Growing trend?

I’ve been blogging for several years now, and recently I’ve seen a trend that I’m not sure I like. In fact, I KNOW I don’t like it.

People are writing their blogs with short excerpts on the front page, with a “read more”, “click here to continue” link at the end of the excerpt, which then takes you to the whole message they have written. When I see these blogs, unless the excerpt is EXCEPTIONALLY good and leading, I tend to ignore the whole blog and move on.

Why do this? Is it to get more entries on one page? That is the only reason I can see to do it. It is not to keep them on your blog, as they are already there…

Now, I can see submitting only excerpts to sites such as bloglines.com and such so you get the reader to come to your site, and hopefully stay a while, but in general, the front page of your blog, to me, should have the whole message there and not require me to click to read it all.

Another trend is in format, again one I’m not liking, and how the blog looks. Many people are choosing a three column format in which two of the columns have squares of excerpts with the “read more” and the third column is full of ads and junk. Looks VERY cluttered to me, and is often difficult to read, so I move on and don’t read them….

Another one of those I don’t get it days I guess…

Half over…

…and I want to double the time off!

Well, my week off form work is all but half over, and I’m already wishing for more time off.

It has been a busy week of traveling to Ohio for a medical appointment to make sure my bad knee, given to me by the US Army, was still bad, and if to see if I could get a bump up in how bad it was (more money, and it is in pain ALL the time these days, gives out often, and I’m in a brace most of the time now), fixing the code behind ExposeYourBlog! and WORKING on getting Surf&Chat back in place (not quite there yet, but getting closer) in a manner that the system doesn’t bog down like it was. I have also been busy cleaning out my dresser, night stand, car, and closet. My wife wants me to clean up my books too, but there is no place to put them, and I’m not wanting to get rid of them…. I have also added more music to my music selection, equalized all the music in my collection so it all comes out with the same volume when it plays, and updated the autoDJ at Radio ExposeYourBlog! today.

Tribal Blogs and ExposeYourBlog! have joined up in partnership in what I think will be great for the blogging community! I look forward to this relationship growing stronger each day! (And if you don’t use either service for your blogs, you should sign up for both, and actively use them!)

Tomorrow I get to go to the dentist for a cleaning, anyone want to go for me? Please? Pretty please?

Busy times. But I’m having fun, and I’m getting some reading in to boot!!

Happy Days! (Till I go back to work Monday…)

I don’t get it???

Ok, as I hope ALL of you know, especially if you have a blog, I own and run a Traffic Exchange for Blogs. In the process of checking out the various scripts out there to manage and run an exchange program, I have visited many sites to see how they set up their software, and to get a feel for each of them from the user side. After a week or so, I set on one, and purchased it and now we have ExposeYourBlog!. It’s up and running and it is niche based, meaning it is only for surfing blogs. It is there to help blog writers to get others to read their blogs, and surprisingly most of the bloggers read the blogs, comment on them, and are enjoying seeing the other blogs.

What I don’t get is the majority of the exchanges I’ve been on, especially the ones you can “earn money” on, are exchanges of exchanges. Meaning, every site in rotation on one exchange is another exchange site with other exchange sites on it. It is almost like they are making money off of one and giving it to another to make money off it to give it to another to make money of it. I just don’t get it!?

Find a niche category of websites, and I don’t mean other exchanges, which granted is a niche, and target that niche and go from there.. WILD!

Wow, what a two weeks…

This past two weeks has been pretty busy for me. And, while a lot of that busy has been on line, I really haven’t been able to surf much on ExposeYourBlog!, post here, post on Watkins Ramblings, or Daily Readings. I’ve been busy working on the back end of ExposeYourBlog! (some surprises coming in the near future there!), and on the Council web page for the Knights of Columbus that I belong to.

Add on to that all the work at work, restarting and re-building my Watkins business, working on Circular Wind Ryu building it up, and then last weekend and this weekend going to Knights of Columbus related events (last weekend doing service work at a Missionary Church, and this weekend going to Knights of Columbus training). Busy times.

Monday of next week, I will get to (I wish I could say back to, but I just haven’t been doing it!) doing daily postings on both Watkins Ramblings and Daily Readings. With Daily Readings I plan on going back in and filling in the missing days, all the way back to the first day I started it. (That will take some time though… )

See you all Monday!! Be safe and have fun, and if you have a blog, be sure to come to ExposeYourBlog!

Radio ExposeYourBlog!

As of about 10 minutes ago, ExposeYourBlog! has begun broadcasting Radio ExposeYourBlog! 24/7 for your listening enjoyment! There were be an eclectic assortment of music played 24/7 via an autoDJ, and schedule live events that will include live DJ’ing, interviews with blog writers and readers, live reviews of blog software and service providers, and internet and international news cast.

Please join us by selecting your music player and clicking the related link:

Enjoy!

Blog Exchanges.

Over the past few years, I have been an active member of Blog Explosion. You may have even seen some post about it here, here, and here for example. While surfing through this, and a couple of other groups, I have found some great blogs that I now check daily (or quite often anyway).

Well over the last year or so, Blog Explosion, as well as many other blog related exchanges have died off because they haven’t made money.

Myself and 5 other people have gotten together and built a new blog exchange, ExposeYourBlog!

So, if you have a blog and want to share it with others, check us out!

Hope to see you on ExposeYourBlog!

Death of BlogMad.net…

Well, another Blog Surfing system (where you go and view other blogs and those owners view yours) has bit the dust! For the last few months I was surfing some pretty good (and not so good) blogs via BlogMad.net. It went down yesterday with no notice (that I saw anyway) on line. I found out today that it was sold and deleted. Something new may be coming up in its place, but who knows.

Any recommendations on finding good blogs, while at the same time getting others to see your bolg?