chrissie

The avid sports fan that is looking for a blog to whet their NFL appetite will certainly appreciate The Sports Dollar Blog.  This is a dual purpose blog in the sense that it is both a sports blog and a blog in which one can learn how to make money at home. The blog combines passion for sports with a passion for blogging and turns that into something that is a full-time blog for this team.  While the bloggers make no claims to be experts, they will provide tips, tricks and other useful information how others could do the exact same thing. You can see this for yourself through any of the most recent bloggeries which include:How to Start a New Sports Blog  – 20 Tips; Hands-on Blogging and Creative Income; NFL Blog Power Rankings Week 2; Sports Dollar’s Weekly 2008 NFL Power Rankings – Week 2; and BlogStorm’s Job Board. 

The blog is designed in a sports friendly theme with a colorful motif in a clean organized template making it very easy to navigate.  Bloggeries are left marginalized in black text on white background and there are both a right sided navigation bar and a top navigation bar in the header.  At the top you will find links to Home, About, Contact, Make Money, Advertise, Jobs, and Subscribe.  In the right sided navigation bar you can find all of the essential blog meat such as some advertising cleverly integrated into the blog design, top articles, recent articles, Yardbarker Network, Recent Comments Menu, Job Board, Recent Readers Widget, Recent Viewers Widget, Archives Menu, and an extensive Categories Menu.  The Categories Menu is very comprehensive and contains labels that include everything the blog purports to offer such as Making Money, Affilliates, NBA, NFL, and so much more.

Overall the blog is looking great, has a great read, and thus deserves a 4.3/5 for review.  I have little to offer in the way of suggestion other than increasing the consistency of bloggeries and perhaps updating on a daily basis.  From an appearance perspective, the blog is clean and well organized, and this makes it easy to navigate as well.  Navigation wise the blog offers all essential blog meat in a clean fashion that makes everything very easy to find.  The unique factor of the dual purpose of the blog also serves both the bloggers and its readers well.  The content is well written and in a user friendly voice making it a very appealing blog overall for the average sports fan, as well as for those looking to make a little money online.  Again, with more consistent activity, I would suspect that this blog would do very well over time and give it a recommend to readers looking for sports or money making blogging content

– Chrissie.

Find other sports blogs in the sports blog directory.

Fashion is all the rave these days in the blogosphere what with New York Fashion Week just passing, and London Fashion Week right on its heels. If you are looking for some good fashion advice from the blogging experts, then you may want to check out The Style Watch Blog.  The Style Watch blog is a fashion blog that strives to be a collaboration of all the fashion news that one can find on the web.   The blog is run by three ‘authors’ or bloggers, and works to provide you with everything you need to know about fashion. Though there is very little original content on the site, the blog does cover quite a range of topics which you can see in any of their most recent bloggerie: NY fashion: politics, celebs, and unsexy clothes; Chanel Mobile Art the Video; Why London is still a fashion capital; New NY fashions appeal to stay-at-home traveler; Fashion Week Fallout: Are Tough Times Ahead?; and “Sex and the City” fans can shop Carrie’s closet! 

The blog contains very little meat, thus making it a clean template and somewhat easy to navigate.  Bloggeries are left marginalized and appear in black text on white background with links highlighted in blue.  The blog offers a right sided navigation system as well where you will find a tag cloud, Pull Down Categories Menu, Authors Menu, a WordPress widget, and a video widget.  The Categories Menu is a little odd for a fashion blog and seems to contain labels for odds and ends such as TV, areas of the globe, and a few pertinent fashion related topics.  The content also is a little bit strange as mentioned, this blog seems to be more a parlayer of news feeds rather than a provision of original content. Bloggers are not writing content per se themselves, but retrieving content from other websites and posting it.  Mind you, they are not claiming originality, however when reviewing blogs the amount of original content on a blog is a factor in the overall review.

Overall this blog gets a 2/5 at the time of review, and this is primarily based on the lack of meat this blog needs. Primarily the blog is lacking in original content, and there is little if any to speak of on the blog. News sources can be reached by other means, so if the bloggers are wishing to retain readers, providing links to news stories is simply not enough. From a navigation perspective, the blog needs more blog essentials for the readers to use such as a Recent Posts Menu and possibly a comments menu. Though, considering the lack of originality here, I would guess few if any comments would be coming in.  Further, the appearance of the blog is somewhat bland for a fashion blog, as fashion readers like to see all of the pretty things they like the most, and while this blog offers the bare bones for graphics, I doubt it would be enough to sustain a healthy readership. Bottom line, my suggestion would be for this blog to start again, implement some blog meat and some original content at the very least in order to see any success at all.

– Chrissie

Those who are constantly on the hunt for the latest and greatest gadgets will find them at The Gadget Advisor Blog.  The gadget advisor technology news blog is filled with only the most innovative and the cutting edge products and gadgets on the markets.  You will also find here add-ons, plug-ins, and extensions that can be used in browsers or other software. What sets this blog apart from all the other gadget blogs out there is that it  admits that it will not cover every single gadget coming to the market.  However, if you like to tinker with the toys, this gadget will certainly tickle that techie bone.  You can see this for yourself through any of the most recent bloggeries which include: Recommended Firefox Extensions; OCZ Releases Triple Channel DDR3 Memory Kits; Free Firefox Web Directory Form Filler Extension; MSI X58 Eclipse Motherboard ; OpenOffice.org 3.0 Released.

The blog offers a very professional layout and this makes it a breeze to navigate.  The blog theme is in a quiet green with bloggeries in dark text on white background.  Bloggeries are left marginalized and there are many navigation systems on this blog, but not too many to work around.  The top navigation system offers you links to Home, About, and Advertisement, while a navigation system in the header will take you to Gadgets, Tech News, Computer Hardware, Computer Software, Featured Articles, and Archives.  There is a double wide right navigation system as well where you will find all of the blog essentials you need.  A Posts Menu divided into Popular, Featured, Comments, and Tags is the first thing you will find here.  Following this you find advertisement, Categories Menu, Site Pages, and Resources Menu which serves as a blogroll.  The blog is only a couple of months young, so you will not find too many categories yet, but expect this to grow.  Right now five categories exist, and the blogger may want to consider expanding that due to the breadth of the niche.  At present, the blog is primarily an information blog and so it looks quite text based. You won’t find any graphics on the opening page, but as you go into the bloggeries pictoral graphics are present in most if not all bloggeries.

This blog gets a 4.5 at the time of review, which is a great mark on such a young blog.  Though the blog presents itself well, it still does need some tweaks to amp it up a bit.  The categories menu could be beefed up a little as mentioned in order to ease navigation a little, but otherwise the navigation is very easy.  The content is well written in a user friendly voice which is important for a blog of this nature.  Appearance wise the blog is clean and friendly, though I do suggest offering more graphics on the opening page within the bloggeries to spice it up a bit.  Activity seems consistent and regular which is a great sign, but again, the bloggeries themselves do not have time and date stamps, and readers like to see current times on recent bloggeries.  Overall however, this is a great blog that is well organized, and will be well appreciated by todays gadget lover.

-Chrissie