Having upgraded the Travel Notes Blog to match the recent TravelNotes.org website changes - and made sure it looked fine in both IE8 and Firefox - I started reading around some of my favourite travel blogs and stumbled on the NetworkedBlogs Facebook application.

Now I can easily keep an eye on Facebook users who follow the Travel Notes Blog, and hopefully discover some more interesting travel-related blogs to read.

NetworkedBlogs also works as something of a blog directory and is easy to browse by Topic, Popularity or Region.

I've even added their search results to the Travel Notes Toolbar.

I don't know why I didn't mention MyBlogLog earlier; when I was talking about a Community of Bloggers.

I guess, because it wasn't a 'community of bloggers' back then.

I initially joined MyBlogLog, in the early Spring of last year, because I liked the idea of their tracking statistics; showing which links were getting clicked on the most.

I paid for the Pro version and spent way too much time, during the summer (when the code was on enough pages), analysing what was proving popular on the TravelNotes website and which links were 'not working'. How variations of link placements might change where the clicks go.

MyBlogLog was mostly used by bloggers then, for tracking their blog logs, but there was nothing to say that you couldn't use the statistics on a 'normal' website. Well, we had the travel articles.

I also added a seperate tracker to our reservations site, to see which hotel links were popular, which destinations were being chosen the most, and why certain hotels were being looked at with great interest but not getting clicked through to the booking stage.

I'll look at anything to try and make the visitor experience better and I believe the MyBlogLog statistics helped, to some extent.

Then I didn't bother to look into the statistics for ages and continued with the badly-needed website upgrades.

Until I logged on some time in October and found out that I was suddenly part of a community and I actually had some 'community members'.

Intrigued, I clicked on the the small faces of people who were in 'my community' and clicked on some of the faces of people in theirs; reading some of the blogs that looked interesting and making a mental note to go back and add some of them to the TravelNotes website, when we finally found the time to add a Travel Blogs section.

The next time I logged in, I saw that some of the people whose blogs I had read, came to my profile page to see what I was about; apparently the widgets on their blogs still had my face on them.

That was the signal to add the Travel Notes Blog to my profile, even though it's not the most active blog around, for the bloggers who were perhaps 'looking for a blog'.

Maybe I'll get around to adding the widget too, so that you can see their smiling faces peering back at you.

My only concern is that with Yahoo's involvement and the announcement that MyBlogLog will change to Yahoo ids, for log-in purposes, is that things don't go downhill like WebRing did; a good community that fell flat with Yahoo's bland implementation of an automated navigation code (or the GeoCities community feel, way back when).

I just hope that MyBlogLog survives the Big Brother input and the small-town community spirit grows stronger, not bolder - when the Yahoo-infested spammers arrive. One thing I have noticed, is that you now can remove some of those faces from your widget; if the undesirables do appear, with their 'face-link' spam.

Technorati: MyBlogLog

Once you've started your blog and have worked hard to get a readership base, through community building, you might be thinking about making some money from your writing.

Occasionally, you might even be thinking about what to write.

How about combining a nudging suggestion about what to write with getting paid for it?

Writers block released, for a fee!

Blogsvertise claim to do that.

Apparently, instead of just buying banner space and text link placement (although they can do that as well), advertisers will pay for bloggers and online journal writers to 'create a buzz'; by writing about their product or service.

Getting Started!

Interested bloggers need to register their blog at Blogsvertise. Once the blog is approved, the blogger will enter an 'assignment queue' and (hopefully) receive new tasks, by e-mail, to write about in their blog.

The e-mail will contain a website url and the blogger's task is to mention the company in their blog and provide at least three links to the website in their blog entry.

The company's product or service does not need to be endorsed, just written about. Even bad publicity is good publicity; as all the search engine spiders register, is that there's website links to the company around the Web. The company then has an increase in their link popularity.

Of course, if you write a good entry (even if it's a 'bad' review) you might find other bloggers linking to it and the company gets an 'online buzz'; even if it's negative.

Once you've written about your task (to be completed within 5 days), you'll need to log-in to Blogsvertise and submit your blog entry for approval.

Assuming everything is fine, you should get paid through PayPal within 30 days (so you'll need a Pay Pal account).

How Much Will You Make?

The current payout rate for new accounts is 4-25 dollars per entry, although most 'assignments' will fall into the $5-15 range. That's 50-150 dollars for ten writing tasks.

Once you have successfully completed five tasks, that were approved, you might even be eligible for a higher rate.

Some blogs may be approved but put on a 'probation status'; if there appears to be little or no content, or if the blog was only recently created. Bloggers without an established readership won't be creating much of a buzz and therefore the payout rate in this case is two dollars for each assigned, completed and approved assignment.

Advertising Through Blogsvertise

Advertisers interested in this concept will be charged a $20 flat rate (per blog); where the system is used to find related blogs.

'Power users' will be charged between four and fifty dollars, with most blogs falling in the eight to thirty dollars price range. Although this is more time-consuming, advertisers can search blog inventory and pick and choose which blogs they would prefer to advertise on.

Personally, I would rather choose where to advertise.

Pricing is based on quality and traffic scoring as measured by independent third parties.

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I've just realised, I've linked to Blogsvertise at least three times in this blog entry. Good training, if nothing else.

If you want to 'create a buzz' for your completed assignments, feel free to post the blog-entry link in the comments.
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Technorati: Blogsvertise