Hi, Enjoy the post. If you find this blog useful, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss out on the nuggets. Thanks for visiting!

Hurrah! I’m 2 years older and this blog now has over 350 posts and counting…

I’ve been looking forward to this milestone so I could do a review of where we are.

Marketing Knows No Country Boundaries!

You my loyal reader have changed your reading habits. You may be interested to discover that you have been joined by other regular readers from places like Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, New Zealand, Spain, UK and across the United States from California to Chicago to New York and right up to Canada.

You’re Reading More Posts (Thanks)

When I started you probably read the equivalent of 1.5 postings. Now that has escalated so that everyone who comes to the blog reads roughly 3.5 posts per visit.

The Blog You’re Reading Has Changed

I’ve found that I really enjoy tinkering with the guts of a blog to get it to do stuff that maybe people thought it couldn’t do.

I’ve added in several different aspects: e-commerce testing, using pictures, using labels and tags and using Blogger Beta.

Does E-commerce Work With Blogs?

Because I believe most businesses benefit from a regular blog I’m seeing whether e-commerce works on it too. So I’ve set-up several different ways of generating revenue to test results. over time I’ve either had, or still have:

• An Amazon Store button at the beginning of each post. Clicking on it opens the Amazon site showing my recommended books
• A full width Amazon banner under the Blog title and description
• A full width Google Adsense banner under the Blog title and description
• A Paypal button to buy my book “How To Leap Ahead Of Your Competitors”
• An Amazon Store button at the end of each post
• Specific Amazon recommendations for reviewed books

These do generate a trickle of income. But what they’ve allowed me to do is to explore the different areas of e-commerce and see that can be easily handled by a blog.

Which Is The Best Blog Client I’ve Used?

I’ve used the following clients over the course of writing the blog:

• Anconia RocketPost Basic
• Blogger
• Blogger Beta
• Elicit
• Microsoft Live Writer
• Qumana
• WordPress
• Zoundry

There’s no doubt at all in my mind that the best client I’ve used is Elicit. It’s great because you can do several posts and publish on different dates very easily and to several different blogs too.

That said I use Microsoft Live Writer to do all my writing now because…

1) It’s free

2) It’s very easy to use

3) It has powerful features

It’s only real downfall is the cumbersome way it handles tagging and there is no post scheduling. So I use RocketPost to generate tags to insert into posts and put up with manually posting each post.

Why Label Or Tag?

While I love the sound of my quill pen scratching out power packed business growth thoughts I also like the idea of others being able to find what I’ve written.

So I started using tagging quite early in my blogging life to allow people to find me. And now with Blogger Beta I use labels to categorise posts within the blog itself. Just so you’ve more opportunity to find stuff you’re particularly interested in on my blog.

The Coolest Guy On The Planet

As you’ve probably noticed I’m interested in Search Engine Optimization and I’ve been trying to see whether this blog can help me get to the top pages in the search engine for the phrase “the coolest guy on the planet”.

In reality just the blog itself won’t achieve that but it has given me a good position in the search results - my top result for the coolest guy … was at 26. Having checked again I’m now in 40th position. So I may do a few of the other things outside the blog to boost that result score a bit.

My Blogging Conclusions

I really enjoy writing this blog, and the others I have running too.

Do I still think that other companies should be blogging? Absolutely vital.

Wal-Mart does and you’ve got to believe that switched on companies who are highly cost concious wouldn’t be doing it unless it helped their bottom line in some identifiable way.

Is it making me wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice? No…but hey! There’s time yet isn’t there?

Wikipedia: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore
UrbanDictionary: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore
RottenTomatoes: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore
MySpace: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore
Google: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore
Technorati: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore
Del.icio.us: Blog Review, Blogger Beta, Blog Client, Microsoft Live Writer, Elicit, RocketPost, Zoundry, Google Adsense, Amazon AStore

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!