Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Good News! My Blogroll is Changing

I am in the process of a complete overhaul of my Blogroll. The main reason for this change is to remove those from the list, who for whatever reason, do not link back to me. I have already removed a few and added a few new ones. This has nothing to do with "followers." Please do not get the two confused.


A Blogroll is more than just a list of blogs. It is a list of links. If you notice about halfway down on my side bar, there is also a widget that shows yesterday's top five out going links from my blog. It is right before the blog archive. When your blog is on myBlogroll and sometimes on the top outgoing links list, it is like free advertising for your blog and contributes to your traffic.

You can learn more about a Blogroll at this website. One of things that I liked most about that website was this statement: It's an unwritten rule in the blogosphere that if a blogger puts a link to your blog in his or her Blogroll, you should reciprocate and add that blog's link in your own Blogroll.

So what does that mean for you? Well you may have already been removed from my Blogroll, because I have noticed that I am not on yours. I will be checking all the blogs on my Blogroll and removing all the ones that do not link back to me. As I have visited many blogs lately, I have noticed that I have been removed from some Blogrolls that I used to be on. When I have noticed that my blog is on another's Blogroll, I have added them to mine as well.

I know that many of my readers have added my blog to their Blogroll lately. If you include me on your's and don't see your blog listed here, then please let me know and I will get the link added. Contact me via email, which is shown on my profile page.

I am not looking for any specific kind or niche' for my new Blogroll. I would prefer to have a wide variety of interests represented and linked from here. If you see a conservative Republican's blog, an atheist's blog, or a pagan's, a Cub fan's or whatever it may be, that does not mean I endorse any certain view.

I will also be changing the name of the Blogroll to "Blogs that link to Me." In the event that I have hundreds of blogs that do link to me, I will then categorize them. I will continue to have my favorites listed in order by the blog with the latest post. I will not be mixing any blatant "money making" blogs with my favorites. Those kinds of blogs will definitely have their own category, and that includes any blogs about SEO, blogging tips, and niches like that. Having blog ads does not mean you will be in that category. Google especially encourages their google adsense, and I use it and encourage others to use it. It is very customizable.

I also want to thank Elizabeth at Elizabeth's Hot Topics for giving me this idea. I am so happy to have found her blog and to network with her at several sites. I have learned a great deal in a short time from her. Not only is she on my Blogroll, but if you scroll halfway down and look at the "Widgetbox Network," you will notice that she is always in the top twenty and has held the number one spot in her category for quite some time. Congratulations, Elizabeth! I am also happy to see my own blog listed currently at #17 in the top 20 in that same category at Widgetbox Network!

Thank you, Elizabeth for all you do. It is much appreciated! And thank you to all the bloggers that already include me on your blogroll.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

12 comments:

Mary Ellen said...

You've come a long way, baby! I love watching your blog evolve from the beginning, you've done a great job. :-)

I have you on my blogroll at Bad Habit and will add you to Eating Habits as soon as I'm finished getting all the details done on that blog.

John said...

@Mary_Ellen, thanks so much! That means a lot coming from a seasoned blogger like yourself!

I know you were one of the first bloggers to link to me and I really appreciate that and I DID notice right away. And thanks for linking to me on the new blog too, whenever you have it all done. I can't wait to read it.

And I remember the other few that linked to me early on. I'm sure they know who they are.

What I don't understand are the blogs that don't even have a blogroll. I think they are selfish and inconsiderate!

I don't think I violated my own comment rules, since I didn't menion any blogger by name!

Mary Ellen said...

John- Thanks for stopping by the new blog! I just wanted to come here to tell you that I understand your frustration with the small print on that blog. Word Press doesn't allow you to adjust the font size on your blog comment windows, but if I highlight the post and jump it a size or so bigger, I can do a little to help it.

My suggestion to you (and you probably already know this) is to hold down your Ctrl key and hit the plus key (+) until it magnifies to the size you're comfortable with. I do this on other blogs that have small print and make my eyes cross. 8-O

I also realized when I saw you had stopped by that I have to get cracking on a new disclaimer for that blog. I'm sure I can come up with something interesting. ;-)

I'll be filling in my blogroll this evening. I'm just going to add the blogs of those who come to visit as they come along. Hopefully it will grow with time.

John said...

@Mary_Ellen, You're welcome and I really enjoy the blog and look forward to future posts!

I assumed wordpress didn't have an option to enlarge the font size in the comment window. Now don't be shocked, but I never knew you could do Ctl + and magnify the font! I will try that next time. Thanks!

It may seem like such a little thing, but it is one more of the many things I have learned while maintaining a blog! I love that!

Best of luck to you and the new blog (Eating Habits), which is now on my Blogroll too!

Allen said...

John,

Hey I had no clue about the blog roll, so now its on my site too.

I added you first. =o)

Thanks for the tip!

John said...

@Allen, Wow, I'm glad I was able to help you! Your blog was one of the first ones on my Blogroll too. When I started I added a few that I noticed on other Blogrolls, but I also just randomly searched blogger (at the top, where it says next blog) and yours was one that came up and I found interesting. I think it was the only blog that I added from doing those random searches.

I hope everyone that uses blogger knows that "blog list" is one of the gadgets that is already configured, so you just click add gadget, choose the add blog list gadget and easily copy and paste blog url's into it and save. Dragging stuff around in layout mode does get more difficult to do if your side bar is full as mine. I noticed you can't drag and drop stuff as easily as you could before.

When embedding YouTube videos, you used to be able to click them on and drag them all over the place. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't drag videos at all now and can only add text above them and not below. If anyone knows some good tips, feel free to share here in comments.

Hey, Allen, if I can help you with your blog in any way, I will try and you can always email me.

ReRe said...

john, i'm guilty. i'm one of those blogs without a blog roll. for 2 reasons: 1) i don't think i know how to create one (jenx67.com designed my masthead for me cus that's how computer savvy i am and 2) i'd hate to leave someone off my role and hurt their feelings.

i'm too sweet (and computer dumb!)

Larry Ohio said...

"What I don't understand are the blogs that don't even have a blogroll. I think they are selfish and inconsiderate!"

I'm very very new at this. My blog is days old. But considering your strong language, I made it a priority last night to figure out this blogroll thingy, and I got it working on my blog.

Anonymous said...

Hi John, thanks for the comments on my blog :). I tried wordpress before, but it was always commented spammed so I ditched it. Although it did come up in the search engines nicely, until they update.

John said...

@ReRe, I wondered why you didn't have a Blogroll LOL! You have so many followers that probably have blogs. I hope you will read the link about Blogrolls in my post.

I'm pretty sure you use blogger, so if you change your mind, it is really simple to do, and I briefly mentioned how to in one of the comments above.

As far as being worried about leaving someone off, you could make a post and say hey, if you want to be on my blogroll leave me your url here. Then you just copy & paste it into the right place.

I have a friend that did that recently, because she changed templates and LOST her Blogroll, which was quite long!

And you are given many choice on how to customize it, if you had hundreds, you might just wasnt to list their link only (without a clippet of the latest post, etc).

If you change your mind I am willing to help you, if you use blogger. I could help you by phone as you did it. Email me anytime, if I can help you.

I feel bad for saying that I thought people without a Blogroll are selfish and inconsiderate--I really was only referring to one blogger that had kept saying saying she was going to make one.

I certainly don't think you are selfish or inconsiderate! I'm sorry for putting so many people into that category.

I am still going to have a place on my sidebar to show the names of "some more of my favorite blogs" and it wlll just be a list, but not a clickable link list. And yours is definitely one of my favorites and I want to list it somewhere.


@Larry, I'm sorry to have used such strong language and lumped so many people into that category. I hope you read my reply to ReRe--the part about why I said that.

At any rate, I'm glad to see you made a Blogroll! I have added your blog to mine as well and look forward to reading your blog!

I guess I should've also said that if anyone does NOT want to be on my blogroll, then to let me know and I will remove them.

Thanks for commenting about this!



@reemakemoneyonlineblog, you're welcome and thanks for visiting my blog! I'm always looking for a way to make $$ online. It won't necessarily be THIS blog, but in my golden years I want to have this mastered by then and have several "niche" blogs that I can make money from. This one is and always will be just a personal blog.

I will never over do this blog with ads, but as you probably know there are other ways to make money online.

I am I am part of several companies that will pay me to submit my blog posts to them first for review & payment, and then I can post them. And I will and have done product endorsements for pay right on this blog.

And I obviously use google adsense, but it is not easy to make money from that unless you have a ton of traffic. I like it though, because I can control how many ads appear and where, etc. Blogger encourages people to use adsense and I believe google will give blogs with adsense a higher page rank too.

Blonde Goddess said...

I have a lot of blogs on my blog roll but it's all people I read. A lot of them don't have me on theirs but I'm ok with that.
I have missed everyone and I'm looking forward to getting caught up with my reading...oh yeah...and blogging.

John said...

@Blonde Goddess, I know you have a real long Blogroll, which I think is so cool! And I DID notice that I was put on your Blogroll early on and I appreciate that so much!

We have all missed you too and look forward to your next post!

You're such a nice person not caring if others have you on their blogroll. For me, I am trying to increase my Page Rank though, which is now a PR3 out of 10. Having those links on other sites helps to raise the page rank.

There are some ways I can make money blogging (besides using ads) that require a PR of 4 or more and 4 is a good number. I've never seen an average blog with more than a 5 (I haven't check PerezHilton, etc blogs like that probably rank even higher).

People can learn about page rank at
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

Anyone can check their page rank at this site: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

I realize that a lot of people don't really care about that stuff, but if you use google adsense, then you get paid more with a higher page rank!

Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Flag Counter (Since July 6, 2009)

free counters