Nice slogan, eh? However, 9rules do not open for submission all the time. Hence, I call it the “Big day” for bloggers who wish to submit their blogs to the 9rules community.

Question is “How to let your blog has the ?”

• Sign up an account for FREE in 9rules.
• Submit your blog today! (5th November, 2008. EST 12.00am)
• Wait for approval.

Read more about how to join 9rules here.

If you want to join 9rules, remember that it only open for submssion at certain time. Now is the last chance for you to submit your blog in this year. If you miss out this day, you’ll have to wait for the next round, probably next year.

9rules do not accept submissions outside of the 24 hour submission period.

Once the submission period closes, 9rules do not accept submissions. The submission period opens at midnight Eastern Standard Time on 5th November 2008.

Are you in the different time zone? Check out the actual date in your country with Time Zone Converter.

For those in Malaysia, the submission period will start from 1pm of 5th November 2008. I’m going to try submit Blogging For Novice to 9rules and lets hope it got approved.

Have you joined 9rules?

Update:

I’ve submitted my blog to 9rules. You can submit your blog to 9rules at http://9rules.com/submit/

So, I will have to check 9rules blog for approval announcement. You can also follow 9rules at Twitter.

I’m a BlogRush user. I joined BlogRush as early as November 2007 when it just started launching. Few months ago, I removed BlogRush widget in my personal blog, as I think it’s not performing well for a mixed content blog. I kept the BlogRush widget here in this blog as I thought it could attract readers with more similar topics or bloggers from similar niche.

Sad to see that BlogRush failed its objective. Here is a quote from BlogRush.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

Another sister project known as TrafficJam dies together with BlogRush. It’s sad that BlogRush is never out of BETA and has to be shut down now.

Are you a BlogRush user? If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it. It’s no longer working now. It will show an empty space at the location which you have placed the widget code. I’m going to remove mine once I finish this post.

Wish John Reese all the best in his future projects.

What is Micro-blogging?

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. [ Source ]

Other than Twitter, there are several similar services such as Pownce, Plurk, Jaiku, etc…

But why Twitter?

Base on Google PageRank (PR) ranking, Twitter has higher importance than its competitors. Take a look at the comparison with the recent Google PR updates.

You can read a very good article from Mr. Javo on Micro-blogging, to learn more about the importance of this technique to drive traffic to your blog.

You can also download a 7 pages e-book, Beginner’s Guide to Using Twitter for Business, by Duct Tape Marketing. It’s a very short and simple guide for those who want to learn about Twitter. Here are some useful tools which are also introduced in the e-book:

• Twitter Tools for WordPress – a nice plugin for WordPress
• Twitterrific – an application that can read and post “Tweets”
• Twhirl – another application to enhance your Twitter experience, required Adobe AIR platform.
• Get more Twitter tools here…

Are you a Twitter user? Feel free to follow me @xiaoyenzi to get my Twitter updates.

Idiot’s Guide to Blogging (IGTB) is offering a FREE blog review to those who wish to expose their blogs to more new readers as well as to get tips to improve their blogs.

Your blog has to fulfill some simple requirements:

• Your blog must be at least 6 months old, and updated often.
• Your blog must be acceptable for all audiences.
• Tell your friends! A link back to IGTB is not required, but it would be very much appreciated.

How to join?
Email your blog URL to Raivyn85[at]yahoo[dot]com with the subject “Blog Review“. Raivyn will get back to you as soon as possible.

For more details read here.

My thoughts on IGTB:

I enjoy reading IGTB as you can see that Raivyn is putting a lot of effort in giving tips and guiding new bloggers on a lot of blogging issues. Although IGTB has no fancy layout, content is still the king. It’s a recommended blog for all bloggers.

EntreCard is really a great tool to generate traffic and also a chance to gain potential readers. Other than that, through the EntreCard network, you can find out more blogs that share the same interest. I have found several nice blogs via the EntreCard network.

What is an Entrecard?

Entrecard is your business card 2.0. It’s a 125×125 image which represents you and your blog. Its part advertisement, part business card. It comes with a widget you place on your blog, so that others can leave their Entrecard for you. You can also use Entrecard to promote your blog and launch free advertising campaigns. [directly quoted from EntreCard]

Requirements to join EntreCard:

• Must be blog owner.
• Blog must be written in English.
• Not a spam blog.

Before joining EntreCard, make sure your blog is qualified by following a list of new EntreCard Blog Quality Standards:

1. No nudity:Entrecard, and its members blogs, are generally family friendly. Blogs with images containing nudity are not permitted. This includes nudity in advertisements.
2. English only: Until we develop the infrastructure necessary to facilitate non-English language blogs, English is the only language allowed in Entrecard.
3. Minimum 5 posts: Blogs with no posts, or less than 5 posts, will be removed.
4. Content must be original: Unoriginal content provides no value to the reader. A site that consists only of posts from “free article” sites, copies of articles from news sites, stolen or scraped content is not allowed.
5. No full-screen ads: Blogs that include a “Skip This Ad” popup or other full-screen ads will be removed.
6. No illegal file downloads: Blogs that link to illegally shared files, such as music, movies or software, will be removed. By “illegal” we mean content that you do not have the right to distribute. Linking to free, legal music and software is permitted.
7. Entrecard widget must be present: Including the widget on your site is a requirement if you wish to participate in Entrecard.
8. No redirects: Sites that use a redirect (such as tinyurl links) as the URL on their account will be deleted.
9. No duplicate accounts: If you have more than one account for the same blog, the duplicate account will be deleted.
10. URLs must be valid: Sites with URLs that do not work or are wrongly typed will be deleted.
11. No autoplaying audio: This includes music that plays automatically when you visit the page, or short audio ads that come up unannounced.
12. Content must be recent: Sites that have not been updated in six months will be removed.

Also remember to check out the FAQ.

My Two Cents

The emerge of EntreCard has drawn to a question: Can you really gain loyal readership or EC members just come and drop their cards?

Base on my own experience (from my personal blog), some EC droppers really spend some time reading your blog content, and most of them just come-and-drop visitors, in order to earn the EC credits. I’m going to monitor the traffic brought by EntreCard to BFN. Welcome all EC members to drop your EC cards here, and for this blog, I will be slightly “picky” for free EentreCard ads requests. I will only approve blogs with the same niche or similar / related niche.

There is an algorithm behind this ranking system, defining how a page will be assigned a rate ranging from 0 to 10. For me, I would rather leave the study of that algorithm behind, because by seeing the explanation of the formula, I feel dizzy.

Here’s a quote from Google, explaining what is PageRank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Apparently, a lot of website/blog owners will try hard to get a higher PageRank, as it literally indicates that a higher PageRank proves the “importance” of that page. Hence, a higher chance of getting listed in the front page of the Google search results.

It’s said that Google will update the PageRank every 3 to 4 months by re-indexing the Google search engine. Each time of the update, you will see many blogs being affected. If you ever do a little research in Google SEO, you will know that Google loves blogs, but it dislike links (ie. selling of text links, doing paid post, etc). And that’s how bloggers (including me) get their PR penalized for doing so.

However, PageRank is not everything. Even a blog with PR0 can be really useful to some readers in certain extent. Meaning, content is the king! If you write unique and useful posts in your blogs, you still can gain traffic from various medium (ie. Referral from other sites), not only from search engines.

One of my favorite problogger, Darren from Problogger.net said that:

• I have a number of blogs with Page Ranks of 6 and 7 which get little traffic from Google.
• A couple of PR updates ago a number of my blogs went from PR of 0 to a PR of 6. Traffic did not alter that day or any time shortly before or after the changes.
  [Source]

He also gave advise on forgetting about PageRank and build a better blog, which I really have to agree with that statement.

Morever, PageRank is no longer so accurate as you can even build a FAKE PageRank! That’s what we call Black Hat SEO. It’s a bad attempt and you can get your websites/blogs banned in Google search engine forever.

In conclusion, just focus on producing quality contents in your blogs and don’t bother too much about PageRank.  Remember, PageRank cannot identify the actually quality of a blog!

What is your PageRank? Check it here.

What is it all about? Is it that important that a website/blog owner should be aware of it? Well, I can tell you that, there are many things to cover when talk about SEO. It’s a subject to learn by all times.

First of all, let’s take a look at a couple of definitions quoted from the web.

the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. [Source: Webopedia]

is the process of optimizing a website through an extensive mixture of tasks that help improve a website’s presence on the search engines. [Source: Ezine Articles]

Apparently, by the name itself, you know that SEO has something to do with search engines (ie. Google, Yahoo!, MSN). From the definitions above, we know that SEO is a way to get your sites/blogs high listed in the search engines.

Why do we even bother about get high listed?

This actually brings some impact to your blog. Imagine a search engine user (a.k.a. reader) type in a keyword in the search engine. If the user is searching something related to your blog, you might get a higher chance of your blog listed in the search results. Hence, you get a higher chance that the user might click to your blog. Traffic! It draws traffic to your blog!

I believe now you should see the importance of SEO.  However, don’t be too obsess on building SEO and forget about quality content of your blog.

Google – The famous search engine.

If you’ve been an Internet user for some time, you should know that Google is sort of owning the Internet world.  Therefore, whatever statement made by Google, we bloggers, have to be aware of (if you want to gain benefit from Google).

Google has implemented something called PageRank.  It has something to do with SEO.  Will talk about PageRank in the next post. Stay tune!