Blogger Responsibilities

In her book, “The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog,” Rebecca Blood was one of the first to publish guidelines for bloggers to remind them of the responsibilities they have to their audience, their blogging peers, and the integrity of the medium as a whole:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

Track Your Readership

Want to know how many readers came to your site this week? This month? This year? Want to look at graphs that show your readership trends? Want to know where your readers are, and who referred them to your site? You need metrics! Here are a few sites that provide free and/or pay metering for websites/blogs:

Sitemeter

Statcounter

GoStats

Google-Analytics

pMetrics

Monetize Your Blog

Once your blog has a dedicated following, why not make a few pennies a month from your work?

Here are a few places that can get you on the road to earning milk money (eventually):

Text Link Ads
AdSense
AuctionAds
Bidvertiser
BlogAds (requires invitation and minimum average weekly visitors)

Blogs of Note

Here is a preliminary list of blogs of note for beginning bloggers -- you can learn something from each of them, including tone, layout, content, organization, and subject matter. This list (with additions) will be placed in the Blog Roll section of the sidebar.

The Sneeze Humor Gorilla vs. Bear Music State of the Day Politics Daily KOS Politics Crooks And Liars Politics Birdmonster Band Cupcake Blog Baking well-tagged and organized 52 Cupcakes Baking fun writing, good photos Mimi Smartypants personal journal-humor Boing Boing general wackiness Tom Paine.com politics Stuff on My Cat humor, pets Questionable Content daily comic strip Perez Hilton.com celebrity gossip Pink Is The New Blog celebrity gossip Go Fug Yourself celebrity gossip, snark Dooce personal journal (start with the about page, or the faq)

Directories: Promote Your Blog

General directories
Yahoo Directory - $300 annually, $600 for adult content
Best Of The Web - $80/yr. $240 one-time fee
Open Directory
Blog Flux
Eatonweb

There are also niche directories -- search for ones that suit your blog and submit your blog to them.