This scene is all too familiar for those of us that work in an urban downtown area. Do we stop and listen or just hurry on about our business?

But wait, this was not your typical panhandler. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall was one of the finest classical musicians in the world. In fact, the musician was Joshua Bell. Whom just three days before he appeared at the Metro station, had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. The very violin that he played was worth more than most of the passer byes would make in their lifetime. The violin was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari and the price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million.

Joshua Bell, one of the worlds top classical musicians, equipped with his million dollar Stradivari violin played one of the most difficult violin pieces ever. AND THE WORLD WAS TOO BUSY TO NOTICE…

This experiment arranged by The Washington Post struck a cord in me. Probably because I fear that I would be one of the many that was too busy with life to see or hear the beauty that was right there in front of me.

This is one of the reasons for the less frequency of blog post these days. The other reason is the birth of my second child. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

The life of a software developer is fast paced for sure, maybe that’s why they call them sprints in the Agile dev methodology. Make sure you are stopping from time to time to smell the roses or hear the music. Work to live. Don’t live to work…

Be sure to read the entire Washington Post experiment here. It’s well worth your time.

Stephane Grenier was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book Blog Blazers – 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets. I’m glad he did, it’s a very enjoyable read. It’s a lot like what the Random Bits podcast offers its listeners. In fact the book interviews both Jonathan Snook and Yaro Starak which have been interviewed here before on the Random Bits podcast. You’ll also find interviews with notables like Seth Godin, Neil Patel, David Seah and 35 other top bloggers.

The books main goal is to provide you and your blog some insight into what it takes to be successful. Reminding you that “A new blog comes online every 1.4 seconds” it sure doesn’t hurt to learn from some of the most successful bloggers to date.

In Blog Blazers, you’ll learn the secrets of 40 top bloggers, as they all weigh in on such questions as:

- What’s your best tip for writing a successful blog post?
- What are your main avenues for marketing your blog?
- What was your most successful blog post ever?
- What’s the most common mistake new bloggers make?
- What turns you off most when visiting a blog?
- What’s the best way to make money from your blog?
- Which books and websites do you recommend to new bloggers?
- Which five blogs do you regularly read?
- and many more!

It’s a quick and easy read and well worth any bloggers time.

In this article I’ll share with you what I shared with them. It may surprise you to hear some of my suggestions.

The beginning of our conversation was your typical SEO talk. It started with an explanation of how Google (and others) ranks web pages. The typical reader of this blog will be familiar with this, so I’ll skip it. But if you need a refresher, read the article Google’s PageRank Explained.

After explaining to them the significance of inbound links to their site it didn’t take long before they asked the question that always gets asked at this point, “How do we get people to link to our website?”

I deflated their spirits be telling them that it’s not easy. You see, e-commerce sites, like theirs, don’t typically attract people wanting to link to them. Nobody, naturally, wants to link to a website that sells jewelry or Hungarian food condiments and trying to get people to link to a site they don’t want to can be an exercise in futility. I know, because I’ve done it many times.

But hope is not lost. There is a way…

The short answer is you have to give people a reason to want to link to you. But how does an e-commerce site do that?

That’s what we’ll look at in this article. No, it’s not your typical, “How to acquire links” article so read on.

Doing Old School E-commerce in a Web 2.0 World

Your typical e-commerce site is the web equivalent of a retail shopping aisle. It basically just puts product in front of the consumer. That’s a necessary step – you need to put the product in front of the consumer in order for them to purchase it, but it shouldn’t be the first step and it most certainly shouldn’t be the only step. If you don’t take steps to encourage their buying decision along the way then placing product in front of them won’t even matter. It’s kinda like the guy that swings his jacket open revealing a bunch of watches and asking you if you want to buy a watch. He’s probably not too successful unless he’s fortunate enough to be in a room of people needing watches.

The Amazon Effect

Just because Amazon does it doesn’t mean you can too! Amazon has become the model for which many people base their e-commerce paradigm on and I believe this is hurting a lot of web businesses.

Amazon was launched in 1995 and was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet. While many companies did not survive the late 1990s dot-com bust, Amazon did, and now has become a household name for web shoppers.

If you are running an e-commerce shop you need to get one thing straight. You’re not Amazon!

There’s three attributes that Amazon possesses that you don’t:

1. Everybody knows Amazon; we don’t know you. In fact, we’ve never heard of you and we don’t trust you. Over the years I have made hundreds of purchases from Amazon. They have earned my trust. I can purchase from them without fear that my personal information is in jeopardy or that the product will never find it’s way to me. I can’t say the same for you.

2. I already have an Amazon account. Ultimately this may be your biggest problem. I’ve already given all my user information to Amazon: name, address, city, state, zip, credit card info and all the rest. I really don’t want to go through that process again. In addition, I really don’t want to have to create an account and remember yet another username and password. Sure, I could use my same username and password as I do for Amazon, but is it worth it? Especially if I’m only going to buy from you once?

3. Amazon doesn’t have to do a damn thing. Because Amazon has earned my trust they really don’t have to do anything but show me the product and the purchase button. In fact, many times I will find a product on another site that I like then turn around and see if Amazon has it so I can buy it from them; even if it costs me a few more dollars. What can I say, I’m lazy and don’t want to fill out the forms again. And like I said, I trust them.

So you can see you really need to question whether the Amazon e-commerce paradigm will work for you or not. Keep in mind, it wasn’t easy for Amazon to get where they are either. It took them eight years to make their first annual profit with this model.

At this point you may be asking, “But what other model is there?”

Let’s look at two companies I mentioned earlier: the jewelry store and the Hungarian food condiments store. They both have some things going for them, things that separate them from Amazon. The jewelry store has prices that Amazon can’t compete with and Hungarian food condiments is something Amazon doesn’t sell; maybe the only thing these days. So both are good businesses to make a go of it.

Here’s what I would do if I ran either of those websites: I would blog. If I owned the jewelry store then I would blog about jewelry. I would become an authority on jewelry. Here’s some of the blog post you might find on such a blog: Don’t Buy a Diamond Without Reading This First! The Difference Between a Cultured Pearl and a Natural Pearl. Or Do You Know What The Hardest Metal on Earth Is? It’s tungsten carbide. I would explain what tungsten carbide is and nonchalantly explain why it makes for a great ring and — are you ready for it — I would link to the tungsten carbide ring section of my store. I’m using the blog to act like a impartial party that informs and teaches it’s audience about jewelry all the while linking to my store that sells the product. It’s important to not make your blog post sound like a sales pitch, but casually plug your products.

Need more ideas? You could blog about what popular celebrities are wearing. Perhaps a blog post showing the necklace that Angelina Jolie is wearing on the red carpet or the ring that Paris Hilton is sporting. You could show pictures, tell who designed it, list what it costs and then link to a necklace or ring that you sell that is similar, but for a fraction of the price. Sound silly? Take a moment and think about how many people do searches for “Angelina Jolie”. On Google in 2007 Paris Hilton was the eighth most popular search so perhaps not so silly.

The Hungarian food condiments blog could feature a new recipe each week. Each recipe would be sure to use one of the condiments that your e-commerce store sells and of course it too would link to its product. Imagine how many people perform searches on recipes. Certainly much more than those that perform searches for Hungarian mustard! Instead of just having an audience of Hungarian food lovers you have an audience that loves food… much bigger.

Becoming an Influential Source

Creating a blog / e-commerce tandem allows you to become an authority on your subject. It allows you to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about your product and even passionate about it. This allows you to move away from the cold, impersonal store front of placing as much product on the screen as possible and replaces it with a human; complete with personality and passion.

In the end the idea is to connect with your audience and form relationships with them. This builds trust and trust is a big factor in making purchasing decisions.

Let’s Spell it Out

Let’s review and see where we’re at. We have an e-commerce site that isn’t doing well in the search engines because no one links to it. Why would they?

As a result we are creating something else, something that if done correctly people will feel compelled to link to: a blog. Whether you put the blog on the same domain as the e-commerce site or its own domain I’m not sure. I welcome your thoughts on that.

The blog not only acts as a conductor of links, but more importantly, it allows you to influence people’s buying decisions. In addition, it allows you to do something most e-commerce sites don’t. It allows you to have a relationship with your customers and hopefully convert your blog’s audience into your e-commerce stores customers.

I will conclude by saying that this strategy is not a quick fix. Nor is it easy. It takes work, but all successful businesses take work!

Introducing the Comment Info Tip Plugin

You asked for it – now you got it!

This WordPress plugin provides you and your commenter’s a bit of information on their posting stats.

How It Works
When you mouseover a commenter’s name you will see a tip appear displaying some information about that given commenter. The tip will display 1 of 4 results:

1. If the commenter has only posted once then it will say so in the tip (see number 1 in the legend below).
2. If the commenter has posted more than once we will look up the last three posts they have commented in and display links to those posts. This allows you to see which type of posts this user is interested in and easily navigate to those posts (see number 2 in the legend below).
3. If the commenter has posted more than once we will attempt to search their RSS feed and show an excerpt from their last post (see number 3 in the legend below).
4. If it’s a pingback or trackback the tip will indicate so (see number 4 in the legend below).

DOWNLOAD THE PLUGIN HERE

* Please give it a shot and return here and tell us where you installed it. Let me know how it’s working for you and of course if you have suggestions or advice please let me know.

One of the problems I had at Search-This was that I could never easily tell how many comments a given person contributed. It would be nice to know who our top commentators are, not just for a given month but overall.

In addition to satisfying my own curiosity, I thought you guys might also like to know how many comments total you have logged.

Now we both can tell!

Simply mouseover the dude representing you for your comment and it shows you your total comments. It also displays links to the last three posts you commented in. See the screenshot below:

1. What’s In It For Me?

In his book, The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki tells us of a colleague who was trained by IBM to imagine that there was a little man sitting on his shoulder and during presentations, every time he said something, the little man would whisper “So what?” to him.

Every blogger should carry this little man on their shoulder and listen to him. It really doesn’t matter what your blog is about, your readers want to know what’s in it for them. Will they learn internet marketing tips they can use to leverage the search engines? Will they learn how to tie flies to become a better fisherman? Will they learn pet training tips to make their pets more obedient?

I came to your blog because I want something — what is it that this article is going to provide me?

It’s important to tell your audience (within the first few paragraphs) why the column matters to them because you can be sure that one of the first things to enter their minds when reading about any giving topic is, “So what? Why does this benefit me?” Never assume your reader knows why it’s important — the significance of what you’re saying is not always self-evident — spell it out for them. Give them an example early — let us see it — don’t wait for the end of the article. They want to know what the end result will be. Is it going to accomplish what we need it to for our purposes? Keep in mind this also benefits you, the author, as it makes it easier for everyone to follow along because we now know the end result.

2. My Time Is Short

Not only do readers want to know what they’ll be getting out of reading your column, they want to get it quickly. The reality is that in todays fast paced world, there’s little time to waste. We have instant coffee, instant messaging and we want our information instantly. So it comes as no surprise that the most popular article on Search-This is titled 10 Quick Tips for an Easier CSS Life. The title is hook-line-and-sinker, “Hey it’s just ten tips and they’re quick… and besides, they’re going to make my life easier!… I really should read this.”

This isn’t to say that every blog post should be short, but tell me if this sounds familiar? How many times have you gone to a blog, found a title of a post that sounds interesting, clicked the link and then found yourself immediately scrolling to the bottom to see how long the article was before determining if you wanted to invest the time?

I don’t think a blog post should be a certain length, but I do have a rule of thumb. Make your blog post as short as possible, and say everything that needs to be said, and nothing more.

In Conclusion…

So the next time you write a blog post, remember that little man on your shoulder perpetually asking you, “SO WHAT?!” and be sure to tell the reader why it’s important to them. Ultimately, I want to leave feeling I’m better off for having read your post. I want to leave feeling empowered. Oh, and make it quick cause I got a dozen other blogs in my reader…

In this, our second lesson, I want to caution you about a trap that can happen to bloggers, especially as your blog becomes more and more successful. Let’s just call it stinginess.

When I started Search-This in June of 2003 it was the height of Google’s PageRank. People were crazy about PageRank and acquiring it and hording it. I was no different. I didn’t want to link out to anyone and transfer <Golem like>my precious</Golem like> to anyone else. In a word, I was stingy.

Stinginess is rampant in the business world — to concentrate so much on the prize that you forget to help others along the way. Guy Kawasaki in his book The Art of The Start begins the first chapter by saying, “The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning — to create a product or service that makes the world a better place.” I couldn’t agree more and while blogging may not allow you to change the world, you can still give back to the community of which you are a part.

So I would caution you to not fall victim to stinginess as you blog, like I did.

Thankfully in 2007 when I relaunched Search-This I, like Frodo, conquered the strangle-hold that my precious had over me. Search-This today now gives without concern for link-juice to others. In addition, when we come up with a new or improved way of doing things, you can be sure to hear about it right here; we give away all our tools and techniques for others to use.

Here are some ways to give back to your community:

1. Link Freely
Give away the link-juice — really, it’s ok.

2. Blogroll
Let others know what blogs you enjoy reading and reward those blogs by placing them in your blogroll.

3. Teach a Man To Fish
If you have developed a successful technique for doing something, then share it with others. Stinginess can really creep up on you with this one. We often think “damn I spent a lot of time coming up with this solution, I’m not giving it away.” We all learn from each other, one day it’s your turn to learn, the next day it’s your turn to teach. Everyone wins.

4. Give it Away Now
If you’ve made a great plugin or wiget perhaps others might like it too? Again, try not to succumb to stinginess. Surely you are benefiting from someone else’s plugin. Now let others benefit from yours.

Remember, nobody gets to the top by themselves. Someone helped you along the way. Make sure you do the same.

In typical WordPress fashion, they've made it as easy as pie to create plugins. The plugin I've created is real simple; there's no admin panel so that part I have yet to learn how to do. But now that I've got my feet wet I think I will start thinking of what other plugins could be handy.

Let me show you the plugin I created and how I created it...

So what is my first plugin? The Obama 2008 Ribbon plugin.

It places the above image in the top-right corner of your website like this:

You can visit my personal blog to see exactly what it looks like.

How it's Done

First I use some JavaScript to create a div and give it an id of 'obama2008ribbon'. Then I just append it to the body tag since every web page has one.

Next we use some CSS. This simply takes our newly created div and absolutely positions it in the top right corner. We give it a z-index of 10001 to keep it on top of everything else. If you're not in IE6 then you will use the transparent PNG image. If you are in IE6 you will use a transparent GIF.

Lastly we need to use a PHP file to tell WordPress to add our JavaScript and CSS to the head section. Once again, this is made easy thanks to WordPress' built-in function add_action. The add_action hooks a function on to a specific action. In this case our action is 'wp_head'. wp_head() is triggered within the <head></head> section of the user's template by the wp_head() function. Here's the code:

That's it, my first WordPress plugin. Nothing fancy, but it was fun. Maybe this will encourage you to make a plugin?

If you wish to use my plugin you can download it here.

Since it's the beginning of a new year and many will be either starting their first blog or looking for ways to further their current blog, I thought it fitting to start this series by talking about the significance of setting goals for your blog.

Know Where You're Going

Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn't find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets. It wasn't there, so he looked in his briefcase but couldn't find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn't find it.

The conductor said, "Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I'm sure you bought a ticket. Don't worry about it."

Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back and said, "Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, don't worry, I know who you are. No problem. You don't need a ticket. I'm sure you bought one."

Einstein looked at him and said, "Young man, I too, know who I am. What I don't know is where I'm going."

Where are you going with your blog? What goals have you set for your blog for the year? You do have some goals and aspirations for your blog for this year, don't you?

When I asked the question, "What goals do you have for your blog in 2008?" in a forum dedicated to bloggers there were mixed results. Some bloggers had clearly defined goals for the coming year, while others hadn't even given thought to what they wanted for their blog. Here are some of the replies:

"2008? I barely know what my goals are for next week at the moment"

"My goal is to earn $25,000 from my finance blog in 2008."

"I hope to achieve in 2008: 100% increase in visitors every 3 months to my existing blog, launch 2 more blogs and post more frequently. May be ambitious, but it gives me a target to aim for!"

"I wanna have at least 250 unique visitors per day since now I'm having 150 in average..."

"My goal is to enhance more of my writing abilities to provide information for my blog visitors, money isn't my concern, I'm more into what I can contribute through my small effort..."

"To get New Ground (my blog) up and running. Monetize all three of my blogs. Put my poetry into an e-book for sale on my site..."

"Blogging goals for 2008 - don't abandon [my] blog..."

"I'd like my site to pop up as the first Google search result when searching for my full name by the end of 2008..."

I think it's safe to say that those that have set clearly defined goals for their blogs will have a better chance of succeeding than those that don't. Goals that are well defined, like: to earn $25,000 from my blog, or to have 100% increase in visitors every 3 months, or I wanna have at least 250 unique visitors per day, or to put my poetry into an e-book all provide the blogger with something to work towards.

Soni Pitts, in her free e-book, "50 Ways To Reach Your Goals" has this to say:

"Creating that vision before starting out on your journey creates a real destination in your mind, which is infinitely preferable to just wandering off in the general direction of whatever it is you want and hoping you end up somewhere acceptable. The stronger and more realistically detailed you make your visualizations, the better chance you have of succeeding. Why leave anything to chance - picture your goal right down to the stitching, as it were, to ensure that your energy is being focused in the right direction and is concentrated on creating the most effective and appropriate result."

If you don't know where you're going, how will you know if you get there?

Let's conclude by looking at some more examples of clearly defined goals:

- I want n unique visitors a day by April
- I want to have at least n subscribers to my blog by the end of 2008
- I want a Technorati Rank of n by the end of 2008
- I want to be in Google's top 5 search results for the keyword x
- I want a monthly Adsense revenue of n by May
- I want my e-book finished by March
- I want n post to make it to the front of digg in 2008
- I want to transfer my blog to a new theme by March
- I want to post n number of times a week
- I want to be a better writer by the end of 2008

If you haven't set goals for your blog yet, then do so. Give your blog a chance to succeed, plan things out and know where you are going.

Blogging

• Blog Critique: Chris Garrett on New Media
• How to Promote Your Blog
• WordPress - From Install to Pimped Out
• 10 Blogging Mistakes / Why Your Blog Struggles

CSS

• Relatives - Who needs them?
• CSS Liquid Round Corners
• 10 Quick Tips for an Easier CSS Life
• CSS - A Recipe for Success

SEO

• Title Tags - A Search Engine Optimization Cornerstone
• Do It Yourself SEO? Part 2
• Stop Worrying - About SEO
• Link Swapping - Should You Do It?

Coding

• OOP in PHP from a .NET OOP Perspective
• CSS The Star Matrix Pre-loaded: Part 2
• Objects - Why You Should Care About Them

Other Stuff

• Web Browser Wednesday - Going to the Opera (Part 1)
• Simple Tips to Help Survive The Digg Effect
• Yahoo Job Interview Questions: Part 1
• What's Your 404?

Random Bits

• Random Bits Podcast with Rand Fishkin
• Random Bits Podcast with Peter Flaschner
• Random Bits Podcast with Chris Garrett, Part 1
• Random Bits Podcast with Eric Meyer

Let us know if there is something you would like to have us blog about in 2008. Or who you would like to see interviewed in a Random Bits Podcast. And Thanks for making 2007 a wonderful year.

Nominate your favorite blogs for the Performancing Blog Awards 2007.

It would be nice to get Random Bits nominated for "The Best Blog Podcast" since Sara does such a fantastic job with it!

Perhaps Search-This could get nominated for "The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of" too. Although that may be one you don't want to win.

Anyways, get over there and vote people!!!

Official Categories For The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards:

1. The Best Overall Blog
2. The Most Influential Blogger
3. The Best Blog Design
4. The Best Blog Typography
5. The Best Blog Name
6. The Best New Blog
7. The Best Blog Community
8. The Most Improved Blog of 2007
9. The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
10. The Best Blog Podcast
11. The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
12. The Best Video Blog
13. The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
14. The Best Science/Technology Blog
15. The Most Controversial Blog
16. The Best SEO Blog
17. The Best Celeb/Style Blog
18. The Best Business/Money Blogs
19. The Best Photo Blog
20. The Best Sports Blog
21. The Best Blog WebHost
22. The Best Family and Parenting Blog
23. The Best Political Blog
24. The Best Food/Health Blog
25. The Funniest Blog
26. The Best Travel Blog
27. The Best Education Blog

AFTER MIDNIGHT - J. J. Cale released this song in 1966. Several years later, Eric Clapton would record the song on his first solo album, Tulsa. The song would become one of Clapton's standards.

LITTLE WING - Jimi Hendrix released this in 1967. Since then it's been covered by over thirty different artist, but no one does it better than Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hendrix may have knocked up the song, but Stevie Ray Vaughan married it.

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS - The Beatles released this classic in 1967 on the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But The Beatles aren't the only ones that found success with the song; Joe Cocker also made the song number one on the British singles charts in 1968.

While The Beatles may be the most covered band in history, The Beatles also found much success by covering other artists such as: Chuck Berry, The Isley Brothers, The Miracles, Little Richard and more.

What's The Point?

"I can't blog about that because so-and-so did last week..."

"I can't find anything to blog about that hasn't already been covered..."

"That technique is just the same one that so-and-so already talked about..."

I repeatedly hear these reasons from people on why they feel they can't blog about a topic. So in this article I'll explain why each of these reasons shouldn't stop anyone from "covering" it themselves.

"I can't blog about that because so-and-so did last week..."

If so-and-so blogged about it last week then we can assume that you had your finger on a hot topic and so you should absolutely blog about it. Yes, even if so-and-so said pretty much the same things that you wanted to say. While you may share some of the same readers, there's a good chance that you have some readers that they don't have.

You may also try expanding on what was already said, or using a different analogy, or giving a personal story or testimony. All of these can help to make the story more your own.

The only time I wouldn't cover something that someone else already covered is if it's a news or breaking story, like the unveiling of Apple's iPhone, or something like so and you find yourself with nothing to add to the topic. Then I would probably skip it...

"I can't find anything to blog about that hasn't already been covered..."

It's really not about finding that unique or seldom blogged about topic as it is about finding your passion and voice. Technorati is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs! Finding something unique is not likely to happen. Instead, find something that you can be excited to blog about. Something that you don't feel you can ever get tired talking about; whatever that may be. Think of Forrest Gump's friend Bubba talking about shrimp. If you can talk about your topic like Bubba then you know you have a good topic for you.

"That technique is just the same one that so-and-so already talked about..."

Who was the first guy to land of the moon? Right, Neil Armstrong. Who was the second guy to land on the moon? A little harder eh... Look it's nice to be Neil Armstrong and be first, but I can guarantee you that it wasn't going to stop Buzz Aldrin from taking his turn.

Being first to bring a new technique of doing something to the web is wonderful, but it's not necessary. Not even close to necessary. Do you know what the most popular article ever on Search-This has been? It was Paul's article CSS Liquid Round Corners. When I asked Paul to write the article he was hesitant at first because so many others had already covered the topic. But I knew that with Paul's ability to explain difficult concepts so that they are easily understood and the way that Paul leaves nothing unturned when he covers a subject, that his version of CSS liquid round corners would crush anything else out there. And it has.

Also consider the search engine traffic that you get when covering a popular topic. Doing a search in Google for 'title tags + search engines' brings up our article: Title Tags - A Search Engine Optimization Cornerstone. I wrote that article in May of 2007; think of how many other articles on Title tags had come before this one. We still get search engine traffic today from that article!

When Not To Cover A Topic

• When your heart's not in it and you can't cover the topic with the passion it deserves.
• When you don't have the time to sufficiently cover the topic.
• If it's a news story and you can't be the first to break it or have nothing to add to the topic, then it may not be worth talking about. That is unless you are looking at getting reader feedback from the topic.

Other than these three reasons, I can't think of why you shouldn't take on a subject that has been covered previously.

You can never let other blogs affect whether you post or not. There's just too many blogs - somebody somewhere is bound to cover the same topic as you. Just make sure you cover the topic better

Requiring Visitors To Log In

As much fun as it is to say you have N number of registered users or to see the "Who's Online" widget on your site teeming with usernames, you should never require a visitor to register an account to view basic content on your site. A good rule of thumb is that anyone should be able to view stuff, but if they want to add anything (comments, content, videos, etc), they need to login. Premium content is OK as long as the user is getting a significant value-add by giving up personal information to view it. I made the mistake of putting too much stuff behind a login, so nobody ever bothered logging in to use any of it.

Being A Content/Comment Nazi

One primary goal of community is fostering an environment for the open exchange of ideas and opinions, right? A great way to scare off (and tick off) users is to selectively censor and delete their posts. Be sure to set up your content guidelines/terms of service ahead of time and stick to them. Just because you don't like what someone has posted doesn't mean you should delete it or change it. If its not violating your site's TOS, then leave it. Most communities are good at self-moderating anyway.

Not Solicit/Ignore User Feedback

Community is all about the users, so why wouldn't you listen to their ideas and concerns? Always have some form of open channel of communication with your users, be it a contact form or even just a PM link in your sig. Keep an eye on who your "power" users are and solicit their opinions from time to time. I made the mistake of adding features to my site that I thought would be killer, but never asked what anyone else thought of the ideas before I launched them. I'll bet you a bag of candy corn you know what happened.....nobody used them.

Oversaturate The Site With Ads

You've built a community site with a decent amount of traffic and would like to start recouping some of your hosting costs or put a little extra coin in your pocket. The easiest way to capitalize on this is to put ads on your site and use your traffic to earn $$$. Sounds like a goldmine, right? Be careful how you do this, as you may drive away your users and your precious traffic right along with them. Planning the best methods to integrate ads into your site is beyond the scope of this article, so do a little research in order to maximize your profits and your users' experience at the same time.

Be A "Me Too" Site

Don't add features just because other sites have them. I thought it would be great if my users could upload videos, comment on each other's profiles, have a "friends" list, join groups, and post pictures in their own photo galleries. Sounds a lot like Myspace and every other social network out there, doesn't it? All my users were already doing this on Myspace and Facebook, so why would they do it on my site? Well, the answer to that question was "they didn't". I tried too much to artificially build more community into my site when I should have left it alone. I promoted these features, but found no one interested in using them. Stay focused on the things your site/community does well and don't try to emulate what others are doing (unless the community asks for it, of course).

I'm real big on self deprecation, and nothing is more humbling than admitting I've run a failed community site. I just hope my shortcomings will help some of you avoid the trials and tribulations of driving your users away into the arms of another site. Happy haunting.....

You will no doubt see a wide variety of opinions throughout the web on this issue. I expect there to be a lot of finger pointing -- it's the democrats fault or it's the republicans fault, or it's the SUVs fault, or it's because people are having too many kids. Whatever. People will then say that we need to do something, we need to write to congress and the President and demand action.

Of course the environment is a huge topic for the 2008 presidential candidates. Each candidate has their own plan or program to solve the problem. You can read about them here.

But, I believe --

If the world is saved, it will be saved not by old minds with new programs, but by new minds with no programs at all...

Every culture is a collection of individuals, and each individual has in his or her head a complete set of values, concepts, rules, and preferences that, taken together, constitute the building plans for that particular culture. This is known as the cultures Vision.

Vision is to culture what gravity is to matter. When you see a ball roll off a table and fall to the floor, you should think, "Gravity is at work here." When you see a culture make its appearance and spread outward in all directions until it takes over the entire world, you should think, "Vision is at work here."

Vision is the flowing river. Programs are sticks set in the riverbed to impede the flow. What I'm saying is that the world will not be saved by people with programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved because the people living in it have a new Vision."

Every year, without fail, we outlaw more things, catch more people doing them, and put more of them in jail. The outlawed behavior never goes away, because, directly or indirectly, it's supported by the strong, invisible, unrelenting force called Vision. This explains why police officers are much more likely to take up crime than criminals are to take up law enforcement. It's called "going with the flow."

If the world is saved, it will be saved because people begin to think in a different way about the world and humanity's place in it.

Most of this is from the mind of Daniel Quinn. Author of Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit and The Story of B.

Please take 10 more minutes and continue reading here!

If you want even more reading, try this.

I highly recommend his books. They will change your way of thinking...