I do not write about this concept too much on Maven Mapper’s Information these days, however there is a very good and slightly old fashioned way to network with other bloggers across the blogosphere.  Its called a blog surfing exchange. 

How Blog Surfing Exchanges Work

A blogger or a non-blogger signs up (works better if you have a blog).  You then surf through the directory of blogs that they offer, they tend to display a new blog one after the next in categories that you pick.  You control the speed and you can rate blogs as you go if you want to do that type of thing.  You can also block or favorite blogs as you go.

For each blog you visit, you earn some credits.  You can then use these credits to list your own blog in the exchange and other bloggers will then see your site in the que.

This is a good way to find other bloggers, see what they are doing, how they are doing it and network or share or develop ideas. 

This is not a good way to market your website or products or ebooks.  If you are into that type of thing, you should probably look elsewhere.

This is primarily for bloggers to connect with other bloggers and generally communicate blog to blog.

As I mentioned this concept has been around for a long time.  I am a long time member in BlogExplosion and BlogMad.  These are two of the largest surfing exchanges.  BlogExplosion is the oldest I believe and BlogMad seems to have recently eclipsed it as the largest.

To my knowledge if you have more than one blog, there is no limit on the number of blogs allowed at BlogExplosion.  That said, they are slow at approvals and very picky.  You can expect to be rejected a few times.  Try and take it in stride as it can pay off later. 

I do not agree with their philosophy, but it is their club.

BlogMad is much easier, but they limit you to 3 and then later 6 blogs.  Essentially you have to work your way up the levels to get more benefits such as the ability to list more blogs.

I’m just about to hit the ‘Mad’ level for example, I was hoping to win a Technomarine watch, but will settle for the ability to add more blogs.  Sounds goofy, but hey its about as mature as Facebook.

Big Picture Purpose for Building Subscribers

This isn’t a good place to go strictly to get traffic for your website, however as you network there and as people see and possibly like your site, they will essentially be able to use that introduction as a means to coming back and maybe subscribing to your syndicated delivery via rss or email.

Page Popularity for Site: 33% [?]

As a writer, web designer and CEO, I have a serious need for creativity.  It is intrinsic to everything I do.  My business will not survive if I am not constantly innovating and creating new things from:

• websites
• graphic design
• artwork, buttons, banners, flash presentations
• mindmaps
• databases (yes designing a database requires a great deal of creativity)
• coding
• designing processes
• business plans
• stories,
• articles
• how to guides
• videos

Those are all activities that I will hit in a given month, sometimes a week and sometimes a day.  That doesn’t even include the marketing work that I do!

Now trying to stay fresh and creative when you are creating so much, so fast, so often is not easy.

To keep my creative juices flowing during so much production these are some of the things that I do to stay fresh and keep my soul from fading.

1. I read incessantly.  Mostly for time reasons, I listen to audio books from Audible on my Treo.
2. I watch a lot of movies and TV while I’m doing all of the activities above.
3. I read and watch a lot of news.
4. Traveling helps a great deal also.  New landscapes, sites and new people are very important.
5. I talk to people as much as possible.  Working in a home office, its easy to fall out of touch with people.  Fortunately technology comes to the rescue in the form of discussion boards, Skype, twitter, other blogs, calling people the old fashioned way, email and more.
6. Sleep!  This is very very important, and the thing that is my biggest weakness.  I do not get enough sleep.
7. Exercise, especially exercise in natural surroundings.  I can’t get much from a gym, the cold surroundings bore me to death and I leave feeling like crap.  Put me outside, jogging, hiking or doing sit-ups hanging from a tree and I’m happy.  Add in some swimming or kayaking and its pure serenity.
8. Don’t get into any routines.  For some people this does not work, but for me if I avoid routines and keep myself out of a comfort zone that challenges my thinking and forces me to continually re-evaluate and continually improve.  (Nice trick I learned at working for the Postal Service during the 90’s. )
9. Try new things all the time.  Food, hobbies, software, technology, etc.  The important thing here is to look for new insights from the new perspective that new things give you.  If you just go bungee jump off a cliff, you’ll get a nice adrenalin rush, but if you learn nothing from the experience you have missed some of the potential.
10. Learning new things all the time, follows that last one very closely.  I am a habitual student, which is partly why I have a couple hundred credit hours of education.  Its also why I have a resume that never ends and leaps from discipline to discipline.  Plus, its why I constantly by lots of training DVD’s and take lots of non-credit technical courses all the time.  I also am becoming a connoisseur of free courses.  The internet provides a lot of good knowledge for free.  The trick is that you have to typically create your own syllabus, then do the research to fill it in with good content!
11. Lastly, accepting your vices until you can beat them.  I am a coke zero junkie, never been much for coffee nor espresso machines, although I have rotated in and out of various teas.  At the end of the day its water with chemicals in it.  It could be worse, unfortunately its not better, but I do not stress over it.  Stressing over your vices is sometimes worse than the vices themselves.  Someday I’ll kick my vices or replace them with something better, but until then I accept the reality that they are there and that I could be even more flawed.

Page Popularity for Site: 22% [?]

I’m looking for a new theme to use on this website.  If you look at the article below this one, you will notice that the article section of the blog is rather skinny and doesn’t utilize the full range of the browsers space.

This lack of use of the valuable browser real estate doesn’t help this blog communicate as effectively as it might.  This is exceptionally true when we offer up videos or large images.  Under the current theme those images or videos must fit into a pixel space of approximately 450 pixels in width.

That just doesn’t work when it comes to Mind Maps or wide videos presumably of mind maps or other full screen software applications.

So far I have not been able to find a theme that would be just right, and so I am also rapidly studying up on the things needed to code my own custom WordPress theme.  So over the next few weeks you may see some testing of new themes when you visit here.

Hopefully, I will find one rapidly and find one that utilizes the screen space more effectively and for those folks with slower DSL connections, I will hopefully also find one that loads faster as well.

As I am going through these tests, I would definitely welcome any feedback about the themes that I test out here. 

Page Popularity for Site: 18% [?]

My friend AndrewIanDodge of DodgeBlogium is trying to win a trip to the Superbowl and be featured in Superbowl ad.  He’s one of 10 finalists.

Please consider dropping by to sign up and vote at

http://www.fuelmyblog.com/index.jsp?t=mybowlad

Page Popularity for Site: 13% [?]

I received an invitation to join a new advertising program for publishers and advertisers via email this week from Tumri called AdPods.  The new service offers a unique twist on the concept of offering up one of those little boxes with rotating product ads.

Instead of offering a box that only provides ads to products from one site like chiquita or Amazon or a dozen others, AdPod offers ads from multiple retailers from Amazon to Target to Best Buy and more.

Basically, they consolidate lots of different offers into one box.  For a publisher or blogger that is good as it utilizes your web real estate much more efficiently and effectively.

Everything else about the program seems to be pretty much standard as these types of programs go.

Page Popularity for Site: 17% [?]