Bloggeries Blog

The next blog that we are going to review at Bloggeries is called They Are Our Children. The blog is dedicated to children’s charities and it depicts the urgency and importance of supporting unfortunate children everywhere. The blogger is a 39 year old female out of Carmel, New York, and is blogging to inform readers of the real need to do whatever can be done for less fortunate children, as well as to provide means for you to aide and support them. The blog offers articles as well as free means that readers can support these children and organizations through petition websites and many more. The blogger values honesty and respect in the world, and feels that her blog is a reflection of that belief. You can get to know the blogger and her work little bit better through any of her recent bloggeries: Children In Need-In The U.K , To My Readers – Thank You, Mercy Corps – An Excellent Charity, Animals Are No Less Worthy, Make a Child’s Dream Come True, and Blog Review – Stumble Aid.

The blog is fairly simple in terms of navigation and has a dark pink and mauve theme from blogspot. The bloggeries are in a dark text that appear on a light pink background with a darker pink border and links are highlighted in a darker mauve color. Bloggeries are left marginalized and there is a right navigation bar on the blog. The right navigation bar is somewhat hard to navigate as it contains quite a bit of widgets and menus that are involved with specific children’s organizations, but the navigation bar still manages to contain the ‘meat’ of the blog. In the right navigation bar you will find children’s pictures; quotes; links to various children’s projects such as Children’s International, One.org, Project Kindness; Changing the Present, and many more. You will also find in this navigation bar a link list to more children’s charities, AdSense, Recent Viewers Widget, Archives menu, and an About Me Page. I do see labels on each of the bloggeries, such as fundraising, penny donations, children’s dreams, granting wishes, free links, and so on, but I do not see a Categories or Labels menu located on the blog itself. The addition of this feature may make the blog a little easier to navigate for the blog readership.

I will go with a 3.4/5 for this blog. The blog scores at the average level on each of the criteria. Right now it is currently being updated every two to three days, and I would really encourage the blogger to update more frequently. This will increase the exposure of the blog and direct it to a readers demographic the blogger is looking for, those that are interested in supporting charities. I would also suggest adding pictures to the blog to enhance the overall appearance of the blog. Specifically, more pictures within the posts themselves would truly add relevance to this blog. Further, to connect with the readers on a more personal level, I recommend expanding the About Me or Profile page so that the readers truly get a feel for the personal voice and passion that goes behind this blog. There is no doubt that the blogger is a passionate one, but if the readers were able to get to know her more, it may increase the success of the blog. With this I recommend moving the About Page to the top of the navigation bar from its current location at the bottom of the navigation bar. This would make this the first thing readers see, and add to the overall feel of the blog. I would also suggest a categories menu so that those looking for specific charities may have ease in doing so when arriving at this blog. Adding categories and labels that are keyword friendly would also help with exposure in this case. Overall however, I think this blog is a great blog in an excellent niche, and with a few tweaks it has the potential to be a huge success within the charity spectrum.

-Chrissie

For those that enjoy a good tongue in cheek blog, I recommend you check out the Omnipotent Poobah Speaks Blog. The blog is certainly a running commentary and opinion piece on a variety of issues with the blogger being self-proclaimed as the Omnipotent Poohbah or the Grand Maven of all that is media. The blogger ‘speaks the truth’ is ‘all knowing and all powerful’ by his own admissions, and also believes in the “Constitution, Motherhood, and applie pie” in that order. He thinks religion is a wonderful thing as long as you don’t bother him with it, that political correctness should be extinguished, and also that the truest test of democracy is how it deals with its ‘loathsome’ practitioners. Still not sure what the blog is about? I wasn’t so much either, but you receive an invitation from the Poohbah himself to ‘genuflect’ in your own right on what the blog stands for. You can easily do this through any of his recent bloggeries: Randomness: Piggy Style, Blackwater Takes to the Waves, In Defense of the Human Powered Dildo, Humans are always Mucking up the Works, Randomness AARP Style, The Energizer Craphound, and Purge the Surge.

The blog is fairly easy to navigate with a few different navigation systems. Bloggeries are left marginalized and appear in black text on white background with links highlighted in blue. Each post also has relevant pictures attached to it as well. There is a top navigation system that contains menus in pull-down format and these links contain a Pages Link that pulls down to pages for comment policy, contact information, Privacy Policy, Poohbah Toys, and a Photoblog link. You will also find the Archives menu and Categories links in these top pull down menus. The right margin contains two right sided navigation bars. In the left bar contains the blogroll, and in the far right navigation bar you will find a search bar, pull-down Archives Menu called the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Skype links. The blog also contains funny and relevant pictures attached in each post and a good example of this is in the post called “The Energizer Craphound”. I don’t see a Recent Posts Menu in this blog, and given that some of the posts are fairly lengthy, I think one would definitely benefit this blog to add some ease to the overall navigation.

I will go with a 4/5 for this blog as I found it to do very well on almost every criteria for scores. Navigation was very easy with the two right menus and the top pull down menus, though I would suggest the two right sided menus be combined to make one longer right sided menu as due to the little content in each navigation bar, there is a lot of white space on the opening page which affects the overall appearance of the blog. I think moving the two navigation bars into one will fill up the blog a little more and take out some of that white space. The writing is very well done and contains flavor that will definitely appeal to its readership. It also keeps in touch with its readers on a very regular basis which is always beneficial to any blog. The blog has a very obvious healthy readership judging by its wealth of comments, and given this, it may do it some service to monetize the blog a little with some advertising. Overall however the blog is a fun read with some very good tongue in cheek points that I think its healthy readership would find very appealing.
-Chrissie

If you like money, like to talk about money, like to make money, or like to read about money, in an investing and big finance kind of way, then you may want to have a look at the Sharpe Investing Blog. The blog is only a few months old but is doing very well as a means of providing comprehensive information about a variety of finance and investing information. The owner of the blog is Matt, and he is a finance major attending a well-respected business school in the United States. His career objective is to pursue investment banking or asset management. Besides education, his experience lends credibility to the blog topic, as Matt has been investing himself since he was 13 when he started out with a small value mutual fund and he made 60% in the first year. That same year he began pursuing the stock market through a contest at school and as he says ‘performed very well’. He finds that writing and researching this topic has helped him grow immensely in the field, and he wants to enhance this learning process by growing a readership through which, everyone can grow together. You can get a feel for his extensive knowledge in the subject through any of his recent bloggeries: When to Issue Debt Versus Equity, WallStreetOasis.com, Liar’s Poker, LIBOR – London Interbank Offered Rate; In Investing, You Get What you Pay For – Speech by John Bogle, 130/30 Fund Strategies; Merger or Risk Arbitrage Overview; George Soros Theory of Reflexivity MIT Speech; and Theory of Reflexivity.

Navigation on this blog is very easy, as the blog has a clean layout and extremely organized design template. Bloggeries are in black text on white background with blue bordering and blue highlights throughout the blog. The links are in blue highlights and this overall design makes the blog easy on the eyes, and thus, a very easy read. Bloggeries are left marginalized with two navigation bars in the right hand side. In the left navigation bar you will find a Categories menu, advertising, Archives Menu, and a Blog Roll. In the right navigation bar you will find advertising, subscription information, Recent Posts Menu, Recent Comments Menu, and a Top Commenters Menu. You will also find a very handy Top navigation bar where you can access the Home link, About Page, Archives, Contact Us information, Sitemap, and Subscription information. Themes you will find in the categories menu are of course finance related, and range from Alternative Investments, Economics, Personal Finance, Retirement, and many more finance related topics.

I am going to give this blog a 3.7/5 as it does very well on almost all blog criteria. The appearance is excellently managed and makes for a very easy read. Navigation scores are well as well, as this blog has a clean layout and well-organized navigation system. The blogger has also incorporated his advertising enough to monetize the blog without the ads distracting from the blog content. The only area the blog needs some strength is in the frequency of activity. Currently the bloggeries are only coming in every couple of weeks and sometimes even longer in between. Overall however, this blogger clearly understands his content and conveys that in an easy to read yet intelligent manner, and thus with more frequent activity could very easily sustain a nice healthy readership. If you are looking for some sound credible advice on investing or finance, this blog is definitely well worth the read.

-Chrissie