It is hard to go very far without running into a site with entries in Darren Rowse’s latest group writing project; it was a huge hit with close to 900 entries. While it is great that people are linking to one another from this thing, it seems that many involved in the project are simply linking to the entire list of submissions. While I did participate (on another blog) and don’t ever mind new backlinks, I’m a bit disappointed that people haven’t really broken this thing down a bit.

Why link to every post? While many were good, there were some really bad posts in that batch. Do you really want to link to (and give your support to) blogs that don’t make the cut? I went through the entire list a few times to pull out posts that I thought would be interesting or helpful for the readers of this blog.

Here are a few that I felt were actually useful and worth a read (yes, I actually read every internet related post on the list!):

AdSense
• Top 5 AdSense Boo-Boos
  Blogging

• Top Five Ways Blog Carnivals Make Blogging Better
• Top 5 Tips to be the next Darren Rowse
• Top 5 Methods to Increase Comments on Your Blog
• Top 5 tips for beating blogger’s block
• Top 5 Best and Youngest Bloggers
• Top 5 Tips for a Successful Link Train
• 5 Things You Should do Before Launching Your Own Blog
• 5 Tips to Break Free From The Blogger’s Bubble
  Blogging Tools

• Top Five Little Known Wordpress Plugins
• Top 5 Must-Have Blog Monitoring Tools
• Top 5 WordPress Plugins That Help Increase Comments
• Top 5 Tools Every Blogger Should Use
• Top 5 OS X Dashboard Widgets for Bloggers
  SEO

• The Top 5 Free Search Engine Optimization Tools
• Top 5 Top Blog Posts in SEO
  Assorted

• Top Five Challenges Newbies Face Online
• Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling
• Five Tips for Running a Successful Online Giveaway

What I thought was most impressive was that many of these great posts were written by fairly unknown bloggers. This is another sign that there will always be great new talents emerging in the blogging world and you must keep exploring to find them!

I make it a habit to support my fellow bloggers through both socializing their posts and visiting their advertisers when appropriate. Make sure you do the same! While linking is great, these things are just as important!

Finally, I’d like to mention that many of the blogs I went through were still using Blogger or some other hosted blog solution, and many others were making some of the most basic blogging mistakes. If you haven’t already, read the The Top 77 Mistakes New Bloggers Make so you’re not out there making some of these yourself!

Blogging is esentially easy. Formatting your blog posts so they have some style and flavor is a bit more difficult. One of the more important elements in blog posts are graphics or images. These serve to both break up the text, and to add interest to your articles. I thought it was important to write a post covering how to place images in your blog posts to help out all those people who have been having trouble doing so (see disclaimer at end of post). This tutorial will focus on WordPress blogs, but it will have alternatives for other blog software as well.

When Should I Use Images in my Posts?

I find that the best use of images are when they are directly related to what you’re writing (e.g. if you’re writing about flowers, then use images of flowers), or when they are somehow metaphorically related (e.g. I wrote an article Are Alexa And DMOZ Down For The Count? and used the image of a boxer to go with it). This is not to say that you can’t use images otherwise, but when these situations come up, I think it is a given that you should.

I discovered a blog a few months ago called DoshDosh that uses images with every post. Maki’s use of manga images keeps his blog colorful and interesting (not to mention his articles are extremly well written and thorough). In this case, placing themed images with all his posts works to build some interest and break up the monotony of the page.

How to Add Images to Your Blog Articles

There are a few ways to add images to your articles using WordPress.

I. Use Image Hosting Services to Host Your Blog’s Images

The first way to add an image to your post is to use some kind of image hosting service. Nirmal T V wrote a great post the other day where he shared the Top 5 Image Hosting Services and gave detailed explanations of each. Any of the ones he listed, including: Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Imageshack, and Yahoo Photos, or any other online image hosting service will work for you.
How to Add an Image to Your Articles with Free Hosting Services

1. Pick a hosting service and register or log in
2. Find the Upload button or link
3. Click the browse button which will allow you to search your computer for images and click on the name of the image you want to upload.
4. Add details about the image as asked by the website.
5. Voila! Your image is now hosted.
6. Click on the image with the right button (or for your Mac users do it while holding control down) and select “Copy Image Location.” Your image’s location will now be in your computer’s memory.
7. Go to your blog post, and where you want to add your image (be sure you’re not using a WSIWYG editor. In wordpress, this means click on the CODE Tab if you’re writing our post with the VISUAL tab active),
   

   enter the following, replacing “PASTE IMAGE LOCATION HERE” with the actual location (use control-v or in your browser’s menu options go to edit, then paste):
   
   <img src=”PASTE IMAGE LOCATION HERE”>

8. Congrats! You now have an image in your article. Click “Save and Continue Editing” at the bottom of the text box where you write your blog entries, and you’ll be able to see your image in the preview window as you scroll to the bottom of your browser window.

II. Using Wordpress to Add Images

Wordpress makes it very easy to add images to your website.

1. Decide where in your post you want your image to appear and click there.
2. Find the following area of your wordpress control panel (while writing or editing a post):
   

3. Click the browse button which will allow you to search your computer for images and click on the name of the image you want to upload.
4. Once you’ve clicked on the file, you’ll want to click the OPEN button in the pop-up window. You’ll see something similar to:
   
   

5. Fill out the title and description boxes and then click on the UPLOAD button. Your browser will upload the image and you’ll see the following:
   
   

6. Click on the button options that you’d like, then click on SEND TO EDITOR
7. The source code for the image will now be set and you’ll have an image. Save and preview your post and you’ll see your image!

Stay tuned for additional posts in the Images & Blogging Series:
Part II - Photo Formatting & Advanced Photo Layouts
Part III - Where to Find Images & Proper Use

Disclaimer: This post is dedicated to my friend Charles Feldman who has been asking me to teach him this for a long time now. Hope this helps!

I’ve been a fan of many of the things that John Chow has done on his blog, however I do have a bone to pick. It seems that at least 1 out of every 2 times I visit his site, my browser (Firefox) crashes on me. If I were just reading his blog it wouldn’t bother me, but it always happens when I’ve got around 5-10 other tabs open in my browser.

At this point, I’ve given up! I’ll read the site, but only through my feedreader.

John - If you’re reading this, please look into this situation. If it is happening to me, then it is happening to others as well. I’m sure it is something you want to fix.

As for the rest of you, are there any sites that do this to you?

Ready for another rant? Seems like I’ve been doing quite a lot of that lately. This time, it is about something that I’m sure all the bloggers can relate to: Corporate Comment Spam. It seems that the corporations have indeed resorted to non other than comment SPAM to promote themselves

In the past 3 days, I’ve had to deal with comments from the flunkies of two large corporations: AOL and the The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns HGTV. I’ve chosen to leave out the identities of the perpetrators as the purpose of this post is to to expose what corporations are up to, not to call specific people out.

• HGTV Comment Spam

  I at least give a tiny bit of credit to the guy who has SPAMMED our Real Estate Investing for Real blog comments twice in the past 3 days. It seems that he tries to relate his spammy commercials to the topic at hand. Here’s the latest (I’ve colored the acceptable part in green and the SPAMMY Crap in red):

  Its funny that you should mention Los Angeles, I live there and you are right on. Since the average price of houses is so expensive the take for an agent is ridiculous. Btw, a $350,000 in LA will get you a fixer-upper. I wanted to ask anybody who is reading this…have you seen the show Bought & Sold on HGTV? I work with them and have been alerting people of the show because I think its worth seeing, if you’re into real estate at all…It basically shows 12 different agents trying to show houses and close the deal. It gives you huge insight into the way homes are marketed and how price levels are decided upon in the Northern New Jersey market - which is one of the toughest markets in the country. You can check out a preview - [VIDEO LINK REMOVED] - It’s on Sundays at 10PM e/p time on HGTV. Definitely worth checking out. It’d be funny to see them do one here in LA.

  I actually erased the first one he did, otherwise I’d also share it with you as well. I sent him an email asking him to immediately stop wasting both of our time (his writing and my deleting) and explained what netiquette was. We’ll see if he comes back for more!

• AOL Comment Spam

  AOL is also guilty of dishing out Hawaii’s favorite meat concoction. First I received a form email from someone at AOL trying to get me to blog about their new real estate section. It was impersonal, badly formatted, and poorly written (formatted as received):

  Dear Bloggers,

  I’m a Promotions Manager for AOL Real Estate, and have read your real estate
  blog. Your insights are thought provoking and often times right on the money.
  I
  would love to get your opinion about an “Inside Stories of…” series we are
  currently running. We interviewed various players in the real estate process
  for
  candid (some harsh) realities of the business. I know you’ve posted about such
  subjects, and thought you could take a look at what we’ve done, and offer a
  fascinating perspective; good, bad, or ugly.

  I’ve included our entire lineup for this original series below. If you decide
  to blog and need more info from me, please feel free to contact me anytime.
  Thanks for your time.

  We’d love to be involved on your site if you’d like to link to our home page,
  [LINK REMOVED] we have a lot to offer in exciting original
  content,
  listings, investing information, and staging/home improvement.

  Thanks,
  ~Name Removed

  After going through my daily SPAM scan, I noticed a message that my filters caught written by the same person, as a comment on my most popular post on the blog.

  Check out Unstructured, the official editor’s blog, AOL Real Estate.

  [URL REMOVED]

  Had I gotten the email or the blog SPAM, I would have just ignored it. In conjunction, the campaign to plug AOL’s new real estate site just hit a bad nerve. I decided to write the author back:

  Name Removed-
  A few things. First, It would be great if you had actually personalized the email you sent me instead of sending a form email that probably went to every other real estate blogger around. I’m surprised that a company of AOL’s financial backing couldn’t consider such an obvious move. It looks poorly upon you and your company.

  While the site you are looking to promote is good, your tactics are nothing but amateurish. I was quite shocked to look through my blog’s comments to see that you’ve also gone and SPAMMED us with your site’s link.

  I’ve had bloggers with 2 weeks of experience conduct themselves with more netiquette and web professionalism. I have no intention of supporting your site thanks to your tactics.

  I hope you reconsider how you’re approaching people in the future.

  Sincerely,

  A few of my friends and fellow bloggers recommended that I CC the email to her bosses at AOL. Sometimes I’m a jerk, but not that big of one. I’m not trying to get her fired; I just want people to learn what is and is not okay online these days.

Conclusion

We all know that people are spending more time online these days, corporations included. Apparently the online marketing teams for large corporations want eyeballs at any cost! I think the “street teams” of old, who kept busy handing out promo items on street corners, have given way to a group of young hired SPAM teams. They’re hitting the social networks, forums, and now, the blogs.

Apparently corporations still don’t understand online netiquette. Way to go! Piss off the whole online blogging community while you’re at it! Little do they know that the backlash from the internet can be fast and relentless (we all saw what Digg went through last week), and by ignoring the established “rules” of order online they are setting themselves for a fall.

Anyone think I’ll help promote HGTV or AOL Real Estate now?

5/11/07 UPDATE: Not a day after I wrote this post, HGTV has gone and sent a different person to once again SPAM our blog. From our comments:

May 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am
It seems more and more people are getting into the real estate business these days, without a clear understanding of how the biz really works. For those of you looking for a better understanding, I suggest checking out the new reality show Bought & Sold on HGTV. It’s a great show about the inner workings of the real estate and the lengths brokers will go to just to get the deal. Check it out: [LINK REMOVED]. I work with HGTV and you won’t believe what happens this season. Good luck, and enjoy the show! Don’t forget, the show airs Sundays at 10pm. I’m sure you’ll find it beneficial! Have any of you seen it yet?

There are tons of new bloggers online every day, and many, if not most of them make similar mistakes starting out. I thought it might be fun to compile a list of some of these. Without further adieu:

The Top 77 Mistakes New Bloggers Make
en Español, en Français

Domain & Hosting
1. Not hosting their own blog
2. Registering a blog name (URL) that has been copyrighted
3. Registering a long and difficult to remember domain name

   Style, Design, and Basic Blog Ingredients

4. Keeping the basic template that came installed on the blog
5. Using a black background or one that flashes, blinks, or moves in any other way
6. Using background music
7. Not updating the blogroll that comes with the blog
8. Not using permalinks for their blog posts
9. Not protecting their blogs from SPAM comments with easily installed plugins
10. Under-utilizing easily installed plugins
11. Not including a clear way to contact them
12. Not including a basic About the Author page
13. Not creating a sitemap for Google and other search engines

    Blog Comments

14. Keeping the first post & comment that came with the blog
15. Forcing guests to register in order to leave comments
16. Commenting on other blogs with nothing to say other than “nice post” or some other worthless nonsense
17. Commenting on other blogs and posting spamming their blog’s URL in the post
18. Not commenting on other blogs enough
19. Not thinking through what they comment about on other sites
20. Not responding to comments on their blogs
21. Asking other bloggers to link to their blog in comments
22. Gathering email addresses from people who comment and adding them to email marketing lists without permission (privacy violation)
23. Posting affiliate links when making comments on other blogs

    Links

24. Emailing other bloggers and asking them for links
25. Not linking out enough
26. Posting incorrect or broken links
27. Not using their blog’s trackback capabilities to keep other bloggers in the know

    Blog Content

28. Creating SPLOGS
29. Setting high expectations for your readers and then failing to meet them
30. Not learning blogging etiquette or blog culture before starting out
31. Not choosing a niche to write about
32. Not keeping their blog focused on that niche if and when they do choose one
33. Copying the style and substance of other blogs
34. Blogging about absolutely nothing
35. Not proofreading their posts
36. Failing to place themselves and then experiencing blogger burnout
37. Stealing blog content
38. Blogging about something they know nothing about
39. Copying entire blog posts from other sites and thinking a simple link back makes it okay
40. Failing to attribute another blog or website that you got an idea from
41. Trying to blog as some fake anonymous persona like the kids in Ender’s Game
42. Posting uninteresting titles
43. Posting huge blocks of text without using headlines, images, etc. to break it up
44. Posting at an irregular frequency
45. Forgetting that they are writing for an audience, not themselves.
46. Writing things in their blogs that may harm them in the future
47. Committing libel
48. Being unprofessional
49. Attacking other bloggers just to get attention
50. Sharing company secrets or private information on their blogs
51. Giving away too much personal information (potentially dangerous)
52. Not having their own voice when writing, instead using bland and dry language.
53. Not engaging the reader to participate in the conversation (failing to stimulate comments)
54. Blabbing too much without making any relevant points
55. Writing about what everyone else is writing about
56. Holding blog contests and not coming through on prizes you promised

    Blog Promotion & Traffic Building

57. Advertising their brand-new site anywhere
58. Promoting a site with less than 10 posts
59. Using traffic boosters to get traffic
60. Using any methods to get un-targeted traffic
61. Over-submitting their blogs to social bookmarking sites
62. Submitting bad posts to social bookmarking sites
63. Under-publicizing their best posts
64. Not entering Blog Carnivals to start building traffic
65. Not including a link to their blogs in their email and forum signatures
66. Not responding to emails or other messages

    Blog Monetization

67. Worrying about making money with their blog before they even have any quality content
68. Placing as many ads from as many ad networks as they can on their sites
69. Clicking on their own AdSense Ads
70. Allowing just about any site, even unrelated ones, to advertise on their blog
71. Writing reviews of other sites through ReviewMe or other services and doing a shit job of it. Reviews can be bad or good, but they should at least be well written (happened to me today . . . argh!)

    Feeds

72. Under-utilizing their blog’s feed
73. Not having a clearly identifiable and highly visible way to subscribe to their feed
74. Not using feedburner to optimize, quantify, and publicize their feed
75. Using Feedburner chicklet that shows number of subscribers before you’ve got at least 50-100 subscribers
76. Posting a partial blog feed instead of the full contents
77. Overusing feed advertising

I’ve seen a few other mistake lists out there, but most cover things I’ve mentioned above. Here are a few good ones:

Ten Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made
The Top 10 Design Mistakes
Blogging Mistakes Final List
10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid

Think I’m missing any important points?

I found an article through Kevin at BloggingTips about how to support your favorite bloggers. This article covered quite a few great points and I thought I’d go into 2 of them with some more detail.

Both of the steps I mention can really make a difference for your favorite sites, and spreading the word about them can make a difference for you as well!

The 2 Best Ways to Support Your Favorite Websites

1. Socialize the Blog or Site
   If you find a site, blog, article, etc. that you find interesting or helpful, one of the best ways to support it is to “socialize” it. Of course, the original form of socialization is word of mouth, but email works great too! Let your friends and family know about the site and tell them to let their friends and family know about it. Many of the most popular websites have all grown on word of mouth campaigns.

   In addition, by submitting it to different social networking and social bookmarking sites, you increase the exposure opportunities for that site. Sites like Netscape, Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, MyBlogLog, MySpace, Facebook, etc. are all wonderful tools for sharing the love. I make it a habit of social bookmarking or Digging any article or site that I think is a great one, because I hope that someone will do the same for me. If we can spread the idea of helping one another out by doing this, I think we’d see lots of great, semi-unknown, sites climb to prominence. There are tons of these sites around, but people don’t realize how easy it is to do their part to help those sites out.

   If you like a site, an article, a blog, etc., then Bookmark It! It is that easy!

2. Visit the Site’s Advertisers
   These days, most websites have some sort of advertising. Many webmasters (like myself) support their work online soley through that advertising. While we all become semi-blind to ads these days, it is extremly important that we do our part to help our fellow webmasters by visiting the advertising on their sites. Imagine if even a small percentage of your users happened to visit the ads on your site (provided they are some kind of PPC ads)? Be careful not to overdo it, though. Clicking too often on a site’s ads can constitute click fraud, something you don’t want to do.

   Even visiting ads that may not be PPC is helpful to websites. Advertisers always look at the amount of traffic they get from a site when considering whether or not they will extend their campaigns. If you do your part by visiting these ads, you help the sites to retain advertisers and increase revenue. You also help the advertiser by finding their site . . . the more eyeballs, the better!

   Remember not to just click on any and all ads. Visit those that look interesting to you.

   Like with socializing, if we can build this mentality around the ‘net where people support one another’s advertisers, I think a lot of people would be a lot happier. The advertisers would get increased exposure (which is what they are paying for) and you’d be supporting the owners of your favorite sites, blogs, etc. If only 25% of a site’s visitors supported its advertisers, I’m sure the resulting increases would be beyond remarkable!

   If you like a site, an article, a blog, etc., then visit its advertisers! It is that easy!

By following these two simple and EXTREMELY helpful tips, you too can support your fellow bloggers and favorite sites, and hopefully they will do the same for you!

Please bookmark this site and help spread the mentality! (click the Share This link below)

I just read an interesting post over at the Bivings Report titled, Online Venom or Vibrant speech?, where author Todd Zeigler looked into a recent article on the Washington Post and examined a comment made about moderating comments on Post articles. It seems that the online edition of the newspaper gets some extremly rancorous and vicious comments.

Should there Be Complete Freedom of Speech Online?

I started thinking about the whole concept of commenting and realized that this takes place across the net including on other online newspapers, blogs, social networks (Digg, especially), etc. I know that I was quite taken back when I was the recipient of some pretty nasty comments on this blog. For a long time, I kept the comments in the moderation queue, but eventually decided that it was important to share all views, as long as they didn’t harm me or anyone else. In this and in most other cases I see, the commentor proved their ignorance by spewing hateful nonsense. On the other hand, however, had this comment taken it a step further, I would have never allowed it to see the light of day.

That said, I am amazed by all the hate that is posted online, especially in political sites like Politico and the Huffington Post. What happened to intellectual debate? Is our country so full of ignorance and hate that we are no longer capable of discussing heated topics without reverting to racist and other rants? I am saddened by this and fear that it will worsen as I have children and they grow up.

Back to moderating comments . . . .

Websites Should Absolutely Moderate their Comments

I think it is perfectly acceptable to moderate comments on forums, blogs, social sites, etc. so they comply with your personal or company goals. Why should someone have to put up with hateful comments on their personal blog? Why should a forum about cars put up with comments about sex? Why should political websites put up with people demeaning and insulting others?

They shouldn’t!

If people are incapable of posting well thought out and civil comments, why should they have a voice? All the types of sites I’ve mentioned are private property (in a public domain). Should the Washington Post allow racist and hateful posts? No! The Post is a private company with an image to uphold. I know I don’t want to read a bunch of nasty comments after viewing an article.

People talk about free speech, but fail to recognize that freedom of speech does not cover what a private enterprise can and should allow.

In case we’ve all forgotten the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nowhere does it say that freedom of speech is protected in a private enterprise.

What do you think? Should newspapers, blogs, social networks, and other online media moderate the comments on their sites?