Zac Cohan, Mac software developer residing in Australia is one of the two developers of Acqualia Software, the makers of World of Where, Soulver, and most recently - version 2.0 of Picturesque, an application used for preparing images for the web. Or as I know it, an application I couldn’t blog without.

Picturesque 2.0 features a redesigned single-window interface, tools for cropping, presets, and the 3D perspective effect. Using an animated “drag and drop”-style interface, Picturesque adds effects, such as 3D perspective, reflection, glow, shadow, curve, and stroke. You can also beautify images in batch, and with the ability to resize and apply effects on a whole folder of images, Picturesque is an an easy way to make sophisticated thumbnails and refined full sized images.

It has been a major part of my blogging toolset for the past year, once you start utilizing some of the fun, time saving features, working with images will never be the same again.

Competition: Five Copies To Giveaway

We have five copies of Picturesque to give away to five individual readers. Simply leave a brief comment below and we’ll draw five comments by random on the 18th of May. Oh, and while on the topic of RSS, why not subscribe to our feed for easy access to fresh content.

The Story

I’ve had hundreds upon hundreds of requests for this certain WordPress theme I was using at my personal blog for the past 12 months. The three column theme labeled as “The Red Three” displays content in a very organized manner, providing room in the two sidebars for extra content, advertisements, or notices you wish to provide for your reader-base.

The public release of this theme is my way of saying thanks to the WordPress community, and you - the readers of Desktop Vibes.

The theme which was originally created by Andreas Lengyel, then further customized by myself has had hours upon hours of dedication and hard work put into it. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I have over the past year.

Instructions

Red Three is a three column theme made specifically for WordPress blogs. To edit the title/description of the site in the header, edit these values in the manage settings section of the WordPress back-end.

Please leave all footer links in-tact. These are served as a way for readers of your site to source the original theme download page.

Download & Install

Known to be compatible with WordPress 2.5+. If you are running an older version of WordPress, please, stop what you are doing and upgrade! To install, download and unzip the unstandard directory and upload to wp-content/themes.

Download Red Three Version 1.1

Update: This theme has been updated to version 1.1. Version 1.1 is now compatible with widgets in WordPress.

Stopping in for a very short and brief message this evening - a message regarding topical content. What exactly would you like me to blog about? For the past year I’ve blogged about things on my mind and things happening in the general technology world.

Now I’ve decided to let you, the readers take a little more of a hands on approach and want you to leave your suggestions for topics you’d like to see me write about in the comments area below and I’ll begin to make my way through them.

Creating content you want to read, rather than the usual process of me picking something to write about. It’ll be the other way around for a while. Voice your opinion. What do you want to read about? I know many are keen on the Lightroom review, I best be working on it. It’s first on the list.

Just a few quick notes which don’t warrant a full post of their own, but I wanted to make a quick mention of.

I’ve sat down with a few other Mac fanatics and recorded the first episode of the MacFocus podcast. The team of Nick Danforth, Alex Killpatrick, Wesley Yendrys and myself produced the first podcast yesterday evening. Oh, and before you mention something - I’ve already told Wesley the show needs an iTunes feed before any further episodes are made.

Chanpory Rith from the popular blog LifeClever which focuses on helping you design, work, and live better, asked me to write a guest post a few weeks back. My article, 5 Simple Steps To Greater Productivity is now live on the site.

Last but not least, up-and-coming Mac blogger Shawn Blanc interviewed me on his personal weblog. The interview was conducted over dozens of emails and more than three days last week, and is now live for viewing on his blog. I was very pleased with how the interview evolved, very detailed and fun to be a part of.

On a final note, writing this post has left me considering integrating a link blog into the blog where I can post little rambling much like this on a daily basis. Kind of like the Daring Fireball Linked List. Any thoughts on this idea?

One year old today. 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, or 8,760 hours. It feels like so much longer, I’ve done so much over this short year - met so many cool people, blogged about so many cool things, and had a lot of fun communicating with the people who matter, you!

July 22nd, 2006 stated the opening of this blog. Since then, I’ve published 270+ articles, collecting 4,641+ comments. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many new people, creating so many new friendships, and further developing my writing in a community atmosphere.

1. Quality Content Pays Off

One thing which has really worked for me over the past year is writing quality content on a regular basis. You need to personally be able to see value in the writing you’ve done, if you can’t, chances are no one else will either.

Write for a reason. Are you writing this post because you haven’t blogged for four days and feel you need to post something? You don’t. Only post if you have something to say, chances are, if you wait till it gets to this what you have to say will be valuable, and will be formed as quality content.

2. Establish Reader Relationships Early

See people regularly commenting on your blog? Get in contact with them, reply to their comments, listen to them, and most importantly, communicate. It’s important to know what your readers want from your site - the only way to do this is keep the avenue for contact open and respond to all emails you receive. A few words in reply can go a long way.

3. Keep Focused On A Niche

Pick your niche/s and stick to them. Try not to sway off too far as you could lose your focused readership. Pick something you know a lot about, no one is going to listen to a blogger blogging about a topic they know nothing about.

This should be done in the early days of blogging, if not even before starting up the site. Make sure you know your stuff about what you’re writing about. Keep focused, and keep your readership.

4. Forget The Stats

I’ve seen too many blogger focus on stats in the early days of running a blog, sure, they can be exciting, but soon you will reach a stage where you need to step away from them and set some goals, think about exactly why you’re looking at stats - shouldn’t your main goal be to create great content? Visitors will flow in over time, don’t over scrutinize or analyze them before you need to. Keep writing about what you love, it doesn’t matter if 20 or 2000 people are reading, just keep at it.

5. Read More Than You Write

What do you think of when you hear the word “Blogger?” I think of writing, I’m sure most of you do too. However, there’s more to becoming a successful blogger than just writing, you need to keep in the “know” about general happenings in your niche. I would estimate I read 50 fold what I write - not a small amount. Subscribe to sites, blogs and magazines and just start reading content, it’ll ultimately help you write/blog better.

Thanks For Your Encouraging And Vocal Support

Last but not least, thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. It has been great to have an audience as vocal and encouraging as you! I can’t wait to see what’s in store in the future, one thing I know for sure is that I will not stop blogging anytime soon - I love what I’m doing here. Thank you all!

The following is a reply I sent to blog reader and friend Seb Payne after receiving an email from him regarding boosting his blog readership. Thought it might be helpful for a few others, hence posting it here.

Consider why exactly you are after traffic? For bragging rights, to feel good, to make more ad money, or, in my case, for others to discover quality content. Think about what kind of visitors you want, and ultimately this will help you find where to pick them up.

If a quick burst of traffic is all you’re after then start off with an article you think will hit it off on Digg, this is the perfect way to create some exposure for your site first up. Prior to getting dugg, make sure that you have a truckload of quality articles in your archive, ensuring Digg users have lots to explore when they hit your site.

Personally, I wouldn’t normally recommend trying to get content on Digg too regularly because chances are it isn’t the kind of traffic you want. I try to attract a centric group of traffic - I value quality over quantity. My personal goal is to have a smaller, educated audience who really enjoy my content, rather than a huge readership who really don’t care what I write about. To achieve this, I write on a regular basis and I write more than reports and general reviews, I attempt to put a personal twist on everything I publish.

It all comes down to the same fundamental point, focus on creating quality content for the readers you currently have, and it’ll slowly spread one by one to more people. Value your traffic, and receive it for a reason.

I’ve been asked many times in the past about what ads I’m running on my blog. Many have emailed me complementing the “beautiful style” of the ads which “don’t look like ads at all”. I thought I’d post a little blurb to save others from having to ask the same question.

Question: What ad service do I use on my website?
Answer: None.

That’s right, there is no back-end to my advertisements, they are not automatically generated by code like Google Adsense or similar services, I pursue companies and developers personally to gain sponsorship.

Sure it takes a lot longer and requires much more effort than using a simple service like Adsense - but in hindsight, the ads look much cleaner, and as users have said in the past, they look beautiful.

It’s really nice to be in contact directly with people who are interested in sharing their product via my website. I gain satisfaction when I hear someone purchased an application/service after seeing an image in my sidebar or reading one of my posts.

Interested in sponsoring me? Contact me for more details.

You’ve chosen a domain name, launched a blog, and decided on a stat tracking application - now’s the time to put Mint into use and start building up your RSS subscribers.

Link To Other Related Blogs

It doesn’t matter if you write about Apple technology, dogs, or life at university, there are always going to be blogs covering similar areas. Find these sites and spend some time browsing their archives, looking for articles of interest.

When you stumble across interesting pieces, don’t just read them, but blog about the article you stumbled on. Do more than just leave a link, write a few hundred words providing your views on the matter in hand, and adding some helpful related comments to stretch the discussion. Continue Reading »

Blog reader Jeremy recently wrote to me with a couple of blogging questions. One of them was asking how can someone find a lot of news and info right when it’s been announced to blog about. I decided a blog post would suffice as an acceptable response to help him out (and hopefully a few others) with finding things to blog about.

If I’m stuck on ideas, I generally head to a social news site, or other similar blogs for ideas and inspiration. I like to come up with creative content myself, but sometimes it can be refreshing to blog about current news in my (your) industry. Here are four ways to find fresh content ideas. Continue Reading »

Design matters - as much as people argue against the face, it does. Blog design is no different. A poorly designed blog with amazing content will not receive as many readers as a beautifully designed blog with equal content.

As promised here’s “Take Two” of the ten most beautiful blog designs, this time including a few of your suggestions. Continue Reading »

Paul Stamatiou is a 20 year old blogger who writes at PaulStamatiou.com, and previously worked as an intern for Yahoo!. This is the first interview in a series which will run it’s course over the next month (one interview per week).

Firstly Paul, when and why did you venture into the blogosphere with PaulStamatiou.com?

I started blogging back in the summer of 2005. It started out as curiosity about various blog CMSs. I started playing around with WordPress, thought it was pretty cool and bought the PaulStamatiou.com domain. I’ve been blogging ever since.

You recently served a stint at Yahoo! working as an intern, what’s was the best experience you took out of your time there?

I’m not sure I can narrow down my Yahoo! journey to one particular experience but I got to meet tons of great people, enjoy California for the first time, as well as learn how things work at a big internet company. After the first week I was in California, I knew I had to
move out there as soon as I graduate.

Your personal blog has only been running for just under two years, but has over 4000 RSS readers. What three main factors have combined to make that happen?

Actually, my blog is closer to 1.5 years old but it’s still been around a while, in one design or another. I’ve gotten to where I am now with pure dedication, a passion for learning as well as a passion for sharing that knowledge. I try to blog every day and I hope to have a “big post” once a week.

Are there any tools you have discovered over the time you’ve been running your blog which help you create and write posts with higher efficiency.

Not really. I’ve pretty much been doing the same thing now that I was a year ago. However, I couldn’t blog nearly as fast as I do now without live spell checking in Firefox 2.0 and my dictionary widget in OS X. Sometimes my dictionary widget can’t find words so then I resort to Ninja Words.

Your blog is part of the 9rules Network, what noticeable advantages have you gained being part of the network?

I thoroughly enjoy being part of 9rules because of the community surrounding the network. Everyone in 9rules has been a great help and I know I can turn to them when I have a question - technical or not.

Do you have a set posting schedule, or do you just write blog posts when one strikes you?

I don’t have a set schedule at all. My posting frequency and time depends on whether there is any urgent tech news, such as an Apple announcement, and on how much school work I have at the moment. Generally, I’ll have an idea about a post but be too busy with school work to do it then so I’ll put a Post-it on my iMac. I have about 7 Post-its on my iMac right now.

What’s your process. and what tools do you use in the process off finding something to blog about, through to writing and publishing the post.

If I find something interesting I want to cover online, whether I first hear of it from Digg, TechMeme, Etcetera, I generally make a draft and throw a bunch of relevant links in there. When I have more time, I go back and read/research through all relevant information and
come up with my own way of presenting the news or issue to my readers.

I like getting the big picture before blogging about things. I use the WordPress admin panel for posting pages as I can’t live without the post preview. The first thing I do is write up a rock solid introduction paragraph with a few sentences that fully describe what the post will be about.

I always use the more tag after the intro so on my homepage people can get a quick feel for what each post is about.

What provides your energy, your drive, and your inspiration to keep blogging on a daily basis?

Redbull! Haha, that may keep me awake at 5am when finishing up computer science projects, but I get my blogging drive from my readers. I thrive off of comments. They let me know that someone’s listening to what I have to say. I could careless about the traffic I get or the money I make, which at this point isn’t anywhere near enough to pay my rent.

But more than all that is my desire to learn about new things. I absolutely love discovering new services and products that impact me and others like me in some way.

What on piece of advice do you have to those who have already started a blog, and want to make it a success?

Keep blogging, regardless of the numbers of readers you have or your traffic. It took me many months to get what I would call a decent level of traffic and dedicated readers that would comment on posts. If you have lots of readers but not many comments, perhaps you’re not blogging about the right things or talk about your personal life too much. I always like to make posts open-ended and ask for responses by asking related questions.

What are your views on the Full RSS Feeds vs Partial RSS Feeds debate? Which do you support?

Full feeds are the only way to go. As long as I have a full feed, I don’t care how many advertisements it may have, I’ll still be happy. End of story.

Ten blogs you love reading are..?

Oh wow, I don’t think I can come up with 10 blogs right on the spot..there are just so many. But I do check out UNEASYsilence, TUAW, The Apple Blog, Jeremy Zawodny’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal, Torrentfreak, and Valleywag almost daily.

Design matters - as much as people argue against the face, it does. Blog design is no different. A poorly designed blog with amazing content will not receive as many readers as a beautifully designed blog with equal content.

Here’s my opinion on the top ten most beautiful blog designs. Click on a picture to be taken to the site. Continue Reading »

Over the past year I’ve seen many start blogs, and give up after a couple of months, if not weeks, because of the lack of daily visitors and traffic streaming through the tubes.

My advice for the first 6 months of running your blog, is to forget about the readership statistics, and focus on creating and posting stacks of quality content to help build up your archives.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set goals, if you haven’t already, now’s the time to set some goals and be prepared to review them at the end of the year.

To begin this process, goal setting is in order. I personally like to set goals at the start of every year, and look them over each month to track current progress. Whatever date you read this post, make it a task to check over them each month for the next 12 months - the goals you will be setting are over a one year period.

Here are a few goals you should set, along with a few of your own.

Set a value for each of these goals, and make a comment on this article so you have a little push and drive to achieve these goals. In 12 months time, I’ll follow up to this article so you can see if you achieved your goals.

Goals are important. Without goals you are just going with the flow, with goals, you have something to work towards, something lying up ahead in the future to aim at.

What are your blogging goals for this year?

Blogging is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Sure, writing content might seem simple, and even enjoyable, but what about all the other stressful tasks a blogger must complete? Such as SEO, monetizing, and gaining readers? These four blogs will help you out with all of the tasks listed above, and more.

ProBlogger

ProBlogger is written by professional blogger Darren Rowse. ProBlogger is the most popular blog about blogging on the web. Darren typically makes around 25 top quality posts each and every week, on a range of topics including attracting readers to your blog, improving your writing skills, and earning money.

John Chow

John Chow’s personal blog covers many different topics, but primarily monetizing your blog. He provides many insightful posts full of tips on how to make money from your blog using different services including Google Adsense, Text Link Ad’s, and ReviewMe.

Daily Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips is a blog updated daily full of short posts full of great information to help your blogging. There are many posts on how to design a great blog, lots of links to other blogs which will take you even further with your career, and more. Daily Blog Tips is in my RSS reader because it’s updated daily, and the entries are short, helpful, and to the point.

Instigator Blog

Instigator Blog is mainly compromised of posts teaching you how to market your blog, and how to blog for businesses. The posts are mainly longer than you will see on the other blogs listed in this list, and they are packed with detail. Instigator Blog has been running since April 2006, and has since built up a large archive of handy posts full of tips and tricks.

Related Resources

Are you looking to work at home business? Well, you have many available options in the form of PPC advertising. For this all you need is a website. Start with domain name registration and then purchase web hosting. Many web hosting companies sell domain names also. Decide about windows or Linux hosting according to your requirements and launch your website globally. Next step is directory submission for making your site popular and bring some extra traffic to your website. If you start a shopping website then the best option for you will be ebay affiliate as they have strong market reputation.

Tony Hung, a guest poster on Darren Rowse’s popular blog ProBlogger has written an article entitled “5 Prerequisites For Blogging Success”.

Tony covers 5 highly detailed tips on what you can do to get the most from your blog. These are no short easy tips, if you’re looking to become a successful blogger it’ll take some time and great effort, Tony highlights the exact way you can go about it in the article.

If you have time on your hands, are not worried about hard work, and are looking to become a successful blogger, check out his post while you’re waiting for my upcoming series, Blogging 202. If you have any suggestions on what you want to get out of Blogging 202, let me know!

Reading blogs is a fun and time consuming hobby, which with a few tips, can become even more enjoyable whilst taking half the time.

1. RSS Groups By Importance

Love reading TUAW posts? Find some of the Engadget posts a waste of time? Create a few groups in your RSS reader - Very Important, Important, Less Important, Least Important. Then spend some time sorting your feeds into these groups. Then when you only have 5 minutes of time to check up on blogs, go straight into the “Very Important” group to find the content you are most interested in reading.

2. Cut Down To The Essential Blogs

You are always going to learn more, enjoy more, and have much more free time if you are reading 20 blogs rather than 100. Go through your blogs and choose which ones are producing the most original, fun content that you really enjoy, and delete all the other blogs that you find semi-interesting and are mostly “re-distributing” the news.

3. Take The Content In

Spend time to read and absorb every word of your most important feeds. Try and spend more time reading the content rather than browsing and sorting through it. Spend some time with the blogs you really enjoy or those that you find real value in. You will find you learn more by taking your time to read posts carefully.

How much time do you spend reading blogs daily, and how many blog RSS feeds do you track?

Many feel that tracking your stats is the best way to see how you are progressing with your blogging. Whilst I semi-agree with this, I believe a blogs success is shown in how readers are getting involved in the comments, and your RSS subscriber count.

Stats are very important though. I love to see where visitors are coming from, where they are clicking, and what posts are the most popular. Mint is a product that helps you keep tab on your blogs stats. In my opinion, Mint is the premier stat tracking product on the market,not even Googles’ Analytics beats Mint.

Mint is the most beautiful and easy to use stat tracking product on the web. After you install it you add a little line of code onto your header document, and it will start tracking visits to your blog. Shaun, Mint’s developer has used a combination of images, CSS, JavaScript and AJAX to make it really shine.

One of the smartest things Shaun did when building Mint was allowing developers to tap into Mint’s API to create plugins, called Peppers. Peppers can easily be installed into Mint to provide even more statistical tracking, check out the full list of Pepper’s for more info.

The graphical interface and the usability of Mint is very hard to explain, so in short, if you want to track stats for your blog, head over to the Mint site and drop $30 to get your copy. You will not regret it.

I hope you enjoyed the “Blogging 101″ series. By now you should have your plan worked out, installed WordPress, picked a theme, installed essential plug-ins, and installed Mint to track your stats. You are ready to start writing.

“Blogging 202″ will include tips on how to write great content for your blog and attract readers. It’s currently in the works, so look out for it in the upcoming months.

Once you have decided on which theme you are going to use for your blog, you can start customizing it and making it your own by installing plugins. Here are a few I recommend you check out.

Akismet

This is the first and primary plugin you should install once WordPress is setup. Akismet is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

So far it has saved me from checking and deleting over 2,000 spam comments, and the count is growing by the hour. Install Akismet to zero out comment spam.

Get it here.

Feedburner Plugin

If you have replaced your blogs RSS feed with a personalized FeedBurner feed (which I recommend you do), you will not want to sort through all the back-end code to manually change the link over.

The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.

Get it here.

Subscribe to Comments

Provide your readers with a way to keep up to date with the latest comments on a post with this plugin. It will display a small check-box next to the comment field when a user is posting a comment, allowing them to receive new comment updates directly to their inboxes.

Get it here.

Top Commenters

Encourage more discussion from your readers, by displaying their names (linked to their website if desired) and number of comments they have made recently to your sidebar.

Get it here.

SRG Clean Archives

I am using this plugin to run my Archives page. SRG Clean Archives is a rather simple WordPress plugin that will allow you to display your archives in a much “cleaner” format than any other plugin available.

Get it here.

Next up and last in the series before we move onto Blogging 202, is picking a stat tracker to track the stats of your blog.

What plugins have you installed on your blog?

Although content should be your number one priority, a nicely designed blog is import to keep readers clicking and exploring through your archives. A good design, especially if you constructed it from scratch should generate a lot of buzz and conversation.

If you dont have any design or coding experience, no problem. There are thousands of free themes available for WordPress. Check out this directory for hundreds of free themes, or alternatively here’s a few independent sites offering themes.

5ThirtyOne

5ThirtyOne is the online home of designer Derek Punsalan. He has three themes released for public consumption, 5ThirtyOne V2, October Special, and Foliage. There are some of the best quality themes I have found to date, and at this current time I’m using V2 (with some customization) for my blog.

ThemePorter

ThemePorter is one of the most extensive WordPress theme sites I have come across. They have dozens of themes up for download sutiable for any type of blog.

Good luck with finding a theme for your blog, remember, content is key, but a good design will help improve the “stickiness” of your blog and make it more enjoyable for readers to navigate.

Next up in the series, picking out plug-ins which are essential to install before you launch your blog.

You have decided on your topic, your target audience, and the frequency you will post, but what platform should you use to blog and reach the world with your words? Wordpress, Movable Type, Symphony or Textpattern? There are so many options, but which is the right one?

Personally I use WordPress, and wouldn’t go with any other. Here are a few reasons why you should use WordPress when starting your blog.

Plugins

If you want to do something interesting such as display your blog stats, display recent comments, put up a contact form, or anything else that springs to mind, the WordPress community it littered with thousands of handy plugins that can do simple tasks, up to downright amazing things to enhance your blog.

Theme Library

As the most used blogging system in the world you would expect WordPress to have the most themes available, and your right. There are thousands of free open source themes up for download all over the internet. WordPress is also very easy to develop for - it doesn’t take much more than basic HTML and CSS knowledge to customize a theme to your liking.

User Community

The user community using, and based around WordPress is amazing. If you need help with your install, a simple Google search should give you an answer, if not, there are dozens of online forums full of helpful people to fix your issue.

The user community is constantly helping others, developing new themes and plug-ins, and providing the WordPress developers with many feature requests to improve it’s build - which in the long run works out better for you as WordPress wil be more stable, and more packed with features than any other piece of blogging software.

Things to get after the install

After you install WordPress, I recommend you do a few things. The first thing is enable permalinks so your URL’s look tidier. Instead of ending with something such as “archives/741″ - you will get “2007/01/01/example-post/”.

The second thing you should do it beautify your WordPress back-end, the admin area by installing WP Tiger Administration v3.0 made by Steve Smith of Ordered List.

After you have done all of this, you can move on and get stuck into the next stage which we will cover in the next installment - picking a theme and plug-ins.

You have decided you want to start your own blog, but dont know where to begin. In this series I am going to teach you how to get a blog started, from the planning stages, right through to picking a good stat tracking application and announcing your blog to the world. Let’s get started!

The first thing you need to do after deciding you want to start a blog, is ask yourself these questions:

• What am I going to write about?

• What is my target audience?

• How often am I going to blog?

When answering the first question, take into consideration how much you know about certain topics, and what topics you are interested in and love. Generally the best thing/s to write about are things you really enjoy.

Your answer to the first question can highly effect your answer to the second. For an example if you are writing about emo music, your target will be teenagers and the early twenties. If you are blogging about photography, your audience widens. Personally I try and keep to four main topics, Apple, Photography, Productivity, and Blogging. Most of these go hand and hand into each other which helps me interlink posts and keep a general theme.

How often you are going to blog is a big question. You cant expect people to keep loyal to reading your blog if you blog for seven days in a row, then leave it a week before your next post, then 3 days before your next. Routine is a key. Pick a date and stick to it, weather it’s once a day, week, or month.

After you have answered all of these, then you can move on and get stuck into the next stage which we will cover in the next installment - picking your blogging platform.

Many bloggers write a long post on why they are blogging, but I thought I’d do it a little differently and post in the ever so popular list format. Here’s 5 reasons why I blog.

• 1. It’s Fun

Blogging is simply fun. I enjoy writing, I enjoy receiving feedback, and I enjoy seeing my work on the web. If blogging wasn’t fun, I’d have nothing to do with it.

• 2. It Keeps Me Busy

Blogging forces discipline on me. Each day that I look at the WordPress calendar and see it’s blank, it creates a false illusion to me that I have to do something to fill the blank space. Blogging keeps me focused and busy to keep creating.

• 3. I Love Comments

I love waking up each morning and seeing new comments on the blog. It’s a great feeling to know your reaching people and they are taking note of your hard work and efforts. Comments are one thing which keeps me coming back for more.

• 4. Job Opportunities

You would be surprised to see how many working opportunities have been presented to myself in the few months I’ve been blogging. There have been a few requests for blogging, writing, and podcasting work. One day blogging might present me with an offer I cant turn down.

• 5. The People

There are many great people to be met in the blogosphere. I have become reasonable good friends with bloggers such as Paul Stamation, Derek Punsalan, Phill Ryu, and dozens of people in the Mac community.

Why do you blog? For money, for fun, to get better at writing, to meet people, or all of the reasons listed? Let me know why you are blogging!

As most of you, I have a list of blogs I absoutely love to read, and get excited everytime I see an unread item in one of their feeds in NewsFire.

PhillRyu

Phill Ryu, a well known name in the Mac community. Before his MyDreamApp fame, and after his Menuet fame he began his personal blog, hosting an array of interesting unique articles.

TUAW

If you know Apple, you should know TUAW (short for The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

TUAW is lead by lead blogger Scott McNulty with his crew of over 10 other bloggers delivering up to a dozen posts on everything about the Mac and the iPod daily.

Mike Matas

Although not frequently updated, Mike Matas’s blog provised an ensigntful inside look at what it’s like to work for Apple.

43 Folders

Merlin Mann’s primary blog 43 Folders is a must read for those looking to get their lives, both real and digital sorted. I really enjoy reading his tips to getting yiur email sorted, and from that, my email is now 100% clean and organized.

ProBlogger

If you have a blog, you must check out Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. Darren usually makes around 15 posts a week to the blog, so it’s a leeching ground for great content.

Darren writes about everything to do with blogging, such as tips, tricks, way’s to make more money, and attract more readers. A must read for any blogger.

5ThirtyOne

5ThirtyOne is the online home of designer Derek Punsalan. Derek has many WordPress themes released to the public for free, and his writing is generally about design, gaming, and Apple.

Paul Stamatiou

Yahoo intern Paul Stamatiou’s blog is all about technology, apple, web 2.0, and his personal life. In my opinion if you could only read one tech blog, it should be Paul’s. He manages to cover so many topics yet keep his audience happy by delivering it all in such a way that there’s something for everyone.

Digital Photography School

If you are wanting to get into and learn more about digital photography, this blog must be added to your RSS reader.

Today an article I wrote for friend Darren Rowse of ProBlogger went live. The article I wrote entitled “5 Essential OSX Blogging Tools” covers the full process of blogging and which apps come in handy for each task.

The tasks are Collect News, Compose, Resize Images, and Announce.

Check out the article here.

Blogs can be a great hobby, but they are even more fun to write when you are getting rewarded with cash. It can give you that extra little edge and push to write great content, keep you focused, and keep you blogging for longer periods of time.

ReviewMe has made that goal achievable for every blogger in the world now, thanks to their great new service.

The basic concept of ReviewMe is simple. Bloggers are paid to write sponsored posts in return for a payment from advertisers. The payment is judged based on different stat rankings of your blog such as Technorati rank, Alexa rank and number of subscribers to it’s RSS feed.

If you are an advertiser and want to purchase a review of your product/service, simple. Just browse around looking for a site your interested in having the review on and click the “Add to Cart” button.

ReviewMe does have a few rules that bloggers do need to follow. For example, each review must be at least 200 words, and you must disclose that your review is a sponsored one.

Looking forward to seeing how this effects the blogging universe. What are your thoughts? let me know.

Disclosure: I will be receiving $30 for this post.

Derek Punsalan, a freelance web designer behind 5ThirtyOne has just released yet another amazing WordPress theme to the public free of charge.

The new theme, Widgetized October Special is a newer version of his great theme Pink For October (which was also made available for free).

The theme is a widgetized release which allows users to manipulate sidebar content - both top and bottom - using convenient drag ‘n drop “widgets� within the Presentations Dashboard preferences pane.

Support Derek and download it here.

If you are like me, you will have been doing all you can these last few weeks to prepare for 9rules round 5 of blog submissions.

For those new to the 9rules concept, it’s a blog community (much like a network) where people apply to be included into the network when they have “inclusion rounds”. The site’s that get into 9rules will be sites which have great content, updated on a regular basis, a desire to improve your site and your skills, and a commitment to the 9rules community, whether that means helping fellow members or just giving advice to a new writer.

So, how can you increase your chances of getting into the 9rules network this time around?

• Make your site searchable
• Always tell the truth, and nothing but the truth
• Make your titles detailed yet interesting
• Let people know what your site is about in a glance
• Tag your posts to make your site’s subject known

Once you’ve done these things keep pumping out the content, not just in the lead up to the submission day, but keep going even after you have submitted your site for inclusion - and if you dont get in, dont give up hope. Keep working hard on your blog as these submission rounds come along often enough.

Have fun, and good luck!