What are the Most Popular Platforms among Top Bloggers?

I use Blogger for all my blog hosting needs. I have heard that there are some other blogging platforms, and the most competitive to our Blogger is, definitely, WordPress. I even reviewed the differences in one of my posts, but overall for me the blogging world was divided between two ruling blogging platforms with small fractions of all others, having a limited, mostly local, influence, like Live Journal in Russia. Maybe, it is the same for you? But also maybe it is time to at least consider more professional solution?

Pingdom performed a very interesting research of which platforms are chosen by the top 100 blogs according to the Technorati rating. Note that there is a notable distinction between blogging services and self-hosted blog software.

• Blogging services are online services like Typepad, Wordpress.com and Blogger, where a third-party is handling the blog software and hosting for you.
• Blog software is the software you use when you set up and host the platform yourself (using Wordpress, Movable Type, etc).

Review the diagram so you can get a quick overview of which blog platforms (and CMS) are the most popular among the top 100 blogs.

Blog software (self-hosted)

As you see Wordpress is the most-used platform among self-hosted blogs, which perhaps isn’t a huge surprise. It has more than twice as many blogs in the top 100 as Movable Type, the blog platform that came in second place.

• Wordpress is used by 27 blogs in the top 100.
• Movable Type is used by 12 blogs in the top 100.
• Only 8 of the top 100 blogs use a custom-made blog platform.
• Drupal is the only general-purpose CMS with any presence worth mentioning, with 4 blogs in the top 100.

Blogging services

Though Wordpress is more popular among the self-hosted blogs than Movable Type, the situation is reversed when it comes to the blogging services based on these blog platforms. Typepad (based on Movable Type) is more popular than Wordpress.com (based on Wordpress). Blogger comes in at third place.

That’s at least if you count the commonly available blogging services. If you also count the AOL-owned Blogsmith that is used by Weblogs, Inc., that ends up having almost as many blogs in the top 100 as Typepad, leaving Wordpress.com and Blogger in a distant third and fourth place.

Traditional media like Entertainment Weekly, CNN and Wired often use blogging services for their blogs, and most seem to have chosen Typepad.

• More than one third of the top 100 blogs use a blogging service.
• Typepad is used by 16 blogs in the top 100.
• Blogsmith is used by 14 blogs in the top 100.
• Wordpress.com is used by 5 blogs in the top 100.
• Blogger is used by 3 blogs in the top 100. (Including, of course, The Official Google Blog.)

Wordpress and Movable Type as a whole

If you combine the hosted and self-hosted versions of Wordpress and Movable Type (i.e. include Wordpress.com and Typepad as well), they dominate, claiming 60 of the top 100 blogs.

• Wordpress + Wordpress.com have 32 of the top 100 blogs
• Movable Type + Typepad have 28 of the top 100 blogs.

Blog networks

Interesting is that two big blog networks have taken a large chunk of the top 100 blogs. In addition to these, Wired has created a small blog empire of its own.

• AOL-owned Weblogs, Inc. has 14 blogs in the top 100. All use Blogsmith as a blog platform.
• Gawker Media has 8 blogs in the top 100. Gawker Media uses its own, custom-made blog platform for its blogs.
• Wired’s blogs are plentiful as well. There are 9 Wired blogs in the top 100, all using Typepad.

Rotating Post Widget for Blogger Blog

In blogger best intentions is keeping the visitor as long as possible, keeping him busy with all the wonderful content you have. But, in many cases, due to the time-related blog building logics, your visitor is leaving the site, without even knowing how much interesting stuff he failed to read beside.

Many different widgets are trying to fill the gap, and random post widget for Blogger is one of them. If you have a blog with more than 20 posts than this gadget is just the thing you might be interesting in.

 

Main features:

1. Shows one post title at a time.

2. Links to the post.

3. Shows post excerpt also.

4. Every 5 seconds shows a new post.

5. Cycles through all the posts in the blog.

6. Starts a new cycle at the end of the list.

7. Once loaded continues cycling even when not connected to the Internet.

8. Uses official Google AJAX technology.

9. Can be used on other blogging platforms (not tested).

10. Hovering with mouse cursor over the post title halts the rotation till mouse moves off the gadget.

 

Drawback:

Posts are not random, the sequence is quite defined - from the newer to the older posts.

Code:

Get code from the developer’s post http://www.blogdoctor.me/2009/01/random-rotating-post-gadget-with.html. If you need to modify the widget as per your particular needs, review the questions and answers below the post. I removed the author’s name and date, for example, decreased dimensions and fonts in half, and placed it in the side column. You can review the Random Post widget modified in the right sidebar.

 

Note that there are three areas you need to put particular data from your blog to make it work. Change "MYBLOG" to actual blog sub-domain and "BLOG_TITLE" to actual title of your blog. Then paste the modified code in the Html gadget and save the gadget. Get your AJAX API key and put it in above code instead of 'PUT_AJAX_KEY_HERE'.

Installation:

1. Login at Blogger.com.
2. Click Layouts link on Dashboard.
3. Click Add Gadget link in sidebar on Page Elements subtab of Layout tab.
4. In popup window scroll down and click Html/Javascript gadget.
5. In Contents window copy the code below and paste after modifying it.

6. Move the new widget blog to the desirable location on your template.

How to Put a Widget on a Specific Page of your Blogger Blog

Widgets are short and handy small computer programs that can add more functionality to any Blog platform. In Blogger, where standard set of features and embedded plugins is rather limited, adding extended capabilities with third-party widget might help to spice up your blog and increase its attractiveness. It can be added as an extra code behind the new Page Elements through the Page Elements subtab of the Template tab.

In brief, to add widget or page elements to your blog login at Blogger.com and click on Layout link on Dashboard. Then click the Add Page Element link in the sidebar.

After adding a Page Element to your blog it can be seen on all your blog pages by default, unless you wrap the widget in conditional tags. In this publication, we will present you the way on how to put selectively widgets on particular blog pages. You really can decide on which pages or a single pagethe widget should appear.

WIDGET ON POST PAGES ONLY

If you want to put the widget only on the post (item) pages then paste this line :

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == "item"’>

immediately after the main includable line of code in the widget :

<b:includable id=’main’ var=’top’>

For this login at Blogger.com and click on Layout link on Dashboard. Then click Edit Html subtab of Template tab. Put a check in the Expand Wdgets Template checkbox at the top of the Template code box and scroll down to the widget code. Lastly in the widget code add a </b:if> before the immediate next </b:includable>. This is how the whole widget code will look like after the change :

<b:widget id=’HTML1’ locked=’false’ title=’’ type=’HTML’>
<b:includable id=’main’>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == "item"’>

WIDGET CODE

</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

This widget will only appear on the Post Pages.

WIDGET ON MAIN PAGE ONLY

If you want the widget to appear only on the Main Page of the blog use the code below :

<b:widget id=’HTML1’ locked=’false’ title=’’ type=’HTML’>
<b:includable id=’main’>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl’>

WIDGET CODE

</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

This widget will appear only on the Main Page.

WIDGET ON SPECIFIC BLOG PAGE

There are some cases in which you may want the widget to appear only on a specific page of your blog. For example, there might be some pages on your blog with heavy traffic where you plan to put some special ads or particular content. Create the widget by pasting the HTML in the new widget. Then modify the code as shown below :

<b:widget id=’HTML1’ locked=’false’ title=’’ type=’HTML’>
<b:includable id=’main’>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.url == "BLOG_PAGE_URL"’>

WIDGET CODE

</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Replace the CAPS : BLOG_PAGE_URL with the permalink of your post.

WIDGET ON SPECIFIC LABEL PAGE

You can specify a widget to appear only on specific label pages. This is useful when you want to represent your labels with icons. For example, you may have posts on books and when the label books are clicked in your blog the sidebar will show a book icon. For such widgets, you can use the following code:

<b:widget id=’HTML1’ locked=’false’ title=’’ type=’HTML’>
<b:includable id=’main’>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.url == "http://BLOG_NAME.blogspot.com/search/label/LABEL_NAME"’>

WIDGET CODE

</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Replace BLOG_NAME and LABEL_NAME with actual.
Source: http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/12/put-widget-on-specific-page-or-url.html

Spice up your blog with free cartoon

How to make my site unconditionally attractive? How to add interesting and catchy content to encourage my visitors come back again and again? How to make my readers stay longer on my pages?

I bet, you ask yourself all these and similar questions, when you try to tune and enhance your blog. And answers might be completely different. In this publication, I want to present a single way to spice up your blog and make it more attractive. It might not work for every site and every blog, but I am sure for some of you it will be a good solution.

Free daily cartoon add-on is a good way to add automatically high-demand content and liven up any page on your site. Simply cut and paste the code below into your website or blog HTML. When your readers click on the thumbnail, a larger version of the cartoon appears.

Users rules from the content developer

1. Feel free to change the code's fonts, colors, etc to match your website or blog, but please keep the text and links "as-is".

2. Cartoons archiving on your site is not permitted.

3. If you find cartoons you'd like to use, please contact the author for the aforementioned reasonable quote.

4. Adult websites are not allowed to use the free content.

Business Cartoons:

DAILY CARTOON
click to enlarge

Cartoon by Andertoons

Removing Newer and Older Post Links in Blogger Blog

If you are using Blogger as blogging platform, you might be used to some of the built-in features, that you consider hard coded, but can be changed with slight template code modification. One of the hacks, presented in this publication, addresses a seemingly minor issue on the page - two links “Older Posts” and “Newer Posts” on the bottom of the page.

For those, who prefer their blog to be maximally close to the static webpages, these links not just unnecessary, but are plainly irritating. There is a way to remove them once and forever. And that is quite easy to do, even for not very experienced users. Note, that this hack will also remove “home” link from the bottom of the blog page.

Open Layout Tab in your blog profile page, choose Edit HTML, and search your code in your blog template for the following text:
#blog-pager-newer-link {
float: left;
}
#blog-pager-older-link {
float: right;
}
#blog-pager {
text-align: center;
}


Now replace that code with the following code:

#blog-pager-newer-link {
display: none;
}
#blog-pager-older-link {
display: none;
}
#blog-pager {
display: none;
}


Save the template and you are done. I hope that was indeed an easy and straightforward one.

Additional Reading:

http://bloggeruniversity.blogspot.com/
http://tipsforwebsite.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-remove-post-and-post-link-on.html

Disabling Right Click in Blogger Blog

Have you noticed, that some web sites do not allow their visitors using right mouse click while pointer is on the blog area. This option is useful for the site and blog owners, who want to minimize the possibilities of the content direct copying to other posts.

Provided cross browser DHTML script from dynamicdrive will help you achieving the same result on your own blog, preventing default right menu from popping up when right mouse is clicked. There are actually two options for this script are provided: Alert Option and Non-alert Option. If the Alert Script is enabled, if someone tries to execute Right click on the blog, then a Message, which can be customized per your desire, appears. If the Non-alert script is activated, then no message is displayed.

To setup this tool in your blog Copy the Following code and paste it to your blog by adding a new page element.

Message Alert Script:

<script language=JavaScript>
<!--

//Disable right mouse click Script
//By Maximus (maximus@nsimail.com) w/ mods by DynamicDrive
//For full source code, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com

var message="Function Disabled!";

///////////////////////////////////
function clickIE4(){
if (event.button==2){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

function clickNS4(e){
if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers){
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
document.onmousedown=clickNS4;
}
else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
document.onmousedown=clickIE4;
}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("alert(message);return false")

// -->
</script>

Message Non-Alert Script:

<script language=JavaScript>
<!--

//Disable right click script III- By Renigade (renigade@mediaone.net)
//For full source code, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com

var message="";
///////////////////////////////////
function clickIE() {if (document.all) {(message);return false;}}
function clickNS(e) {if
(document.layers||(document.getElementById&&!document.all)) {
if (e.which==2||e.which==3) {(message);return false;}}}
if (document.layers)
{document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);document.onmousedown=clickNS;}
else{document.onmouseup=clickNS;document.oncontextmenu=clickIE;}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("return false")
// -->
</script>

Improving Blog Placement Optimizing Title

In one of my previous publications, I have presented a way to swap parts of the blog post title the way that the post name will go before the blog name, as it is setup by default in the Blogger templates. There are multiple advantages of this simple transformation, both from aesthetical and Search Engines Optimization point of views. Your posts will be less competitive in respect to each other for a descent space on the search page for the particular search items. It is always good to have your main keywords (introduced in your Post title) of a specific blog post at the start rather than placing your blog title at the start. The situation improvement is even more significant, if the blog post title is very long. The method offered was tested, and its works on my Blogger blog posts.

This time, I want to present one more way to reach the same, or almost the same outcome (the only difference is a separation sign between blog post title and blog title). However, there is always good to have a choice. This time, credit goes to BloggerTricks blog.

Let’s make the process more visual.

Before the trick:

After the trick:

How to change:

As usual, Sign in to Blogger » Layout » Edit html and find this line in the current blog template:
<title><data:blog.title/></title>

Now, replace that line with the following code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/>
<data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> </b:if>

Save the Changes.
The method has been also tested on this blog, and it worked for me.

How to Create a Killing Blog Post Title?

There are some many ways to improve your blog in terms of readability, search ability, attractiveness, organization, and so on, that the newbie blogger feels completely overwhelmed with amount of the available information and massive recommendations, sometimes controversial. Little-by-little, you start developing your own style, adopting some recommendations completely, rejecting others, and modifying the remaining group to accommodate your strategic goals, aesthetic and ethical views, and personal common sense. For me, it is probably time to seek improvement of my blog titles.

Hendry Lee is offering 10 templates on how to create killer titles for your blog posts that nobody could resist but got interested in the post content. Definitely, that does not present the complete solution. You cannot fit all your posts in one of the offered schematic forms. However, these templates give you overview of the killer titles generation approach. In many cases, you can use them “as is”, but be sure not overdoing that, following the internal voice of your personal common sense.

1. How to ____

This is at the top of the list for a reason. It is simple yet very effective. It can be used almost for any technical (and not only) post.

Example: How to Win Friends and Influence People.
This is the title of Dale Carnegie’s book. It includes double benefits within a single title, which works extremely well.

2. ____ Proven Strategies to ____

Fill the first blank with a number. This title works because it is specific. It also promises something in the content the readers can find and use. The effectiveness of the title, of course, depends on the benefit you include in the second blank space.

Example: 7 Proven Strategies to Save on Tax.

3. Here’s a Way to _____ That Has Never Failed Yet!

This one is taken from an email subject line that generated a staggering 60% open rate. It works for sales copy and it can be used for blog post title too.

Example: Here’s a Way to Lose Weight That Has Never Failed Yet!

4. Do You Make These Mistakes in ____?

Maxwell Sackheim wrote this headline. It became a legendary 40-year control ad. Many copywriters believe this is because of the headline.

What’s account for its stunning success? It is the word these.

Combining these and mistakes intrigue the audience to continue reading and find out what these mistakes are. Including the answers in the copy or content is important as well.

Example: Do You Make These Mistakes in Designing a Web Site?

5. (Attention: ____,) Don’t ____ Until You Read This

In the first blank, you insert your target audience. Insert something desirable in the second blank space. The impact is much like the fourth title template above but with a qualifier. You may create a second variation by omitting the Attention: ____,” part.

Example: Attention: Newbie Blogger, Don’t Quit Your Job Until You Read This.

6. Who Else Wants to ____ (in ____)?

Social proof is a powerful and effective psychological trigger to influence your audience to make a decision (like in buying a product). This same headline and title template has been overused in certain niche because it works. The second blank adds specificity into the title, usually a phrase that shows the readers how they could benefit by reading on.

Example: Who Else Wants to Drive 10,000 Unique Visitors to Their Blog in Two Hours?

7. Need a ____?

A simple formula that identifies an unfulfilled desire the readers want to achieve. You can also rephrase the question to make it a problem instead of desire. Using this title template allows the readers to resonate with it immediately, even if they scroll down the page quickly.

Example: Need a Marketing Makeover?

8. Stress Free ____

Insert a challenging problem the reader wants to remedy immediately. Something easy that fixes a problem without a lot of struggle is always appealing. You can also rephrase the title to include a desire instead of problem.

Example: Stress Free Ways to Improve Your Productivity

9. Make ____ Work for You

This template promises to solve or fulfill something. In the previous template above, you emphasize on the benefit of the solution (stress free) but this one focuses on getting the problem solved (finally).

Example: Make Real Estate Investing Work for You.

10. The Secret to ____ (is Simply ____)

Everyone wants to know a secret. It immediately puts him/her in the loop. Make sure you have something important and exclusive in the blog post though. Another twist is to immediately tell there is no secret at all to stress the simplicity of the solution, sort of a hidden benefit.

Example: The Secret of Selling Your Product on eBay

There is one more point: it is good to include one or two important keywords from those you target, but do not duplicate the same name in labels and keywords as you use in your title, as it might be considered rude by the Search Engines.

As you see, I have chosen for the title just one of the offered templates. However, you can do your home exercise and easily apply each of the offered templates to our topic of discussion. And remember, that title is just starter. If your blog post content does not match the striking title, or it is just boring, you lost it, as you could not keep your visitor at your virtual home for more than couple of seconds.

Bloggerplugins Help to Optimize Blog Title for Search Engines

You have probably already noticed that when you search Google for something and your blog is present in the search results the Title of the result will be of the form: Blog Title + Post Title. This type of a title is not very attractive to the searchers, and your posts at some degree compete each other. Here is a hack that will change the title to the following more attractive format: Post Title + Blog Title. This trick will help you to optimize the blog title for Search Engines and is expected to drive more visitors to your blog.

Note that it will take some time for the new title format to appear in the search results (actually, following the next re-indexation of your blog by the crawling spider).

Please visit developer Website and follow the recommended way of code modification: http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2007/09/optimise-blog-title-for-search-engine.html

Display Recent Posts on your Blogger Blog

Recently, I have found an opportunity to display certain amount of the recent post of the blog on sidebar of the Blogger hosted blog. If your reader came to the particular article, he might just miss the opportunities to review your other content. So, the developed widget will help you capturing attention of your reader to your other posts.

"Display 10 recent posts" (10 posts represent just default setting, but you can alter the number as you like) widget is a free and can be easily embedded on your Blogger blog. You do not need to know scripting to do so. Just follow the simple steps given below.

Step 1: Go to Add and Arrange Page Elements page.
Step 2: Click Add a Page Element.
Step 3: Choose HTML/JavaScript
Step 4: Copy the following code to the ’HTML/JavaScript’ element.
Step 5 (optional): The red highlight code (var postshow=10) is the number of posts you want to display (Default is 10).
Step 6: Change the default address (http://yourblogaddress.blogspot.com/) to your blog address.
Step 7: Save your changes and review your blog.

Code to be copied from the developer website: http://kanlab.blogspot.com/2007/09/display-10-recent-posts-on-your-blog.html

Live Traffic Widget for your Blog - FEEDJIT

Feedjit (http://feedjit.com/) is offering a widget that provides important information about who is visiting your blog or website. An entry is posted to the widget every time a person arrives at your website and again when the person leaves. Feedjit entries list referring web site where your visitors came from, what was their post of interest, and their geographical location. To visualize the gadget, Feedjit also posts a little flag near every entry to indicate what country each visitor is from. Feedjit also offers a separate map widget that shows the locations of the last 100 visitors to your website.

The offered widgets are all free and you do not need to register to get them for your blog or website. They are also extremely lightweight and won’t slow your site down.

If you’re a Blogger or Typepad user you can install any of the widgets with one click. If you use a different blogging platform or website, you can simply cut and paste the provided script into your blog template or website HTML. Feedjit will appear in the position you paste the script.

You can choose from four types of the Widget to install:

1. Live Traffic Feed
2. Live Traffic Map
3. Live Recommended Reading
4. Live Page Popularity

Take a glance on how the Widget (Live Traffic Feed) looks on the page (screen shot is take from my blog http://freeware4review.blogspot.com)

FEEDJIT

Comments moderation with TypePad AntiSpam

Six Apart has launched a new free open source product into beta called TypePad AntiSpam. The basic spam filtering technology has been already used by the company since May 2007 as built-in feature of TypePad blogs. Now it is offered as a plug-in for other blogging platforms, such as Movable Type and WordPress, and any other platform which supports spam plugins.

TypePad AntiSpam beta is free for any type of use, personal and commercial, regardless of how large your site is and of how many comments you receive daily. In comparison, Akismet, the similar service for WordPress and other platforms, is free for personal use but starts at $5 a month for anyone making more than $500 a month off their blog.

The developed software adapts to the changing spam tactics. You can report any comment that is not welcome to your blog, and the TypePad AntiSpam engine learns from your spam definition, retaining quality comments and enhancing the automatic unwanted entries detection and filtering with every step.

Download the plug-in from the authors Web Site: http://antispam.typepad.com/info/get-started.html

Additional Reading:

http://www.sixapart.com/blog/2008/05/typepad-antispam-whats-good-fo.html

http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/a-better-way-to.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052902175.html

Be carefull: Blogging might be dangerous!

Blogging is Dangerous

Twenty-two-year-old Lisa called in sick one Friday afternoon. But she wasn’t really sick. She was planning to start the weekend early by going to the beach with her friends. Days later, she posted pictures of the outing on her blog. Someone in her office found the link. Soon, she was called to her boss’ office. She didn’t lose her job, but she got into a lot of trouble.
Eighteen-year-old Anne enjoys an independent life. Both parents are in the US. She blogged freely about her misadventures—drunken nights out, failed tests, her penchant for bad boys. She thought her blog was being read only by her friends.
But a concerned relative sent the link to her parents who immediately jumped to action, calling Anne up and threatening to fly her to the US where she could be put under their watch. Anne is still in the country but has deleted her blog.
The two girls have experienced blog backfire. Things they posted online ended up working against them.
Make sure it doesn’t happen to you, too. Here are some things to think about when you blog.
1. You don’t know who is reading your page.
Unless your entries are locked and you have total control over who has access to them, you’re never sure who is reading your entries. Your parents, your teachers—they’re all just a google search away from unlocking your deepest thoughts.
2. What you post can make or break your career.
While some people have gotten book deals after building a huge blog readership, most bloggers need to realize that employers have started using Google searches as a tool to scan job applicants.
3. Will your post hurt anyone?
It is easy to vent online your anger with a friend or a family member. But let the anger simmer before hitting the “publish” button. Sleep on it, think it over because once it’s online, it will not be easy to get rid of—not with the cache features of online searches.
4. Can your entries be lifted and used against you?
Your blog entries may be lifted anytime by anyone who knows how to highlight and press Ctrl and C. Your photos may be stolen as easily and defaced, like some have been on gossip blogs. It may be smart to add javascript that prevents readers from right-clicking on your page. It’s not total protection, but it may save you from the less-techie lurkers.
5. Will your entries attract the wrong kind of people?
Most blog readers are kind. They leave comments, they send you e-mails and sometimes, you even find people you can be friends with. But some of the more popular bloggers have had problems with blog stalkers. High internet traffic is a good thing, but not when it leads to scary encounters.
Source:
http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/you/blogaddicts/view/20080401-127751/Yes-blogs-can-ruin-your-life

Blogging is Dangerous

25 Popular Free Image Storage Hosts for Bloggers

With tight competition in the blogosphere for visitors and their attention, bloggers need to consider not just providing a fresh unique and interesting content, but also provide blog posts design to grab visitors’ attention. One of the elements of this post design enhancement is images. There are multiple reasons to use pictures inside the posts. Among them:

• Visualizing the topic of discussion;
• Grabbing readers’ attention (great for making your RSS feed readers stop and read);
• Drawing people’s eye down a post beyond the first few lines;
• Illustrating examples;
• Giving your blog a more personal touch;
• Engaging the emotions and senses of readers;
• Giving posts more authority.
  

In most blogging platforms, you can load images directly to your host. However, there are many advantages of posting your images at the special image hosting servers. Among them:

• Image files, stored on third-party sites (many of them offer free services), can be used anywhere you might need them: blogs, social networking sites, message boards, etc. If you load images, for example, on Blogger, you cannot use them on any other location besides BlogSpot domain.
• Storing images on offsite account saves disk space from your blog hosting account.
• Very strong advantage is that it saves your bandwidth from the blog hosting account and uses the third-party bandwidth. So, be sure that you images host allows hot linking; otherwise, it will be useless for you.
• It is easy because you get various codes that can be used on blogs, forums, message boards, and social communities.
• Several images hosting sites even are offering you share of the ads-generated income, so by doing what you need to do for your blog design, you get additional passive income from images, stored on the server, exposure.

For your convenience, I have compiled the list of 25 most popular free image hosting sites on RateItAll with brief description, access links, and rating:

http://www.rateitall.com/t-25965-free-images-hosting-for-bloggers.aspx

Additional Reading:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/11/13/using-images-to-take-your-posts-to-a-new-level/

http://www.tomrafteryit.net/adding-images-to-your-blog-post/

http://antbag.com/how-to-position-images-in-blog-posts/

Not all the comments are born equal, or how to respect your customer

Continuing a topic of using comments to increase you blog exposure, started in my previous post http://blogging4good.blogspot.com/2008/03/comments-as-source-of-free-traffic-to.html, I want to look on that from other side. Comments, left by your readers on your blog, are even more valuable than the comments you are leaving on other blogs. Why? Very simple. You leave comments to improve your blog exposure, to get more rating and referring links. All that to get more potential visitors. But, reader of your blog, leaving you a comment, has already came. And not just came, but also read your post and is willing to spend his valuable time, sharing his thoughts on the article or asking related question. What might be better than that? Show your respect and appreciation - respond ASAP, giving your feedback and encouraging further communication.

Yesterday, I visited a Web Site ReapMoneyOnline , presenting list of the free High Page Rank Non-reciprocal Directories (directories that do not require link exchanges for posting blogs). I left a comment, asking authors (Jennie and Bong) their opinion, if they recommend submitting a blog to all of 100 presented directories, or there is a minimum PR, where the time investment is justifiable. They feedback was instant and complete: "Webmasters have different views on PR. In fact, a lot will choose hundreds of inbound links over a high PR because they bring in real targeted traffic (we click on a link because we think we can use what we will find at the other end). Some were also able to rank high in the SERPs for their chosen keywords even with a low PR. These are directories, which people also use to find websites related to the information they need (like the SEs). If they provide us dofollow links then we get 2 birds with 1 stone.
However, directory submission is only part of our link-building strategy. But yes, we are trying to get RMO into as many as possible over a period of time (going at a rate of 15-30 directories per week). Unfortunately, we haven’t done any ROI study on our link-building efforts.
The “minimum” PR depends on us and our goals. Some webmasters who flip sites work to get them to PR4 before selling. Others sell at PR7, which definitely takes longer but also fetches a higher price. For us, the higher it is, the better, since we’re pushing RMO as our flagship blog". As you see, blog owners spent their time and attention to give a very thoughtful answer, converting me as accidental visitor to the devoted visitor. With this attitude, I will be back soon.

Let's highlight what we can learn from this example:

1. Site has a valuable information, encouraging visitors participation. This is, definitely, a core of the successful blog.
2. Blog has disabled the nofollow tag, so every comment will result in link to your blog, improving your blog rating. An additional reason for people to visit the blog, read it, and leave feedbacks.
3. Authors do not passively enjoy incoming traffic, but activity communicate with their visitors, giving informative and instant recommendations. I noticed, that this particular case is not an exception. Every comment receives immediate reply.

As customer support manager in a High Tech company, I know, that it is good to find a new customer, but it is more valuable, if the customer comes to you again and again. Blogging should follow the same marketing rules, where respect for the client will be always appreciated and paid back.