| New Features |
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New BloggersBase Layout
BloggersBase had just launched its new main page. Before logging in to BloggersBase, the page presented to you is an explanatory page. This page is meant for unregistered or new users, allowing them to clearly see explanations about the site that might help them with their first steps. For registered users, after logging in the home page is the same main page you've learned to know and love.
Import contacts
Import Contacts is a new and exciting feature that allows you to import friends/contacts from various e-mail accounts and social services on to BloggersBase. This new feature expands your network and allows you to notify all your friends about your new posts in a quicker and easier fashion. You can find the Import Contacts component on your profile page, under the community tab; on the invite page and when first registering to BloggersBase and validating your account. The different services that you are able to import from are Hotmail, MSN.com, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Lycos, Mail.com, Rediffmail, Indiatimes, Mobile me (.Mac), FastMail, GMX, Web.de, IcqMail, LinkedIn, MyNet.com, Data.bg and last but not least Ig.com.br. When importing contacts you are also able to pick and choose which contacts you would like to import as well as see which of your contacts are already BloggersBase members. Remember that inviting your friends to vote for your posts can increase your scores, so it is worth your while to take advantage of the new import contacts feature.
Notify Friends
In the past, a blogger was only able to notify his/her friends of a new post while publishing it. We have now introduced a new button which allows you to notify your BloggersBase friends of your post at any time after the publication. Here’s an example of the way in which the button looks before and after notifying your friends.
New Design for the Search Results Page
In BloggersBase’s attempt to be as user-friendly as possible we have changed the appearance of our search results page. While searching for a certain topic the results appear with more information of the posts found and with the excerpt images for easier navigation through your results
Updates for Syndication Widgets
BloggersBase has recently presented its New Syndication Widget which you can put on your own personal blog. Since its debut there have been many more improvements. The first improvement is size – now you can choose one of seven different sizes to suit your blog. The second big improvement made with regards to the widget relates to the Referral Program. If someone starts using BloggersBase through the widget on your website, BloggersBase remembers you referred that person to us. If and when this new user starts writing and wins prizes through BloggersBase, you win the same amount! What’s new about this is that if someone else decides to “Grab” the widget from your website and put it in his/hers, any person that starts writing on BloggersBase because of him or her is still considered as a referral from you. So not only is it worthwhile to put the widget on your site and encourage people to use it, it also pays to have people “Grab” it from you. Thanks myqute for the excellent proposal for our new widget! To see the new widget in action, you can check out some of our user’s websites that are already enjoying this cool feature – Ramaraobobby, Kaytiiangel, myqute and JimKlark.
New Upcoming Blogs
Here are some of the new upcoming blogs that have been added to BloggersBase.
Photography
 This Month we would like to introduce our new Photography blog. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing the world through someone else’s eyes or better yet, the lens of someone else’s camera. Photography gives us the opportunity to do just that. BloggersBase opened this blog to allow all photographers to express their artistic ability as well as give news and reviews about different Photographic events in order to stay in touch with what’s happening in the world of Photography. Two of our leading bloggers in the photography section are Cougarmicrobes & Shadow Rabbit. To see more eye catching photographs visit the Photography blog.
Environment
BloggersBase is also happy to present the “ Environment” blog. This blog presents many different ways in which we can go about or daily lives in a cleaner more Eco-friendly world. One of our leading writers in the “Environment” blog is MacAaron he is an amazing contributor to BloggersBase’s Green community. Here is an interview that MacAaron kindly agreed to do with BloggersBase:
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What is the feature or aspect that you like the most about BloggersBase? |
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I enjoy two things about BloggersBase: the networking with like-minded and similarly-focused bloggers and the ease of use of the site itself. I've found a lot of great friends on BloggersBase that I interact with on and off site daily. For convenience, I especially like importing my blogs, which I do through RSS. This makes it very easy to transfer what I've written into BloggersBase without having to repeat my efforts on more than one blog. Very cool.
Another feature I'd like to point out are Nuggets. At first, I hated these and thought they were the worst idea ever invented. Now that I've seen them in action for a while, though, I'll say that they are awesome. Why? Because they vet out the one-time posters and those who would attempt to just flood BloggersBase with useless content. They force BB participants to take their time and get interested and used to the site before they start posting in quantity. This keeps the "riff raff" at bay and I can see now that it's an extremely intelligent way to do that without requiring a lot of editorial manpower. Nicely done.
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Which blog do you enjoy reading the most and why? |
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The Nature blogs (Nature-Environmental and Nature-Agriculture) are my favorites. These are also where I do most of my posting, from my blogs AaronsEnvironMental.com and Zoomilife.com. I also enjoy the Politics blogs as I am an extremely interested political thinker and write for a handful of politically-oriented websites and blogs as well.
I also, as I've said, enjoy the social aspects of BloggersBase and have a short, but enjoyable list of favorite bloggers that I follow. This makes it easy for me to find content I know I'll be interested in. While I watch the front page and those who comment on posts that I read for new discoveries in bloggers, the setup at BB allows me to be choosy about what I spend my time reading. I really like that.
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| Q: |
What feature do you feel that is missing from BloggersBase? |
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Well, I put in the request to have the Twitter and Facebook alerts fixed so that post-publishing doesn't get sent out to those networks before the article is published. What I would like to see most at BloggersBase, though, is a wider network of bloggers and a richer review process from readers. Ranking of posts by not only their content and usefulness, but also for somewhat more technical things like grammar. One thing that blogs definitely need improvement on, in general, is editing skills. With that said, I will also point out that by and large, the content submitted to BloggersBase is almost always of higher quality than that you'd find on the Web at large.
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| Questions and Answers section |
| Q: |
I received something really nice on my e-mail and wanted to share it with the rest of BB’s community. It is not written by me – what do I do? |
| A: |
You can post it in our new "Finds from the Web" blog – this way people understand that this is something you found and did not write yourself. Be sure to give the right attributions to the original creators. |
| Q: |
I am a new blogger on BloggersBase and I received a notification saying that I am now able to post on the Surface blog for a week. What does this mean? |
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When posting for the first time on a specific blog, the user's post will automatically be posted as a Nugget. This post will enter the weekly competition, at the end of which, if the post gets the highest scores, it will allow the author to submit posts directly to the Surface (Main posts) meaning that you will be able to post as many posts as you would like in to that specific blog. This status has to be maintained by writing more posts every week and receiving appropriate grades. If the grades fail to reach a certain level or if the author did not post anything new, he or she will be forced to go through the process of publishing Nuggets again. Please note that every author can submit one Nugget to each blog every week. Once you have become a prominent (Surface) blogger on BloggersBase and you are receiving grades good enough to post on the main page you will be able to post as many posts in to the same category as you wish. |
| Q: |
How can I import my other blog posts from BlogSpot to put on the site? I have several posts that I would like to enter and only 2 RSS feeds have come through for me to approve to publish. Thank you. |
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The RSS feed allows us to receive posts from you starting from the day that you joined BloggersBase and it doesn't send all your posts from the first time you started blogging because it would clutter the system. However, we would love to see the posts you speak of on BloggersBase. All you have to do is manually copy and paste the posts on to BloggersBase. However, if you are still a new user this would mean that your posts are still Nuggets meaning you will not be able to post more than one Nugget in each blog until you have received a high enough ranking to post on the Surface. Once you are a more prominent blogger on BloggersBase you will be able to post as many posts as you wish in to the category of your choice. |
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| Alex's corner |
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Expanding your readership audience
Each blogger aims to reach as large an audience as possible. Some of the prominent bloggers on BloggersBase have already crossed the impressive mark of one hundred thousand total pages read. In addition to our numerous efforts to promote the top quality posts, there are several simple things that you can do yourself, which can significantly boost your readership numbers.
First of all, socializing has always been a good way to gain exposure. BloggersBase offers certain social elements to help blogger-reader related activities. Increasing the number of your friends on BloggersBase will surely help to gain more readers to rate and comment your posts. You can add a user as a friend by clicking on his avatar, opening his profile and clicking ‘Add as a friend’ link.
You can notify your friends on BloggersBase with each post you publish at any time (but only one notification, sent to all your friends, per post). Therefore, the more friends you have – the larger the amount of users that will be notified about your new post. If you didn't notify them at the end of the publishing process, you can open your own post and click the notify button.
 Moreover, you can also ask your friends to recommend your posts, which in turn will alert all their friends that this is a good post.
However, you must bear in mind that friendship is a two-way street. Just like you expect of your friends on BloggersBase to read your posts, leave comments and rate them favorably – so will they be expecting of you to do the same for them. Being friendly, responsive, positive and polite is also a great strategy for gaining friends and increasing your influence and exposure.
 Another method to easily bring hundreds of readers is advertising your posts using external services, like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and others. We have already discussed ways to syndicate your comments and posts on Twitter and Facebook in the previous newsletter. Publishing in selected external services can be easily done by using the publishing panel located on the top of post page. My personal recommendation would be submitting your posts to StumbleUpon. This can be done with almost zero effort and can bring a surprisingly high amount of visits. Publishing in aggregation engines like Digg and Reddit usually yields something significant only in case that you maintain a social networks on those sites – but by significant I meant REALLY significant.
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| Featured User of the Month |
 June was an amazing month. We were overwhelmed with the high standards of our bloggers on BloggersBase and so we couldn’t resist interviewing more than one! We interviewed, Robehren, DrRus and Kaytiiangel. We’ll be kicking off with Robehren, one of our current leaders of the Politics & Opinions blog, and an excellent writer. He was kind enough to grant us this short interview:
| Q: |
What is the feature or aspect that you like the most about BloggersBase? |
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I love the fact that it is open to everyone and requires a "nugget" be ranked before being able to publish on the front page. I have also found that the site is extremely easy to navigate and use in general. |
| Q: |
What feature do you feel that is missing from BloggersBase? |
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I can't think of anything I would change. The system seems to work well as is. |
| Q: |
What advice would you give to new bloggers? |
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Write, write and write some more. Find something that you love to talk about and blog about it. As long as you are passionate the rest is easy. Stay away from gimmicks and get rich quick stuff. Post and comment on others posts and you audience will grow. |
| Q: |
We see that you take the time to invest on your posts, what makes a quality post, in your eyes? |
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I'm easy, I just love to read a post that is full of passion. I can overlook grammatical errors and lack of structure if the post conveys some visceral quality. I love to see someone’s passion bleed through the page. |
 DrRus is also one of our top bloggers in both the Media blog and the Humor blog. He is an active member of the BloggersBase community and we appreciate his posts and constant publishing on BloggersBase. He always tries out new features and gives us dynamic feedback. Helping us make BloggersBase better for all users. Here’s the interview from the Dr.
| Q: |
What influenced you to start blogging? |
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I've actually been "blogging" in one way or another since 1994. That's when I founded an email service called GodLaughsDotNet. It was a weekly mailing of jokes that subscribers sent to me. Then, every week I compiled an e-zine mail which I sent out to well over 3,000 subscribers. I'm in the midst of re-tooling the GodLaughsDotNet list to a blog. But, for anyone who's interested, the original GodLaughsDotNet site can be found here - http://www.godlaughs.net/index-old.html - As the Internet grew, the technology changed. As the years went along, many people started blogging, so it was a natural progression to move from the e-zine to a blog. Now, as we find ourselves in the year 2009, I have a number of blogs on the go. Each one serves a different purpose. My main blog focus is on movie reviews with a blog called Frame by Frame: A Family-Friendly Guide to the Movies. Posts from that blog are usually what appear here on the BloggersBase. |
| Q: |
Which blog do you enjoy reading the most and why? |
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Wow, that's a tough question really. There are so many great blogs out there to read! However, some of the mainstays I like to keep an eye here on the BloggersBase are written by Adam Thursby. He always has great things to say about computer technology. He's also just started a new post highlighting new DVD and Blue-Ray releases each week. Then there's my newest BloggersBase friend Jinxie. She's a writer and a great book reviewer! Jinxie has great insights on books. Then, last, but certainly not least, I love reading kaytiiangel posts too. She's so versatile and posts in a number of different categories on the BloggersBase. But, the posts I enjoy the most are the ones where she openly shares what's going on in her life. |
| Q: |
What advice would you give to new bloggers? |
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Stick with it! Many people start blogging thinking they will find fame and fortune instantly. There's the idea that as soon as they make a post, any kind of post, they will become famous overnight. Such is not the case. As mentioned already, there are a lot of blogs, not only on BloggersBase, but on the Internet. One must be consistent, staying focused and sticking with it. It takes time for people to discover you and then it takes time for you to gain the respect of others to consider you a worthwhile author to read. Secondly, stay focused. In my early days of blogging I was all over the map when it came to topics. While I do still write a number of different blogs, with a different focus, my main blog is Frame by Frame: A Family-Friendly Guide to the Movies Blog. My wife and I are movie critics, which means we do have the inside scoop when it comes to movies. We screen movies before they're released to the big screen, and our focus is always with an eye to family-friendly. While we review all genres of movies, we're always asking question - "Is this movie family-friendly?" - I've been focused on that blog for about the past 2 years and now people have finally discovered that we're out there.
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| Q: |
We see that you take the time to invest on your posts, what makes a quality post, in your eyes? |
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Originality key when it comes to blog posts. Too often people simply do a "copy and paste" pretty much stealing someone else's work. While it's fine to attribute where the material comes from when you do this, I usually skip posts containing material I can find elsewhere. A "copy and paste" blog post is not really a blog post. It's simply filler in a world of noise. People aren't fooled either. An astute reader will pick up on a copy and paste post very quickly, and then quickly pass over the post in search of something original. Keep it original. Besides, it's always more rewarding when you see your written word on the page, instead of the the written word written by someone else underneath your name. |
 Kaytiiangel is an extremely prominent Blogger on BloggersBase especially in the “ Love & Relationships” blog. She is a well known member of BloggersBase and this is what she had to say:
| Q: |
What is the feature or aspect that you like the most about BloggersBase? |
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The feature I like most about BloggersBase is the reason I joined. It's a fantastic way to gain exposure for my blog, RMS Snowdrop. Not long after starting my blog I began searching for ways to get it out there, to gain more readers. After researching several different sites, I chose BloggersBase. |
| Q: |
What influenced you to start blogging? |
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My best friend, Kris. Being adopted, losing my son, and being a mom of four kids she felt I could reach out and help others who may be going through situations I have gone through or will go through. It's proved to be a fantastic outlet for me, like free therapy. Receiving the many comments I've gotten about how I've helped others inspires me to keep RMS Snowdrop afloat. I started with tracking my journey to lose weight which was the kick in the rear I needed to start blogging. In the past several months I'm proud to say I've encouraged others to lose weight, eat healthier, learn that moms aren't perfect, understand what it's like for me to be adopted, and how to heal following the death of a loved one. |
| Q: |
Which blog do you enjoy reading the most and why? |
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I travel around BloggersBase quite a bit. The top of the list has to be Ted in Humor. He has helped me to grow and taught me how to improve the posts I submit in Humor. He is a true genius in that category. Myqute seems to be on everyone's top list. She does so much research and is always finding ways to relate health into all of my posts, even "Bras"! Mashable is trying to help me become more computer literate which is an extremely difficult job. |
| Q: |
What advice would you give to new bloggers? |
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Read, read, and re-read your posts before hitting the submit button. Something I've learned the past several months is that readers don't take you seriously if you have a lot of typos or grammar errors. 98% of my posts are edited by a friend before I post them. Even then sometimes mistakes get by us. It's difficult to read posts with several errors. As for new bloggers on BloggersBase, pay careful attention to where you place your posts. Stop and think how others may see it. I was on the fence once as to where to place a post and, after posting, felt I'd chose the wrong category. Also, explore the upcoming categories. The list has grown substantially since I joined. The more bloggers post in those categories the better chance they have of moving to the competition categories. |
| Q: |
We see that you take the time to invest on your posts, what makes a quality post, in your eyes? |
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To me, a quality post is one that contains more of an author's original work than copying and pasting information from other sites. After reading, you should be able to tell the author took time to write the post. I thought I'd be able to spit out a post in 15 minutes but I quickly learned it wasn't that easy. There are times I can write a post in under two hours but many times it takes several hours or even a few days. A quality post should show the author's passion about the subject they are writing about.
http://rmssnowdrop.blogspot.com/ |
We thank DrRus, Robehren and Kaytiiangel so much for their informative answers. We also have some new and exciting insight from MacAaron waiting for you in the New Upcoming Blogs section!
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| BloggersBase on the Net |
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VC Café talks about BloggersBase's efforts to try and make order in the mass of information being uploaded online and hosts BloggersBase own Dan to explain the way the site works.
People Like News takes the time to explain how BloggersBase can benefit you and elaborates about our Affiliate Program. Check it out!
Killer Startups talks about BloggersBase as giving advantages to bloggers as well as to readers.
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| Invite Your Friends! |
Help us spread the word about BloggersBase and you could win monetary prizes! Simply invite your friends or refer other bloggers by placing a link to BloggersBase on your own site. To do this, choose one of the banners offered in the 'My Account' tab of your profile page and place it on your web page. Each time a blogger who registers by following your link wins the competition in one of the surface blogs a cash bonus will be added to your balance. You can track the number of referred users and your bonuses in the 'My Account' tab of your profile.
You can also invite friends to join by clicking "Invite" on your profile widget to the same effect!
Contact Us
Regarding any questions about BloggersBase or suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact us here
If you wish to unsubscribe from our newsletter please update the ‘receive newsletter’ preference under the preferences tab in your profile. |
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| Tip of the month |
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When writing a post for BloggersBase we recommend that you use as many “tags” as possible. Using “tags” will help users to find your posts more easily when searching for a specific item or topic.
For example, if someone is looking for posts that have to do with fitness it is most likely that the word “fitness” will be one of the words they use to look for those kinds of posts. Below is an example of what the tags will look like on your BloggersBase posts.
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