Blog Reviews by Bloggeries

Bloggeries is looking at another money making blog, and this one comes with a few twists that lend it a very personal feel as well. The blog is called Blogging with Cents and the more I read the more it made sense. The blog is about mindless chatter with tips, reviews, and earning money online and is owned and written by a wife and mother of 3. This blogger makes no bones about her feistyness, as she can change her own tires, cook from scratch, and voice opinions or kick hineys if she is inappropriately ticked off. She blogs about life, people, news, reviews, money, tips, and freebies and runs her blog very professionally. Get a feel for this blogger and her Internet experiences by checking out any of her most recent bloggeries: Xfep’s Amazing Woman Blogging List, Increasing RSS Feed Subscribers, Prevention and Being Thankful, Blogging Away Debt and Living Longer, How Blogging is Like Losing Weight.

Navigation on this blog is very easy as this blog carries an extremely professional appeal with a clean well-organized template. Bloggeries are left marginalized in black text on beige background and black bordering. There are three navigation bars, a top navigation bar and two right-sided navigation bar. In the top navigation bar you will find all of the administration of the blog: Home link, About link, Advertise, Contact information, Disclosure Policy, Freebies, and Get Paid. The left sided navigation bar offers subscription options, Recent Entries menu, Most Popular Posts menu, advertising, and an extensive Categories Menu. The Categories Menu is rather comprehensive and offers a wide range of topics to read from: Affiliates, Blogging Tips, Contests, Featured, Gift Ideas, Health, Hope Tips, and so many more topics that can help you achieve your work from home goals. In the right navigation bar you will find advertising, Top Commentators Menu, Archive Menu, Blogroll, and Recent Viewers and Recent Readers widgets from My Blog Log.

I will go with a 4/5 for this blog. The blog is well written with a strong personal voice so the content scores are very good. This blogger appeals to her audience by offering advice and articles with a personal voice that makes her reviews and tips extremely user friendly and credible. This alone should provide her with a solid readership and steady growth. She also offers an appealing design that is both professional and attractive as well as easy to navigate. The blog scores some unique points as well given that it offers a wide range of topic, and the title of the blog is catchy and appealing. I think activity could use some work if the blogger wants to see even more growth. Activity is doing very well coming in every few days, but a daily bloggery may serve this blogger well with more consistent readership. Overall however, the blog would definitely prove useful to anyone looking for success through working online, and it should see continued success.

-Chrissie

Bloggeries is going to look now at another blog about blogging, but this one comes with a twist which I think you will find interesting. The blog is called Blog About Your Blog, affectionately known around its home on the net as BAYB. This blog is a blog dedicated to quality in the blogosphere. Quality blogs, quality bloggers, and quality people. The blog itself is more of a project, where quality bloggers come together in collaboration of a project to bring bloggers together, and to make bloggers better. It’s all kind of a help us help you mentality that the owners of the blog want your quality blog to be a part of. BAYB is in a never-ending effort to seek talented bloggers on this project and if you are interested, drop them a line. Too shy? While you are getting up your courage, read some of their most recent bloggeries on how to make your blog a better place to be: VidSearchLive Video Search Engine, Forget Page Rank, Comment Friday for January 25th, Search Engine Traffic is Easy with Tech Support Posts, Shopaholic at Entrecard, Conduct Interviews for Easy Content and Traffic, How Often Does Google Crawly You?, and Create Your Own E Store with Wholesale.

The blog is very professionally laid out in clean design and organized template. Bloggeries are left marginalized and in black text on a beige background with links highlighted in black. There is a right navigation bar that contains just about everything you may need to know about this blog, and about blogging in general in several well organized menus. You will find here subscription information and widget with an impressive count of 563 readers; Pages Menu containing About Us, Authors List, Contact Us, and Free Blog. You will also find in this navigation system Are you In my Top Spots Widget, Blogroll, Our Members Blogs, Recent Posts Menu, Recent Comments Menu, Archives Menu, Categories Menu, and Popular Articles Menu. The Categories Menu is comprehensive and contains just about anything you want to find on blogging such as Blog Promotion, Blogging News and Information, Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, Comment Friday, Contests, and How to Increase Website Traffic among much more. The Popular Articles is something that is very handy as well, and a menu you will want to check out. You can see articles here like 6 New Wordpress Plugins You Haven’t Seen, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, and 10 Firefox Addons to Supercharge Your Blogging.

This blog is getting a 5/5 from me as there is little I can offer suggestion wise to a blog that is maintaining and sustaining a regular readership of over 500. The blog scores well on all accounts. It has a professional appearance with a clean layout and organized design and its navigation offers no issues. The activity is consistent and is coming in daily which is keeping the search engines happy along with its healthy readership. The content is very well done, so the owner of the blog is clearly finding the right authors to represent the blog. All tips and articles are done in a user-friendly but personal voice that lends credibility to the advice that is being offered. The only suggestion I would offer at this point would be a change to the font size in the menus in the navigation bar. There are *ahem* older eyes that may have more of an issue when it comes to reading the fine print. But otherwise, this is an excellent blog, and an invaluable resource to its readership and anyone else that happens to, and should, pop in and have a look.

-Chrissie

If you are looking for another site or blog that can offer you additional insight on how to make your blog even better than it already is, then you may want to check out Blog Duck. This site is a blog that provides blogging tips and ideas and is geared towards helping people become better bloggers. You will find here ideas, articles, and information perfect for either the novice or the expert blogger. The owner, CEO, and webmaster of Blog Duck is Brian Alrdich, and he has been around the blogging block for awhile and can offer you some know-hows on what has and has not worked for him. An example of this would be in his anecdote on how using the likeness of Blog mogul John Chow backfired on him. While Brian has some contributing authors working for him at Blog Duck, you can still get a true sense for his personal voice, and his involvement at Blog Duck through any of the recent bloggeries: Is Your Blog Worth it?, When I Used to Think It Was OK to Use John Chow’s Likeness, Get Blog Rushed Already, A Quick Review of RevieWOW, Think and Don’t Drink and Blog, Why Being a Cow is Better Than Being a Chow, and When Hardware Held Me Back.

Blog Duck offers a clean design and layout making it very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are left marginalized and are black text on white background and links highlighted in blue. Though I have yet to understand the meaning of the duck theme, or the name of the blog, I think it’s cute and provides a unique feel to the blog. The header is in large bold lettering and includes a duck motif. Blog Duck contains two navigation systems, one in the right navigation bar, and a top navigation menu as well. In the top navigation menu you will find the Home link, About Blog Duck, Become an Author link, and a Contact Me section. In the right navigation system you find subscription buttons, a list of the 5 current blog authors that takes you to their own blogs or websites, a Categories Menu, Blogroll, Recent Readers widget, Recent Comments menu, and sponsors and ads. The categories menu is comprehensive and contains everything you would expect in a blog advice blog such as Alexa info, Google info, blogging, make money online, increase traffic, ideas, social bookmarks, reviews, speed linking, and many more.

I am going with a 4/5 on this one. I really enjoyed reading this blog and the blogger is definitely a credible source when it comes to advice and tips on blogging. I think the content has a unique personal voice that fellow bloggers will enjoy reading. The blog contains both sound advice with anecdotal speak so it is not only informative, but an enjoyable read. Blog Duck also scores well on navigation, appearance, and uniqueness criteria as all of these aspects make the blog a very easy read. My only complaint would be that there is not enough activity, and this is not to say I am complaining, but serves as a compliment to Blog Duck. The blog is well done, and would be much more successful with more frequent activity. This is the kind of blog that could retain a healthy readership, and would be more successful at that with more activity. Currently the last bloggery noted is October 19, and the bloggeries prior to that are coming in once every week or so. Simply put, we want more Blog Duck! The tips and advice are certainly well worth it.

-Chrissie