Less news about whatever the blogging networks, search engines and software developers are up to. And I wouldn’t pay for any content.

I do look forward to the launch of your new blog, that you wanted us to come up with a domain name for.

Welcome back…

I agree with All who recommended a Forum, I could lighten the load of requests by E-mail. You could set a certain time and/or day that you would be at the forum and leave the rest to the mod’s.

You certainly have enough knowledgable readers and commenters to take some of the burden of running a forum off your shoulders .

I also agree that you should either set up a way to read the Blog from the beginning or Write a Book (I’d buy it).

Joe

We’ve talked about this a little bit in the past, but it sort of goes hand in hand with Lyndoman’s comment.

I’d take his back-to-front, front-to-back comment a step farther. The problem with blogs is that they are too linear. The reality is that you have a cosmos (excuse a term used far too loosely and commonly in blogging) of content that is far from linear.

Tagging is always an option but as we’ve discussed, how you tag has a direct influence on where your blog goes. There’s actually two kinds of tagging.

Cosmo-tagging: Refers to tagging your own content to leverage Technorati, Del.icio.us, etc. Your tags refer to third party services and has the net effect of more exposure to readers who might not read you.
Intra-tagging: Refers to tagging of your own content internally. Tags point to other parts of your blog and has the net effect of offering more complete exposure to existing readers. This is what I have at Technosailor and embraces the idea of a blog as a cosmos more

I should write an article on this now that I think about it…

2. I love your content, rarely too long, rarely too short. Personally I think four posts is enough for me to keep up with. 31 days to a better blog nearly finished me off!

3. When you follow the link from the feed reader to the first post of the day, there is no way to easily navigate to the next post without returning to the feed reader or going to the home page.

4. You could put together some e.books of some of the best content you have. It’s all available free, but some people might pay a little for the benefit of not having to go searching for it.

Maybe just more of the same is in order, people seem to like what is already here. I know I do. There is enough info on these pages to help someone become a Problogger, but online markets change and develop at a rapid rate so it’s good to keep upto date.

One of the problems I have with blogs is that the oldest post is last and the newest post is first. When you first come to this site you really need to read the whole thing backwards, ie. start with the first post in the archive and go forwards (taking notes). I think newer readers of this site would benefit from some kind of indexing, where first things are read first. I know categories sort to some extent, but a as a newbie I would have loved something like SEO book. Perhaps it could be an e-book, perhaps it could even be a proper book, but I am sure you have already been approached – considered this.

Hagrin mentions forums, this is what came to my mind. Of course you get different problems with a forum and it can get quite hard. I ran a games forum for 3 years and the “nutty” quotient can be very high. Although they can be very powerful if good mods are in place. I would see the whole place run day to day by volunteer mods who are looking for exposure, networking and keeping their fingers on the pulse. These people would have to be the people you can trust, I guess it would be similar to recruiting people for a blog network.

It should lighten your email traffic Darren as questions normally sent to you would be posted on the forum and usually answered by the membership. The community you already have on this blog seem willing to share and communicate and I’m sure a forum would rock.

I think this is the best direction for both you and the community, I for one would be willing to mod a section or two.

What do you think?

Personally I think the design is secondary on a site such as this – you don’t need to look like Performancing etc.

Maybe getting a mix of guest bloggers in on a more regular basis – not only will it add new voices but it will iincrease your content and footprint still further. I wouldn’t want to see much more than a 1:3 ratio of visitors to your own posts, though. It’s your voice most people come here specifically for.

As for the content – well I still think you’re best placed to decide what are hot topics, what should be written about.I can’t think of anything else I’d want you to write that you aren’t already.

More things for 2006 – would be reviewed add-ons and freebies for Blog owners to add to their blogs, and also good Stats Trackers for really gauging traffic.

When I thinking of blogging references I think of Peformancing and I think of Problogger. On purely aesthetic grounds, Performancing is ahead of Problogger by some margin and I would like to see you make some of that up.

Besides, blog design is one of the topics addressed by your site so I would enjoy seeing Problogger lead by example.

Welcome back and here’s to a fruitful 2006.

and how do you know the going rate for a sex worker ;-)

That’s the going rate for a sex worker – I think Darren is worth a little more than that don’t you?

One way around this would be to appoint moderators from your readership group. Perhaps you could offer incentives for this to readers either in ad sharing or by giving links to moderators and letting them post occassionally on the main blog. It’s just an idea, I suspect some readers would take it up.

As far as putting a price tag on the consulting services, a $100 for half hour isn’t too bad. A survey for something like this might help (or checking out compeittion, if there is any for something like this).

And as for the design, I say keep the same layout, but provide the ability to change the color scheme based on a user cookie. I love orange (have it on my own site), but I find ithard to read sometimes.

This is a great site – I would maybe apply the “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.

$100 for half an hour? How would you come up with a figure?

I can’t agree with you there – the traditional media will never see us as one of them because we’re all unwashed, untrained and uncouth barbarians.

That’s why more and more people are reading blogs :)