together in front of roaring open fire, chatting and playing card and board games and go for the occasional bracing walk by the sea..

Living relatively close to the busy city of Melbourne I sometimes dream of residing somewhere less crowded and closer to sea and mountain..Next week I will be living in the area I would choose to live, if it were practical; a part of the Mornington Peninsula just outside of Melbourne that I didn’t discover until years after I started living in here. Travelling by the highway I always bypassed these coastal areas of Mount Eliza, Mornington and Mount Martha.. It reminds me very much of the upper north shore of Sydney where I used to live. Being city girl born and bred my ideal location is not somewhere rural but rolling hills, rugged coastline, and a beach on every cove and at least a good smattering of houses

photo by Long Zheng

www.visitmorningtonpeninsula.org

Apart from the sea the 17 different Markets held throughout the month, Australia’s largest antique centre with art and craft galleries coffee shops and restaurants galore are very appealing. If this leaves you unimpressed there are also over 200 vineyards, 18 golf courses and you can take a swim with seals and dolphins. It is not far to the metropolis to get an occasional hit of large shopping malls or far from open countryside and the quiet surf beaches to completely get away from it all. Of course the skies are not always as blue as in these photos but you can’t have it all and nowadays, unlike when younger, being close to family is more important to me than living in more exotic locations.

It seems I cannot completely get away from the subject of blogging as I want to let know about a new Flickr browsing site I came across last week, CompFight ; which I used while searching for images for this post..It is a definite time saver as you do not have to use Flickr’s advanced search features to produce the results you want and more thumbnails per page are displayed.. Type in a keyword and the results are displayed via quick loading thumbnail images. Hover over these images and the pixel size of the full image is displayed. If the keyword does not provide you with what you want then you can do a text search. A particularly useful feature is being able to search for Creative Commons images only, so that you can be assured that you are not breaching copyright if including images in blogs. The image below shows the site’s search box - with the options available to you below.

Where would your ideal place to live be if you had the choice?

Well maybe not quite the epicentre of blogging but we do have some active bloggers who regularly meet and share ideas. Every month there is a bloggers meet-up (in fact there’s one tonight - 21st May - upstairs at the Brass Monkey, Northbridge from 7pm) and there was a Barcamp Perth 2.0 earlier this month. (more on Barcamp - Live blog)

We’re apparently hosting the World Blog Awards in August… although where this comes from is a mystery… maybe it’s wishful thinking.

What’s not wishful thinking but in fact reality is the Edge of the Web Conference - November 6-7 - in Perth. It was announced at BarCamp and has a lot of people excited about it.

The Australian Web Industry Association is proud to announce that Perth, Western Australia will be getting it’s very own world-class web conference event: Edge of the Web 2008.

More details will be announced as they are confirmed, but mark 6-7 November in your calendar now. We have an exciting lineup of local, national and international speakers on both technical and business topics - including accessibility, usability, information architecture, code, marketing with social networks, and much, much more.

You might be wondering why I’m not more fulsome in my descriptions of BarCamp 2.0. Surely, you are thinking, Cellobella wouldn’t have missed such an exciting event on her doorstep? Surely she would have signed up at once! Surely such a blog savvy individual such as she would have been possibly even presenting!!

Well stop calling me Shirley.

Dear reader, I fully intended to go, I really did. I signed up on the wiki even. Not to present - there were plenty of others already lined up for that honour - but just to go and experience an unconference. Unfortunately I had a terrible cold and spent the day in bed feeling sorry for myself and making my family suffer.

I’m a terrible patient - especially when my plans are thwarted.

I lay there imagining Central TAFE full of excited geeky types… the nerdy ones with thick glasses and green or brown tee-shirts, baggy seated jeans… the oh-so-cool Web 3.0 types with funky hairstyles and skinny rectangular glasses (they all look like Elliot Spencer in my mind) … and the Bloggy types - harder to categorise - I’m thinking a cross between Bloggy Hell and Karen Cheng - or maybe Mad Goat Lady crossed with Rotto Bloggo?

They are all sharing ideas and coming up with amazing web business plans and getting very enthusiastic about the Edge of the Web conference in November.

And there are sandwiches…

Did you go? Am I close?

The following technique for problem solving or debating is an oldie but a goodie in my opinion.

It’s De Bono’s six thinking hats. I came across it years ago in a work environment and every now and again I still use it to clarify my thoughts or form an action plan.

It can also help to dispel emotion and see things more rationally. Something happened to me just recently and I used the six thinking hats to problem solve. It reminded me of its effectiveness and I thought that there are plenty of blogging situations where it might come in handy.

I should say that this is an overview and I’ve probably adapted the meanings and the technique over the years to suit myself so if you’re interested in learning more there are plenty of resources online.

The basis of it is to look at something in six very distinct ways. Coloured hats are used as a symbol for each way of thinking as follows:

Red hat = emotion. Use it as an outlet for your feelings, passion, irrational thoughts.

White hat = information. Use it to gather the facts.

Black hat = logical negativity. Use it to define logical, rational reasons why something won’t work or you shouldn’t do something.

Yellow hat = logical positivity. Use it to define logical reasons why something is a good idea.

Green hat = new ideas. Use it to generate new ways of thinking.

Blue hat = overview and processing. Use it to review what you’ve learnt and formulate a way forward.

A couple of weeks ago a client of mine wasn’t getting the results they wanted and I’d been working at trying to improve things. I received an email highlighting some unfavourable figures and my first thoughts were all emotion based. I was upset that the client was unhappy, resentful that I’d been doing the best I could and anxious about what was going to happen. The six thinking hats helped me to get it into perspective and come up with a way forward. I worked through each hat one at a time and by the end of the process I felt much better, in fact pretty good about the whole thing.

There are always problems to be solved and decisions to be made when you have a blog and plenty of times when emotions take over so it can be useful to have a structured way of seeing things from different perspectives at times. Most people tend to favour one of the ways of thinking as well so it can be useful to deliberately change that mode to get a different or more complete picture.

It is great to see the amount of brand new bloggers joining in the Aussie Bloggers Forum community, as well as some who have not yet started but want to learn more before they take the plunge. I have recently read articles which foresee the demise of blogging, its popularity being overtaken by the newer social media applications and microblogging but I do wonder if this will be the case.

As I see more and more people starting to use the internet for public communication; stepping outside of their existing circle of friends, family and contacts to discover new people, interests and opportunities, I can also see more of them taking up blogging. These newer applications are very likely stepping stones on the way to them owing their very own communication portal, a blog. The social media sites will continue performing the same function for bloggers as they do today. They provide additional methods of communication with your current readers, ways of cementing contacts and developing friendships and opportunities to raise your profile and get your blog better known.

Unless, in the unlikely event, that one social media application attracts the majority of internet users and adds enough features to allow us to create our own individual and distinct homes on the web then the blog will survive. As more interactive features become available for social networking sites, more functions and flexibility will also be added to blogging software.

I can think of many ways in which running your own blog, be it personal or business, has the advantage over other types of application to create your own home on the web.

• If you host on your own domain or use an online blogging platform that allows customization and addins (e.g. Blogger blogspot) you have control over your design to make your blogging web portal look distinctly yours.
• With a platform such as Wordpress and the newer Majestic, you can create virtually any kind of site. The actual blog can be peripheral to the rest of the site and different pages can perform different functions. Blog software can be used for such diverse areas as podcasting, photo galleries, community sites or online sales.
• You are free to add the features you want, not those dictated by external media applications.
• Widgets and plugins already allow us to integrate much of our other internet activity into our blogs and these are becoming more advanced and flexible. A blog can even be used as your own personal aggregator, bringing in your feeds and your messages from other sites.
• Direct communication methods can be integrated into a blog to complement the comment functions by adding contact forms, chat applications, messaging, audio and video functions.
• If you are aiming at making money from your site, you can incorporate your own choice of advertising options.
• Files can be made available for download in such forms as photos, documents or e-books.
• A blog can be made public and viewable by all, made available for a select few to read or even completely private and used as a way of organizing the information from your online life.

This is only a short list of what I see as some of the main advantages of owning your own blog over using other applications. If you can think of more please let us know.

What’s Fiction Blogging?

Fiction blogging is a minority niche where the blogging medium is used to deliver works of fiction. There, that sounds simple, doesn’t it? But of course, it can get far more complicated. Blog posts may consist of:

• journal-type entries - similar to a personal blog, but from the perspective of a fictional character. This may be public knowledge, or kept secret (ie, readers think it’s a normal personal blog)
• whole short stories
• partial stories
• group-participation stories (where a group of people all write parts of a story – this can get quite chaotic in real-time)
• Notes from the author, and a link to the latest story written

Is it possible to run a successful fiction blog? Obviously, this depends a bit on your definition of ’successful’. But in general, I think the answer is “Maybe, but it’s even more work than mainstream blogs.”

Why fiction-blog?

Everyone doubtless has their own reasons for fiction-blogging. Some assume that they’ll make money and heaps of fans. Some want their work critiqued by a wider community than they have access to locally. I have a few reasons of my own:

Love: I love to write fiction. And my motivation to write skyrockets when I know that someone is reading and enjoying it.

Realism: I don’t think my work is anywhere near publishing-quality yet. I could wait around, polish it up, keep writing, and hope to get it published… but let’s face it – I’d be gambling my current level of creativity on a maybe. I’d probably stuff up any chance I have of writing a bestseller by stifling myself this way.

Weird non-original theory time: I think that in the next 20 years, the music and publishing industries will undergo radical change. We’ve seen bits of it over the last few years in the music industry. Think about it – why undergo the huge overheads involved in publishing a paper book or creating a DVD or CD when you can publish electronically? Add to that my suspicion that we’ll move to different methods of paying for products like this, and maybe you can see why I’m not keen to get too embroiled in the traditional publishing industry. Of course, you might just see the words ’sour grapes’ blinking neon lights over my head instead! Certainly, if a publisher came to me right now with an offer of $50000 for everything I’ve written in the last year…. hooooo boy, that’d be a hard offer to resist! But I’d do it with misgivings, honest

That said, there are a number of problems specific to fiction blogging.

The problems

An uncomfortable fit: The blogging world tends to be centred around two concepts – exchanging information, and personal relationships. Fiction blogs don’t tend to enjoy high profiles because they often don’t meet either of these requirements for the majority of readers.

Different expectations: People don’t tend to blogsurf to find fiction, and they often don’t like to read a story from a screen. News, yes. Fiction? No. If it’s a story with lots of background information that requires reading previous stories, the chances of someone sticking around long enough to read it drops even further.

Space restrictions: The writer’s style needs to fit blogging requirements. In order to make a decent amount of sense, the stories need to be fairly short. In order to stay in a person’s subscription list on an RSS reader like Google Reader, the blog needs to be updated fairly regularly.

Losing the deal: If the writer hopes to get a publishing deal for the material in the future, the fact that it’s already been effectively ’self-published’ on the internet will put off many publishers.

Not looking for you: I haven’t gotten a single regular reader (that I know of) from a search. Sure, a number of people find my fiction blog via searches – around 4-5 each day. But they don’t tend to comment, and as far as I know, they don’t come back. Why? People search for information. Fiction blogs offer an experience, not information. Interestingly, even those searches obviously looking for fiction on a certain topic don’t seem to yield readers. Probably because the searcher had something quite different in mind.

So is it worth it?

I hate to be such a fence-sitter, but it’s up to you. A lot of fiction blogs apparently just fade away and quietly die. Worst case scenario, yours might be one of them.

How can I make it better?

Remember when I said that blogging is all about information and relationships? If you want a successful fiction blog, I think you need to harness at least one of these. You might weave current events or the latest celebrities into your stories. You might spend time each week visiting a certain number of blogs (on all sorts of topics) and leaving well-thought-out, appropriate comments. Or you might spend that time getting to know others in the fiction blogging world, commenting on their fiction. Or you might do all of those and more besides.

Just remember this important fact – as a writer, it’s all about the content. As a fiction blogger, it’s that and so much more. Good luck!

On May 10, Perth is hosting it’s second BarCamp, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce people to the concept.

So what is a BarCamp?

A lot of people probably saw the title of this post and thought “bar what?” - or assumed it had something to do with that great Australian institution, the pub. Although many BarCamp events in Australia at least do end up at the pub, that’s certainly not the main aim!

BarCamp is the name given to a international movement of informal, user-driven “unconferences” - do-it-yourself workshop-style events where everyone is encouraged to participate, either by presenting a topic or participating in a panel or debate, blogging about the event, taking photographs or shooting video, or helping out with lunch. Although most are one day events - typically on a weekend - some are getting so popular that they are expanding over multiple days.

A BarCamp is an absolute ton of fun, and a great educational experience as well. The people running them are generally very community-minded and are open to participation from people of any level - because everyone has something to offer, even those who don’t consider themselves gurus.

And as for the crazy name - according to Wikipedia, “BarCamp” came about as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Foo Camp, an invitation-only user-generated conference run by publisher Tim O’Reilly. “Foobar” is a term with a long history in computing. Which in itself raises a whole lot of other questions… but I’ll leave it up to the interested reader to follow the links through on that one!

Who comes to these things?

Traditionally, it’s been mostly people who work with the web - programmers, designers, web marketers, etc. But with blogging and podcasting hitting the mainstream, and social networking becoming part of many people’s daily lives, the BarCamp audience is expanding to include people who might not previously have considered themselves “geeks”.

In Perth, we have a strong community of librarians, for example, who are very interested in how social networking and blogging is changing the way they operate. Educators are also often involved. And of course there’s the bloggers!

What are they about?

The range of potential topics is limitless, and as the schedule is decided on the day, it will greatly depend on who is present.

At Perth’s first BarCamp, held in June 2007, there were sessions on blogging, web programming, the Second Life virtual world, ergonomics, mobile web sites and setting up a business. At a recent BarCamp held in Canberra, there were presentations on the “Getting Things Done” productivity methodology, Twitter, web site usability, and the use of social networking in business, amongst a whole range of other topics. Something for everyone!

Much of the time, speaker slides, notes and sometimes even audio or video are posted as well, so you can get a feel for the kind of topics that are covered - and catch up on anything you might have missed.

Sounds great! So how do I get involved?

There’s a central web site - BarCamp.org - where BarCamp events are organised. Check your city and see if there’s one coming up - the front page has THE definitive list of upcoming events.

And if there’s nothing in your area… maybe you could start one. Why not?

I haven’t been blogging all that long. In the big scheme of things, 18 months is very little time.

In my time blogging I have learned many, many things. The following are merely a few.

A blogroll is NOT a dessert full of sugar and fat as was my first thought when I heard the term {and still think it does for that matter}

In a similar vein, a widget isn’t really a bug that will invade your pantry!

Your blogroll Is YOUR community. There are REAL people behind those keyboards, and regardless of the tone on a particular blog, when you delve that little bit further, you will discover some truly amazing human beings.

One of the very first unwritten rules I found was to NOT ignore a comment, regardless of what you thought of it. You wouldn’t ignore a person who said hello in the street, and your blog is no different. It’s simple manners.

The same goes for only responding to some comments and not others. That’s just plain rude. To pick and choose between the merits of one comment as opposed to another is simply wrong in my book, however there are many who don’t share this opinion apparently. Some people even ignore you after leaving a comment on your blog, having it responded to, yet when you repay the visit they ignore you like you don’t exist…go figure!

No matter how loud a person proclaims it’s not about the stats…it IS. If it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t have so many counters now would we?

Whilst personal posts can generate much traffic, many times there are few comments. Some posts simply leave people wondering what they can say that makes sense, and in the absence of finding something they feel is appropriate, choose to say nothing. I too have been guilty of this.

The posts you think will bomb go off like a rocket, and those you think will be great hit the ground with a thud so hard it rattles your bones, and whilst I’ve learned this lesson well, I’ll never, ever work out the difference between the 2!

There are many blogs with content/quality to die for and this is justifiably reflected in their readership and popularity. On the other side of that coin, there are also many blogs full of little but utter crap, regardless of their status. {not mentioning any names here no matter HOW tempting it may be!}

Never underestimate your readers. They are the life blood of your blog. Treat them well and you will be repaid ten fold.

Bloggers are, without a doubt, the friendliest community you will ever meet online.

Nothing is too much trouble to help a fellow blogger. This is a relatively new revelation for me. Since joining the forums, I’ve been privileged to encounter some remarkable people and been on the receiving end of many helpful hints and tips, and in some cases physical help. No question is too silly to ask another blogger.

It is possible to form relationships with people through blogging. I know I have, and to prove it make weekly phone calls, and we’ve planned to America next year to meet 2 people we’ve become very close with.

Many people don’t understand blogging and, quite unfairly, label it all a waste of time. I disagree, vehemently.

How can meeting wonderful people from all walks of life ever be a waste of time?

Our own Carnival of Australia is set to celebrate her first birthday this month, right here at Aussie Bloggers. Throw the snags on the barbie and the beer in the esky for this BYO event, cos we’re set to do it in real Aussie style - with posts from all you Aussie bloggers.

Our pink flash of Lightening Online hostessed the last Carnival of Australia and did a beauty of a job. Have you visited her Carnival post yet? **Megan is pointing her finger at you!** If you have no idea what a Carnival is, then having at squiz at Lightening’s Carnival and learning a bit more, here, is a must.

The Carnival of Australia first threw its Akubra in the door on April 25th, 2007: The Carnival of Australia: ANZAC Day Inaugural Edition. I had already been blogging for almost a year, was participating in several blog carnivals and was frustrated that there was little around, Carnival wise, to showcase Aussie blogs and Aussie bloggers. Finding the motivated Aussie community at Bumpzee was a God send and the Aussie carnival centric idea grew from discussions there.

Open to all Australian bloggers or those who have blogged about Australia, the Carnival of Australia has its niche in the variety and diversity of our great southern land. Some things will not be tolerated in our Carnival though. Each host has the right to weed articles offensive to their blog or beliefs. Given I am a child protection advocate, I am fundamentally opposed to any adult content or posts that sexualise children. Racism, hate and over the top swearing are also weeded - sometimes even before they make their way to the fortnightly host.

To start the Carnival, I just did it: I had an idea and I acted on it. While I am definitely a ‘Seeker’ of meaning, there was no “Carnival is over” thoughts for me. Not one to obsessively procrastinate on ideas until everything is crystal clear, I cyber spoke to a few other Australian bloggers to gauge interest, and then claimed the Carnival at BlogCarnival. I advertised on my old child protection blog spot blog, the home schooling blog that I kept at that time and on Bumpzee. Both Leigh from All for Women and Meg from Blogpond also started advertising on their blogs, and the submissions grew each fortnight.

I knew that I wanted the Carnival to have joint ownership so I called for other Aussie bloggers to share the hosting. Colin from Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe was the first external host and he has since hosted another three times. Thanks Colin. Just as in the beginning, the Carnival of Australia runs fortnightly on different Aussie’s blogs.

To host a Carnival of Australia you can either do minimal work (its a cut and paste job from instacarnival) or put your personality, your sense of humour and own commentary into the edition that shows on your blog. When I host, I prefer to always make additional comment, to visit, read and to stumble all submitted posts. Just as I do my children, I spend time on my Carnivals because I am the Carnival of Australia’s mother.

Carnivals do bring additional hits, visitors and trackback checkers. To increase traffic to a new blog, both participating in and hosting Carnivals can be a useful strategy. For me though, celebrating the diversity of Australian though, life and interest remains my motivator. I have such little time in my hectic professional life to spend on forums and social networking sites, that Carnivals now act as my pivotal meeting place for new blogs.

One of the success attributes for the Carnival of Australia has been the regular reminder emails - an email arrives to remind you to submit your post and to provide you the link to make submission super easy. A follow up email then alerts you that the Carnival is live and that you need to go and check your links. Whereas I used to collect email addresses of all people who participated in the Carnivals and send them off an email from me, nowadays, I use an aweber automated system that bloggers need to sign up to in order to get email alerts. If you want to capatalise on this service, then sign up via the Carnival of Australia’s home page.

The open and click through rate to the automated email reminder service is quite acceptable and acts as a measure of Aussie blogger participation: there are 39 Aussie Bloggers subscribed to the list (yep, while this is okay, you had better sign up, hey). For the immediate past Carnival hosted by the beautiful Lightening, 29 people opened their email reminder and there were 22 clicks onto links (15 to blog carnival to submit, one to Aussie Bloggers, three to Imaginif and three to Lightening Online).

C’mon Aussie, c’mon, c’mon - let’s make the first birthday edition a Carnival to remember. Hosted here on Wednesday 23rd April, you need to have your post submitted to BlogCarnival by Monday 21st April, 11pm. Submit now!

**Aging seeker, breaks into song** Say goodbye, my own true lover,

Megan, mother of Carnival of Australia, from Imaginif

When you started blogging, how much thought did you put into choosing the name you would blog under?

You may have spent some time choosing a title for your blog and a domain name if you’ve registered your own. But what about your name on the blog?

Anonymity?

Some people choose to blog with their own name. Maybe your blog is part of your business or adds to a professional reputation you’re building up online. Many personal bloggers, though, choose to blog under a pseudonym.

There are good reasons to blog anonymously, many related to privacy issues. Not everyone wants to be easily identifiable on their blog, and it’s never a good idea to post lots of personal details like birthdates, addresses or phone numbers on the web. These key pieces of information could be used to steal your identity.

You might be worried that a future employer could search for your name and make decisions on whether to employ you and there’s been several high profile cases where bloggers have been fired for blogging about their employer.

How Blogging and Social Networking Can Impact Your Job Search
How to Blog Safely About Work (or Anything Else)

You might also want to protect the privacy of others you mention in your blog, like family and friends. Even if you use pseudonyms for your “characters”, if you are identifiable, they might be too.

In a recent thread at the Aussie Bloggers Forum, members shared their views on whether to blog anonymously or under your own name.

Web Identity – Truth or Fiction?

Related Articles on whether to blog anonymously

Disclosure and Commitment
Employers and Blogging
The True Consequences of Blogging Anonymously

How to choose a Pseudonym

If you do decide to blog anonymously, the next question is how do you choose a pseudonym? You’ll probably want to choose something that’s personal and unique, not a name that every second blog you read has. Just like in real life, your blog name is part of your identity. It’s how you will be recognised not only on your blog but in your comments on other people’s blogs, in forums and in the many services you might sign up for like Stumbleupon, Entrecard, Bumpzee and Technorati.

When you do choose your blog name, consistency is key! Remember that your online identity is sum of all the places you visit online not just your own blog.

Snoskred recently commented in a thread on the Aussie Blogger’s Forum about how to choose a blog name:

Find a unique nickname for yourself, and use it everywhere.
If you search for Snoskred, you’ll find the majority of the results lead back to me. If you choose to blog as “Mary” there’s already thousands of search results there for that name and none of them lead to you. I don’t recommend using your real name on the internet at all, ever.

Places you can find unique names -
The Baby Name Network has a list of baby names by country origin which is a great resource to begin with. (I especially like the Aboriginal baby names, I’ve used them for other usernames around the place)

Different languages - Choose a word that you like, and then see if you can find out what that word translates to in other languages - that’s how I got my name. I actually picked mine out from here - Norwegian-American Dictionary.

Before you make a final decision on the name -
Search for it on the search engines and see what comes up - are other people using that name? If yes, it will get very annoying fast when you keep getting Google Alerts for that other person. Trust me.

Do it right the first time
- it is very difficult to change your name later on down the track, and you can’t get people to change their links to you - a *small* amount of people who linked to you will change the links, but the rest won’t and you will find it very frustrating.

As Snoskred points out, it’s important to do your homework before committing to your blog name. Make sure you’re happy with it, because changing it down the track could cause a few headaches.

But, if you’re anything like me, when you first started your blog, you didn’t realise any of this would be an issue. You may have wondered whether you would even stick at it for long. And you probably never thought that the name you chose could become your brand. In hindsight, I wish I had chosen something a little more exciting or exotic than “A Roaming Aussie Mum” for my blog title and I thought about changing the name when I moved my blog to a self-hosted domain. My blog name, Guera (pronounced “where-a”) was chosen on a whim – it means “blondie” in Spanish and is a name I get called often by Mexicans.

I realised though, that the identity I had built up in the few months I had been blogging would be lost if I changed my name. It would be like starting all over again. Instead I decided to make the name my brand. I don’t mean in the sense that I have something to sell, but that everything I do on the web adds to my online commodity – me. People recognise me as Guera wherever they see me - on the Aussie Bloggers forum, on another blog, on MyBlogLog, etc. And the Roaming Aussie part of my title might not be very exciting, but it’s a brand I can build upon too. If I ever find the time to launch the other blogs I have in the pipeline, you’ll see they also have a Roaming Aussie theme.

One of the founding moderators of the Aussie Bloggers Forum is a good example of how to build on a blog name as a brand. Lightening chose her blog name and started her blog Lightening Online (read why she chose the name Lightening here). When she decided to start a few new blogs, she built on the reputation she had cultivated online under the name Lightening and created Lightening’s Blogworld and Lightening’s Garden. It’s obvious they are connected and the new blogs build on her Lightening “brand” and add to her online reputation. Her readers get a wonderful chance to know more about her and different sides to the Lightening persona.

So, even if you’re a personal blogger and blogging might just be a hobby for you, it’s worth considering the blog name you choose and the brand you are creating.

What about you? How did you choose your Blog title and name? Have you built on your brand?

People annoy me.

One on one, a small group, fine. But en masse, not so much.

‘The great unwashed’ as my Daddy says. And, yes, I still call him my Daddy. Got a problem with that? (See, perpetual annoyance. It’s a gift.)

But wouldn’t life be that little more pleasant if you could put someone on moderation if you just met them?

Or mark as spam if you never ever want their pointy little face in your life again?

Oh, the bliss!

Walking down the aisles of the supermarket, Super Mummy (You know the one; we all know a Penny Perfect) is sauntering towards you. You are wearing your gardening clothes and just popped in to grab some toilet paper, ’cause the kids are starting to use newspaper and newsprint is hard to get off. But it does give you something to read while washing their hair. So there is a benefit.

Anyway, SM is floating towards you and you look like crap.

‘Mark as spam’

YES! She is gone. Never to be seen again!

You are over at a friends house, having a case of wine a civilized coffee and one of her new friends pops in. Immediately chuck her on moderation, just in case you don’t like what she has to say.

Subscribe to her feed if you do.

You overhear a conversation. It intrigues you. Or makes you laugh so hard you pee a little. Instead of risking a punch in the nose or a death stare for being an eavesdropper you can type a quick comment about how that touched you, or you had to change your underwear and clean up the coffee you spurted down your shirt, and escape unscathed.

And the best thing? Instead of telling the world you are sitting there in your pyjamas, with last nights mascara caked to the side of your face and the kids’ Weetbix in your hair, you can pretend you are a gorgeous domestic goddess with perfect children, a husband that hangs on your every word, and a tiger in the bedroom.

Unless you start posting pictures of yourself and your cover is blown.

Damn, I wish I had of thought of that.

Sometimes I surprise myself and write some posts that may offend.

I am really not that self conscious, but I do wonder sometimes if I have pushed it too far and offended anyone. There are just so many backgrounds and cultural expectations of blog readers. How can you possibly cater to everyone?

It is a very fine line in the lampooning business.

How far can you push it before it descends into offence or makes the reader uncomfortable.

For example:

Cruel Lampooning of Famous People

Lampooning of Australian Politicians

and of course the F word and his friends, that naughty intermittent interloper into our lives, including our blogs, our good friend swearing.

This can be a difficult one and I am partial to the odd swear word on my blog. I would not say that I am the master of the profane, but I do enjoy a good joke and sometimes you just gotta have ‘em for emphasis. I searched my blog for one of the unmentionable words and I had less than ten posts. I doubt I would get much of a mention on a swear blogger round up.

In the UK, there is an informal grouping of swear bloggers, who have refined political lambasting into an art form incorporating naughty words. Most of the masters of this art form are Scottish, including, the Reactionary Snob, a respectable Edinburgh Advocate. Here he summarises the reasons why he swears on his blog.

The only people who get abused on this blog I feel deserve it. There are plenty of politicians I respect from all sides.

If you don’t agree - fair enough. There are a billion blogs to read so go and find one with no effing and blinding. If you think that someone of my standing should be doing more with their life, you are probably right. If you think that I could actually make a difference with my posts and people might listen to me if only I didn’t call (insert politician) a (expletives deleted), you are possibly right. But I don’t want to… I use my blog as a little bit of therapy, a place where I can say what I think. If I go a bit far on occasion, so much the better - the few readers I have seem to enjoy it.

I haven’t noticed this to be quite so accepted here in Australia, where bloggers healthy disrespect for politicians tend to show up more in humour and sarcasm. Cynical lot those Brit Bloggers on the other hand. Must be the weather.

Should we warn the reader or do we just dive in or is OK if we swear in other languages.

And should you apologise, especially if it is out of character and it all flowed so beautifully when you came back from the pub last night.

And of course some of us are comfortable with swearing on the bible, but not to swear on the blog.

What about f**k, fcuk and the like? Are they culturally acceptable substitutes? If we know what they mean (nod nod wink wink) then why not just use them?

Can you use swearing in poetry, jokes or in cartoons? In my humble judgement, many of these just don’t work without the appropriate inappropriate word.

Or how about in educational settings. How about in geography lessons? Is it alright to talk knowledgeably about the social context and ethics in the use of swearing or can you say the words directly? Does the academic snob value outweight the shock value of the words themselves?

There is, of course, an element of class consciousness underlying all of it. Swearing attacks the social structure by showing you refuse to play by the linguistic rules of the upper crust. It makes you a linguistic rebel.

Darren has run the numbers and there are a lot of linquistic rebel bloggers and Justin summarises the pros and cons of attacking the social structure.

Ultimately readers will decide. Either they like it and will come back or they are put off and take their custom elsewhere. I suppose it is down to finding your own voice. If that incorporates swearing and people continue to read your blog then fine.

What do you think?

Editors Note: Some swear words may be noted in the links.

There’s something about Western Australia that seems to nurture geeks. Perhaps it’s our isolation from the rest of Australia, or our seemingly constant need to prove we’re “just as good” as the East coast. Whatever it is, one of the by-products is a thriving blogging community and some great innovations coming from the bottom left hand corner of the country. Just some of the many internet-famous Perth bloggers include:-

• Bronwen Clune, founder of PerthNorg, a citizen journalism site and second home to many Perth bloggers, as well as one of the organisers of the Perth Bloggers meetup-

• Jon Yau, founder of AustralianBlogs.com.au amongst other internet ventures - an avid collector of blogs rather than a prolific poster-

• Miles Burke, founder of the Australian Web Industry Association-

• Simone of Enjoy Perth, the most switched-on what’s on guide in the city, and one of the meetup organisers-

• Matt from Abstract Gourmet, the blog that quite often makes me physically drool-

• Gary Barber, the Man With No Blog, who actually took out the best blog category in the 2007 WA Web Awards

I asked a few of these esteemed individuals if they could guess at the source of all this creativity. Over Twitter, Miles Burke succinctly ventured that “because of our physical isolation we have a great desire for collaboration and a community of sharing”. Hmm, I knew someone would say that!

Gary Barber gave a longer version, suggesting that Perth is just the right size for a great community of bloggers. “Perth also has a very close community of bloggers that span various interests with very little clique that is experienced in smaller and larger cities. I guess the real thing is people in Perth ignore the norm, and for the most part don’t pay attention to the norm”.

Simone cheekily added “well obviously Perth is Dullsville, so there’s not much else to do but blog!”. She also pointed out that there’s a long tradition of bloggers meetups in Perth, as they were started way back in 2004 by Richard Giles - long before blogging hit the mainstream. Perhaps that kind of community encourages new bloggers to start or to keep going.

Abstract Gourmet Matt was more matter of fact - he said “I live in Perth, so I blog in Perth. Basically it’s as simple as that. I think I blog along the lines of that crappy catch phrase, ‘think global, act local’”. Like Gary, Matt thinks the size of the community and lack of high profile bloggers (in the food niche, at least) means that “if you’ve got something to say, and put it across well, you get noticed. I’ve had the chance to have an influence over some actual businesses who have benefited from things I’ve written about them… Which is a nice feeling”.

Me personally, I’m a big fan of the nice feeling. As I sit here, sipping coffee with my laptop in my favourite beach-side cafe, the sun shining and the ocean so close I can hear the waves breaking, I have to ask myself if there is any better place to live in the world. And I may be biased - in fact, I’m sure of it - but I don’t think that there is.

Although it’s faded largely into obscurity since launching in June 2007, Blogger in Draft is a site that Blogspot bloggers should be aware of. Effectively the pre-launch test bed for beta tools and experimental functionality, this area enables Blogspot and Blogger users to explore new options in conjunction with their existing blogs.

To explore Blogger in Draft, simply login to http://drafts.blogger.com using your standard username and password, and you will find a Dashboard area which looks extremely familiar. Importantly, you will also see an identical list of blogs you own to those that appear in the standard Blogger Dashboard area. These blogs are one and the same.

Let’s be clear: Any changes you make in this area will appear in your live blog. The phrase “Blogger in Draft” refers to the beta nature of the tools, not the content you create with them.

It’s also important to note that you can freely switch between Blogger and Blogger in Draft. You do not migrate from one version to the next. The only difference is the fact you have access to an additional suite of tools that hasn’t yet hit the radar.

Most, if not all, of the new functionality ported to http://blogger.com over the last 6 months began its journey here, including the video upload tool and the survey/poll tool.

New functionality is added to this space periodically, with the most recent additions being:

• Google Gadgets - Add one of the many Google Gadgets to your blog.
• Blog Lists - Show off what you read with a blogroll of your favorite blogs.
• Slideshows - Add a slideshow of your photos to your blog.
• Subscription Links - Let your readers easily subscribe to your blog with popular feed readers.
• Search Box - Search over your blog, your blogroll, and everything you’ve linked to.

Just this week, Blogger in Draft also launched a Scheduled Posts option:

“We’ve often heard that sometimes you’d like to write a post now and have it automatically published at some time in the future. We listened, and are pleased to say that this feature is ready for you to try out on Blogger in draft.”

All this being said, while Blogger in Draft provides you with access to an additional tool set that can grant you valuable new functionality, it’s important to remember these are still developmental. So you may experience bugs or errors from time to time.

Nonetheless, it’s always fun to have a play with a new toy before it hits the shelves, and you may find you’re now have the option to do something you’ve been patiently awaiting. So go crazy.

References:

• “New Feature: Scheduled Posts“, Blogger in Draft blog, 15 February 2008
• Blogger in Draft - http://drafts.blogger.com/
• Blogger - http://www.blogger.com/

You have been blogging for a while now, built up a healthy amount of daily traffic, have probably brought your own domain name and now you want to run ads on your blog to make some money. There are hundreds of companies out there that supply advertising to blogs but if you know nothing about online advertising, then choosing a company that is going to offer real value for the space on your blog is almost impossible. In this post, I am going to give you the basics about online advertising to help make that choice a little easier.

Types of Online Advertising

There are two main types of advertising that appear on blogs; display and search. Display ads are those colourful boxes that you see littering almost every single page on the internet these days, whilst search ads are boxes of text, usually hosted by Google. Neither one is better than the other, but one type may be more suitable for your blog.

Firstly, you need to decide how much space you want to devote to advertising. If you don’t want your blog cluttered by advertising, then search ads are probably the best way to go. If you have more space on your site, you might decide that display is for you. Either way, you need to decide if having advertising on your site is going to alienate your readers and how much advertising is too much.

A word of advice: If you can’t tell where the advertising stops and your blog begins, you have gone too far.

Buy Types

Online advertising is sold using one of three buy types;

CPM (cost per thousand): The advertiser pays a fixed amount per thousand impressions, an impression being a user seeing the ad.

CPC (cost per click): The advertiser pays a fixed amount per click, a click being a user clicking on the ad to visit the advertiser’s site.

CPA (cost per action): The advertiser pays a fixed amount per user action; the action can be an inquiry or lead, a sale, or any other kind of specified transaction.

The best buy type for bloggers would be CPM as you are paid for every single time the ad appears, however, the most common buy type offered is CPC. This is because it offers the best value for money for the advertiser as their ad gets shown to every user, but they only pay when someone clicks.

An increasingly large number of companies, such as Amazon, are now selling ads on a CPA buy, which means you only get paid if someone clicks on the ad on your blog and then buys something from that company. Good thing for the company, but not such a great deal for you.

How much money will I make?

Realistically, not that much. Yes, there are a lot of stories about people who are making an income from their blogs, but compared to the number of people blogging, these fortunate ones are very few and far between. Advertising is really not a great way to make money unless you have a massive amount of traffic coming to your blog. This is because advertising is designed to benefit the advertiser and not you, the humble blogger.

Most advertising is sold as CPC (cost per click) at roughly 20 cents a click. The average click through rate (number of clicks/number of impression) for advertising is 0.05%. Therefore, if you serve 2,000 impressions a day, the most clicks you will get is about 100, which gives you at best a daily amount of $20. While $140 a week is pretty good money, the chances are your returns will be much lower than this as, I hate to admit it, blog readers aren’t really big on clicking on ads unless the ads relate to products and services they are interested in.

The trick to making money with advertising is to have a large traffic volume and to offer ads that will appeal to your readership, but not to make the advertising detract from the real reason people visiting which is to read your blog. It is a fine tightrope to work with many pitfalls and traps for inexperienced players. For those that can get the balance right, it can mean giving up your day job but for the rest of us, the best we can hope for is that it pays our hosting costs.

Hi, I’m Gillian Polack and I’m guest blogging today. There’s a reason for me being here, apart from the obvious one of the hosts being incredibly nice and generous people. I’m an Aussie blogger with a lot of US readers. If you check out my Food Historyblog, you’ll find it has a US look to the page and that I blog with a US blog network. My other blog is on Live Journal.

For the purposes of this post, that second blog doesn’t count, in fact, because there is no balancing act involved. I post about my life in Canberra a lot there and what I’m writing about and what I’m reading and what I’m thinking and how I feel that morning. It’s the kind of personal blog you’d expect from a fiction writer. This makes sense, given I am indeed a fiction writer.

I’m also an historian. I express some of my historianness (historianicity?) in my personal blog because – as I like to tell people – the Middle Ages intrudes everywhere – but most I use my Food History blog to talk about food and history and cultural change over time and recipes.

This is where it gets interesting.

I want to get people thinking about history and enjoying history. I want to help readers engage with history and help them pursue their own family history and culinary pasts. I also want to talk about wider issues. All this I do. It’s fun. I get people involved in history through talking about things they’re familiar with. Right now I’m doing it with election cakes – a traditional US recipe quite suited for their election year.

It remains fun as long as I stay on my tightrope. I have to retain my Australian identity (helped by my grandmother’s 1950s handwritten recipe book and by a stalwart group of Canberra locals involved in my various activities) and I have to communicate to the rest of the world. The rest of the food history world comprises readers from at least eighty-five countries. Numerically, though, 53% of my readers are from the United States.

It’s not always easy to keep the balance between celebrating my own culture and luring people into the past, but mostly I seem to succeed. Sometimes, the balance is easier because of the fiction writer. Why? Well, this year I will have a whole series of posts that will appeal to US readers plus have an immediate appeal to Canberrans. I and my team are designing a Prohibition banquet for the Conflux science fiction convention in October. This is the third banquet I’ve done: the first was Medieval and the second, Regency Gothic.

If I weren’t a fiction writer and historian I’d never have the opportunity to design these banquets – but that’s an entirely different balancing act. I have yet to have any of my historical recipes sneak through a publisher and into a novel or short story. That will happen, mark my words.

First let me get the blog balance sorted, then I’ll get the novel/cookbook one under control. After that my main concern will be the balance of the scales: there’s an awful lot of food involved in my blogging!

I Stumble. A lot. Much of it is looking for quality blogs to read, finding new themes, or info on the administration side of my own domain, that type of thing. Now, I read as I go most of the time, have a bit of a look around if the latest post grabs me, look through the comments, maybe check out a couple of links on the blogroll.

Recently I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, on several occasions.

Whilst there are no written rules, per se, in blogging, there are, I believe, a certain set of unwritten rules regarding blog etiquette. One of these is to not challenge a person on their own blog.

If you heard a comment made in a conversation on the street, and you disagreed with it, would you stop and tell the person you disagree with them at all, let alone give them a serve they’re not likely to forget any time soon? I certainly wouldn’t.

All people are different, and have different opinions on things, it’s what gives us individuality, and it’s a good thing in most cases. The world would indeed be a boring place if we were all the same, yes?

I have no issue with a lively debate, and in fact encourage it on my blog. The only thing I ask is it not become personal, whether it be directed at myself, or someone who comments. In the last 3 weeks alone I have stumbled upon 5 blogs where a reader has gone way too far in the comments section on a post. I’m talking name calling, insults, comments that are scathing, and in some cases, downright threatening.

These have been people who are obviously not regular readers or commenters, they’ve just stumbled on the post, much the same as me, and decided to put their 2c worth in. They then come back some hours, or days, later to see the reaction and continue in the same vein. My idea of a blog is to connect with others, put up a post and see what it brings. If I get comments, good and well, and if I don’t it doesn’t matter: I’ve taken the thought from my head and put it into words.

If you’re going to leave a comment, by all means state your case in terms that makes it difficult for them to be misconstrued. If the dialogue continues and it becomes apparent your opinion differs so much, surely an email is far more appropriate than calling someone out in a public forum?

This is not just any public forum is it? You’re in someone else’s space.

If you really have such a strong opposite opinion, would it not be easier to move along and say nothing? The thinking behind name calling and insults eludes me. It’s childish, and makes you look like an idiot. An immature idiot at that. There are many ways of getting an opposite opinion across without resorting to these means.

If you’re a regular reader on a blog, it’s far easier to disagree in a way that won’t be misconstrued because you get to “know’ each other. You sometimes agree to disagree and move on, which is as it should be, but to just breeze in, create havoc and go again?

I’ve been reasonably lucky and only ever had to delete one comment in my time blogging, and I thought long and hard before I did it, but the person in question simply went too far. They attacked not only myself, but three others who had commented on the post in question. Yes, they’re only words on a screen and can’t hurt you but that’s not the point, is it? I wouldn’t tolerate someone coming into my home and doing it, so I’m not going to tolerate it on my blog either. I always console myself with one thought in these situations…

On my blog I’m omnipotent.

I can, will, and have, banished people with a keystroke. An IP address can be blacklisted, and I have several on mine for various reasons.

Has anyone had this problem? I know of one or two in the blogs I read, but I was wondering if others were encountering this problem too? Or am I being too picky?

I started blogging on a whim without really knowing the first thing about it.I’d been a member of a trading forum for quite a while and got to know some of the regulars there. About 18 months ago, in the “off topic” sub forum, someone asked a question on which was the best blogging software. He didn’t get much response. This was someone who had been very helpful to me when I was looking at web hosting options and I remembered reading something about WordPress on a web design site I looked at from time to time. I didn’t read any blogs then or at least I wasn’t really aware of them as blogs. I sent him a private message, said I didn’t know that much about it but that he might want to investigate WordPress as an option.

We started a long communication about the motivation to write and all sorts of other stuff. Something inspired me to give it a go as well and we learnt about WordPress together at that stage. He started the Boomtown Rap and I decided to start a business blog as part of the Semfire website.

18 months down the track I consider it to be one of the best decisions I made. It’s put me in contact with a lot of people I would never have come across otherwise. I’ve maintained the blog as strictly on topic related to my paid search and seo business but in the course of trying to be a better blogger I’ve also discovered some fantastic writers on a whole range of topics.

It also started a friendship with Ross from the Boomtown Rap and we’ve been on a whole lot of learning curves together related to blogging and businesses. It seems funny to look back on that first WordPress discussion.

So, I’m still a relatively new blogger but love the fact that I stumbled across it and it’s an area in which I still want to improve.

Anyone got any stories on how they first started blogging?

Bloggers are creepy. It’s true, you know we are. I mean ‘creepy’ in a good way. (Come on, I’m sure ‘creepy’ can be a compliment. Work with me ….) Think about it for a bit. We expose selected bits and pieces of ourselves on the internet, (and rumour has it that it’s a world wide thing nowadays), and then we burrow into the lives of other people and read selected bits of their lives, we comment and then….

we go out amongst the General Public and we look just like everyone else…. except far more attractive, of course.

We’re a real life version of the Harry Potter world. We’re like the magical people living among the muggles. Here we are in plain sight, but our bloggyness is hidden away from the sight of most of whom we come into contact. Creepy….

Think about it. We could be formulating a post on anything. At any time. Maybe right now….. and how would people know? Maybe a vague look might cross our faces, or pupils dilating might give it away too. But they’re subtle things that could be explained away by a myriad of other things. So we walk amongst the population. Silently noting. Photographing. Documenting.

Creepy.

Think of the actual word “blog’. That’s not a sexy word. You can’t tell me that the first time you heard the word ‘blog’ you felt an instant magnetic pull towards becoming a ‘blogger’. It’s a bit of a turn-off, to tell the truth. And how brilliant is that? Who would ever suspect that someone as scintillating and witty and drop-dead gorgeous as you are could possibly be one of those … (whisper)…Blog People? Aren’t Blog People nerds who are incapable of dealing with real life people so they hide behind a computer screen and blog instead? What a brilliant facade blogging has! And so we are able to weave the magic of our words in peace, going about our day to day lives and indulging in our bloggishness when and where and how we please. Oh the power.

I really wish I’d discovered blogging when I was trapped at home with small children for 10 years before I went back to work. Don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty fond of my boys. They can’t help being ugly and a little slow. They did the best with the genetic material they had to work with, and I applaud them for that. But that decade was very isolating. There’s only so many episodes of Playschool and Sesame street a grown woman can watch before she starts acting like a teapot at the most inappropriate times. Those years were difficult financially. I didn’t have the cash to pop into the indoor play centre and do coffee like a lot of mums did. I had to turn down a lot of invitations. I’m sure that those years would have been easier if I’d had access to the humour, support and sharing that bloggers so generously pass around.

It’s true. Blogging may be a creepy (but totally hip and cool) thing to do, but what a vibrant and generous lot of people we are. (Well… you guys are. I’m just nibbling at the edges.) There are so many people out there who are amazing writers. They take their lives and thoughts and shape them in ways that can make me LOL (as daggy as that looks) or make me weep. (That has happened. Not often, but it has.) Or they describe something that happens in such a way that they absolutely nail it, and I find myself nodding in total agreement, saying, “Yes. That’s exactly what it’s like.” Or… (and in some ways this is the best one) they write about things that I’ve had absolutely no experience about at all, and windows are opened in my mind about what it’s like to live in another kind of reality. After all, what do I know about being a guy? Or a midwife? About parenting a child with autism? About surving a childhood of horrific abuse? About being creative enough to try dying wool with food dye to make fabulous colours? And what about all of that snow that people on the other end of the world live with? Are they crazy? No wonder they’re always knitting. They’d all freeze to death otherwise. Imagine having to shovel snow from the driveway every morning before you go to work. That sort of weather just isn’t civilised.

We (creepy) hip and happening bloggers have deep, unseen connections with people from all over the place. We connect with people from everywhere and almost every socio-economic level. If we see something we don’t like, we simply slip away and move onto the next blog. No fuss, no drama. I love it. I wrote a bit about this on my 100th post. I love the fact that so many different aspects of my life are fed by blogging. Every day I read mummy blogs. Teaching blogs. Reading, knitting and quilting blogs. I read blogs by people far more intelligent than myself, (yes, such a thing IS possible. But only just…) and I love the insights they give me. I’ve become far more conscious of my photography and my son now has his own photo blog, which would never have happened without having his imagination opened up by seeing the work of others. There are also really fun things to do like The Great Interview Experiment where bloggers take turns passing the baton and interviewing each other. (I found out a lot about Norway and saw some amazing photos with my guy.) And aren’t the comments fun?

And all of this activity and creativity happens sight unseen. We look normal. Little do people know what boundless things we explore and friends we’re making while we’re busily tapping away on our keyboards.

Creepy….

but in an excellent way.

(Frogdancer can be found at Dancing With Frogs. )

I’m relatively new to blogging having only started my own blog in September last year. It was through looking at other people’s blogs that my own desire to do the same was sparked.

I was nervous. Various questions ran through my head - Where and how do I start a blog? What would I write about? How much detail about my life do I use? Would anyone want to read my stories? Would my style of writing be up to scratch?

The questions of where and how do I start to blog were answered by looking around the blogs of other people that I knew. I picked the most familiar platform, started a blog, and spent a week playing with it before showing anyone what I had done. That week of play answered a lot of my “how” questions. I discovered that using a blogging platform is a bit like any other application that you will use online. It just takes some time, practice and patience to get used to how it works and learn your way around.

Of course, if I was new to blogging and starting a blog now, I would go to visit the Aussie Bloggers Forum where I would find a plethora of helpful people and handy advice to get me started on my merry blogging way!

All the other questions answered themselves after I asked myself a few questions.

What was I going to blog about? Well, my life. Things that happen to me and my family, my reactions to those things, my thoughts and my emotions.

How much detail was I going to use? No more than I would feel comfortable with someone I know in real life stumbling across it.

Would anyone want to read my rantings? Was my writing style going to be good enough? It doesn’t really matter. The thing is, you see, that I have always liked the idea of keeping a diary, but in practice it never worked for me. I am a seriously easily sidetrackable kind of person. I can’t begin to remember how many diaries I have started only to lose them, or miss a few days and not bother. Blogging, to me, was a last ditch attempt at diary keeping in a place that I regularly spent time and couldn’t possibly lose it.

Keeping a diary of things that happen in my world online is working for me. Knowing that other people may be reading what I’m writing about helps me to sort events/ideas & my reactions to events in my mind as I try to put them in a format that will make sense to the reader. As an added bonus the supportive comments of people who do read my blog are a nice little boost when dealing with difficult circumstances and a lovely addition to my own celebration of the good things.

So if you want to start a blog but don’t know where to start, have a look around. Check out other bloggers and the platforms that they are using. Go to the Aussie Bloggers Forum and ask some questions. Have a think about what you want to blog about and ask yourself some questions about it. Set something up, have a play, have a fiddle, start writing. You may just surprise yourself.

If asked, how quickly and concisely could you describe your blog, and its purpose?

Have you ever been at a Meetup, a networking event, or out at dinner with people you’ve met for the first time, and upon being asked what your blog is about, found yourself saying something like “um, well, yeah, my blog is sort of about stuff, you know.”

That’s not exactly descriptive, good for pulling in traffic, nor the best for business either, particularly if your blog has commercial objectives. So if you’re currently blogging about “like, stuff”, then it’s time you thought about devising an elevator statement.

First up, what is an “elevator statement”? Wikipedia offers the following definition:

In business jargon an elevator statement (or elevator pitch) is a short concise and compelling statement about a business or a business situation that can be delivered in the time it takes for an imaginary elevator ride. The elevator statement would be rehearsed and honed to give maximum impact. Someone wishing to lobby an idea or case might prepare an elevator statement to present it in the best possible light in the shortest possible time whenever an opportunity arose.

In essence an elevator statement is all about making the best use of limited time, such as the time it takes to travel from one floor to another in a lift. And while they are usually the domain of sales and marketing reps, promotion conscious bloggers can put them to good use also.

Be warned though, composing a good elevator statement takes time. It needs to be something you are comfortable conveying, something that makes sense immediately to a listener, enticing, and can be said and done in ten seconds or less. (Some elevators move very quickly remember.)

Despite this, they are not really too difficult to write. It’s just a matter of taking an objective look at your blog and summarising its core objectives. Here are a few simple examples of what you could say:

If you’re a food lover who writes restaurant reviews, you could say “I’m a food lover and I write reviews of restaurants and cafes in Melbourne at my blog ‘Food Lovers Are Us dot com’.”

If you’re an amateur photographer who is interested in outback photography: “I’ve had a life long interest in outdoor photography and am keen to profile the work of rural and outback photographers working in Australia.”

If you’re interested in design, technology, life, the universe, and everything, and telling the world about it: “I love reading design, arts, technology, trends, and current affairs related websites, and sharing my reading discoveries at ‘Geeks like tech dot net’.”

Remember the idea is to be a