Well it looks like our popularity may be our downfall.. at the moment I have over 6500 websites to approve, and given I check each one by hand, this means more work for me than I currently have time for.

So, until I get through the backlog, I have put a $5 fee on submissions.  It was never my intention to charge anything for a regular listing, however with the amount of submission spam I’m getting, I just have to stem the flow for a while until this is cleared.

I’m also hoping that this will get me off all the auto submit lists I appear to be on.  Less than 5% of sites submitted are even blogs!  If I can get off these lists then we may be able to open the directory up to free listings again in the future.

I’ll also be clearing the directory out of all blogs/sites that have re-applied the do-follow tag.  These all need to be done by hand, so it may take me a while.  I want this to be a good resource for bloggers and commentors alike!

out of the directory from the “Arts” section.

Next up with cleaning is the “Home” section!

I also have 1600 or so new submissions. Only around 1% of them actually comply with the requirements to be allowed into the directory. *sigh*

Hi Folks,

Just a quick update on the directory and blog.

Directory - At the moment I’m a bit behind with approvals, I have over 800 sites awaiting approval, and each needs to be checked, firstly that it’s a blog (and about 90% of the sites submitted aren’t even blogs!) and secondly for “do follow” status.  I also need to review the sites we already have in the directory because they change status, and some that WERE “do follow” are now “NO follow”. 

My first priority is to get the new sites into the directory, then to review the current entries.   If you find entries that are no longer “do follow”, feel free to comment on this post.. list the entries and I’ll remove them from the directory.

Blog - lots has been happening out there in the “do follow” world.. I’ll be reading around the blogoshpere and hope to do an update once I’ve digested all the info and have come to some conclusions.    I’ve heard some rumors that leaving comments is no longer valuable, so that’s something I’d like to investigate and get back to you all on.

Cheers for now!

Unless you have had you head stuck under a rock somehwere, you will know that Google has updated their pageranks.

So far, it seems that the toolbar PR has updated, but this needs to filter through the datacenters as yet.

The www.dofollowblogs.com directory I’m now happy to report has a PR3 and this “Do follow blogs Blog” has a PR2.  I’m happy with that given what I hear of the wholesale slaughter of directories and many blogs losing PR. 

Thanks to all of you that have give us a reciprocal link.

Our reciprocal linkers include:

• OSiRiS ANiMe
•  Aiming for Independence
• Free Press Release
• Personal Development - UrbanMonk.Net
• Make Money Online
• Sexy Celebrities| Hot Bikini Photos
• malawika - blog about blogging, making money online, SEO…
• Affiliate Programmes UK
• The Ominous Comma
• DangerCouch
• Bionic Beauty
• Special Kind of Stupid
• Eavesdrop Writer Blog

So here is a big THANKYOU from me for the link

I’m really happy to report that this directory is really taking off.  At first I wasn’t sure how it would go, but we have been having regular new submissions of new blogs every day.

I think I will need to spend more time and energy on the directory and this blog because it is obviously providing value to people.  I myself have noticed that my blogs are receiving many comments on a regular basis.

What I’ve also noticed is that for the most part -  these comments are great comments.  I’m not receiving much human generated SPAM at all, so this is a quick shout out THANKS to all of the folks that are using this directory the right way.

The social proof I have received from the comments has really increased the value of the blogs I have added to the directory - making it pretty obvious to me that for anyone trying to get a blog off the ground, removing the “no follow” tags in your comments is a great way to do it!

(For an explanation of “social proof and why it is important, check out Yaro Starak’s Blog Profit Blueprint.  Yaro made over 10k in September from his one blog, so he knows what he is talking about.)

My directory just got spammed.  The weird thing about it is that I really can’t figure out what they are trying to do.  This dude has about 8 blogs, all of which only have 1 post on each blog, and they are all focusing on the word “sutherland”.   The posts themselves seem random and badly written.  It’s just weird.. any ideas folks?

Well today we have quite a few new additions to the directory!  Ihope those that have joined have started to see an increase in the number of comments you have received.. I have! 

Cooking my hand really was the harbringer of doom.. int he last week both myself and my husband have ended up in hospital and  I’ve also been down with the flu.  I decided that we have both had our rations now and that nobody in our houshold is allowed to get sick for the next ten years..  LOL.  Timing could not have been worse with me getting this blog up and running.. but fingers crossed and we are back on track.  Hopefully. 

It’s really important when your blog is young that you respond to comments in a timely manner and get new content out regularly as well.. now I need to follow my own advice. 

Anyway… here are the latest new blogs in the directory.. enjoy commenting!

http://www.uniongraphite.com bring tips and advice on webdevelopment and design - see if you can pick up something useful for your blog!

Computer Science Canada Blog - a real teckky one, which I’m sure I could learn something from too.

Personal Development - UrbanMonk.Net A blog after my own heart - a little different and thought provoking.

  What is? What! got a tech question - ask here!

Oil Offshore Marine - Jobs Blog - interesting subject, good to see som real variety int he blogs submitted!

Techy Stuff  - more techy stuff.  Lots ot tech stuff in this batch of blogs!

Online Brochure - this looks really cool.. check it out!

Free Press Release  - this is a free press release service in the form of a blog.. if you have a press release, get it out there by posting it to this blog.

BlueJar.com Webmasters Guide - pick up even more tips on being a webmaster from this blog.

Meikai - Bargain hunters - all about bargain hunting and shopping.

My Garden @ House N’ Style - learn about gardening.   Lots of information on this blog.

Make Money Blog - all about making money on line.

Well that’s it for now.. welcome to the new listers! 

Hi Folks, firstly my apologies for not getting back to respond to your comments sooner.. the last 4-5 days or so have been a whirlwind around here.. firstly I have been attending the workshop run by Daryl and Andrew Grant.. which has been an amazing experience!  I was able to catch up with Yaro Starak, the author of www.entrepreneurs-journey.com.  Yaro really impressed me with is unassuming yet friendly manner and his down to earth outlook.  I feel really lucky to have been able to spend some time with him.

I also managed to steam my hand with a vegetable steamer, and ended up in the ER!  Those who know me know that I’m pretty accident prone and this is really no surprise.  Writing and typing have been off the agenda for a few days so I have been only able to stare longingly at the monitor while I got my husband to approve my comments.

I feel so honoured to have had the amount of great feedback in that I have gotten, and the points raised, especially by Tricia, which have had me mulling things over, over the last few days.   I’ve also had some great input from Ponn, and feel blessed to have made contact with these two wonderful women.

So now is the time to reply to comments and get some new content up.. stay tuned!!

This strategy is basically a brain dump of thoughts I’m having about how to use “do follow” and comments to best serve your blog over time.  I’m thinking that different strategies will suit blogs depending where along the blog lifecycle the blog is.  

OK.. so your blog might be a brand new blog, a blog with some traffic, or a very established authority blog with lots of traffic. (baby, teenager, mature.)

If you have a baby blog, you will want to encourage comments as much as possible, to break the ice on your blog and get the ball rolling with your community.  Folks are more likely to stick around if they can see that comments are being made and that you are replying to them.. people like interactive blogs.  Yaro Starak suggests in his Blog Mastermind blueprint thinggy the possibility of you leaving comments on your own blog to get the ball rolling.. (just don’t get caught!)  There are, of course, other ways of getting blog comments at “Baby Blog” level. 

The one that immediately springs to mind for me is installing the “do follow” plugin and advertising your blog on the “do follow” directory, the bumpzee community etc.  At this stage in your blog’s evolution, any comments that are not obvious spam comments are good comments, beggars can’t be choosers, as they say, and advertising your blog this way should attract some commenters, even if just SEO marketers.

At this stage you will want all comments to be followed so install the regular semiologic plugin (if you are on wordpress).  Other plugins you might like to install the wordpress plugin that allows commenters to subscribe to your comments, so that they are emailed whenever a new comment is left on that post.  Subscribe to Comments is a product of Tempus Fugit.

There are other plugins for comments that are very popular, but these probably aren’t good to install now, for example, the plugin that puts the most recent comments in your sidebar and the plugin that puts the top commenters in your sidebar are going to look pretty pathetic, and basically advertise that your blog is loserville and not a popular place to hang out.. yet.  And you don’t want to draw attention to that.    So leave off on these until your blog is a little more popular.

Once your blog has reached teenager status, you can start to be a little pickier about your commenters and the comments that are made on your blog.    Don’t forget - this is YOUR blog, you are queen (or king) of all your survey, and you can just delete crappy comments willy-nilly as you may and whenever you feel like it, without feeling bad.  You have license to be a tyrant, so don’t belly-ache over each comment, just delete it if you don’t like the feel of it and move on.  You are a teenager, after all.

At this point you might consider installing the plugins that I recommended against when the blog was in baby status.  This includes the show top comentators plugin and the show recent comments plugins.  Once you have established a community that is centered on the blog itself, you may decide that you no longer need the spammy comments and no longer advertise the “do follow” status of your blog in the directory or bumpzee to cut down on the comment spam you receive,  and simply view the “do follow” status of your blog as a bonus for the regular “real” readers of your blog.

Once your blog grows up and reaches mature or authority status, you will be receiving many comments a day, and trolling through the moderation queue looking at all that spam could put you in a spin!  At this stage, don’t advertise the fact that your blog is “do follow” and if you really hate the spam, install a plugin like the link love plugin, which allows you to control how many comments a commenter needs to make before their links become “do follow” links.  If you explain this is a “comment policy” and remove anything that advertises your “do follow” status, you should be able to turn off the human comment spammers as they realize that there is nothing in it for them.

So, to sum up - by evolving your comment strategy over time to suit the lifecycle stage of your blog, you can use your comment policy to help your blog succeed and grow.

A nice person helpfully emailed me and suggested that instead of a directory, I should really just join the “do follow” blogroll.

Although I appreciate the thought, I’ve decided that a directory is the best way to go, both for me and for other bloggers.  This is why:

Getting ON: The blogroll is kept on Tricia’s site, and folks copy and paste the roll from her page and put it on their page.  This is all well and good, but it means that if you have copied and pasted the blogroll over, you need to keep doing that as more blogs are added.  No manual updating needed if you are in a directory.    Also, as folks will invariably forget to update their roll, the most recent blogs will not get the exposure their earlier counterparts got.

Getting OFF:  if you want to be taken off the blogroll, as Tricia is comtemplating, then there are dozens of places that this would need to be changed.  Realistically, there is no way you can effectively remove yourself from the blogroll once you are on it.

I really do think a directory, over which the blogger has control of their entry, has got to be a better way to go that lists that get copied over and over ad infinitum in an out of control way.