Finding these little exclusive clubs can sometimes be difficult, but when you do get a V.I.P. pass, the projects you work on will see a great boost.

One such community that I am involved with that is just getting started is EasySmith. EasySmith is being organized by David Krug. David has helped broker the sale of many sites, and built up many of his own. His expertise and connections will be of great help to anyone that applies. He has helped me out in many situations, and I continue to learn a lot from him.

Here are some details about EasySmith:

EasySmith is all about sharing. Ideas, dreams, visions, and goals. It’s a community of bloggers united to help one another achieve dreams. We achieve this by developing an open pattern of sharing. Whether that’s our daily bitching about how horrible and boring web development can be, or how we didn’t make enough money to cover rent this month. That’s what we are here for.

If you know of any other such small, focused support communities within the blogosphere, please let me know. I am always looking for new resources, and avenues, as well as new ways to help out other struggling bloggers.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

We ask all blog publishers to help bring awareness to the world today on the dire situation with climate change and the need for action!

Why Climate Change?

Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.

Suggested Posts

We encourage you to write about climate change in the context of how it relates to the topic of your blog. To help you start thinking, here are a few ideas about how you might connect climate change to things that you might already write about:

* A Technology or Business blog might write about emerging clean tech and how innovative companies might be able to help address the problem of climate change.

* A Health or Lifestyle blog might write about how climate change will affect our children’s health and daily living.

* A Nonprofit or Political blog might write about how climate change is deeply connected to many other issues – such as poverty and conflict.

* A Design blog might write about new trends in eco-friendly or sustainable design.

* A Travel blog might write about the places you want to see now before climate change makes them difficult to access or, well, under the sea.

Please join the 7,037 blogs in 135 countries and 11,211,921 readers in uniting over this urgent issue!

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

We have already published a dozen posts on the topic ranging from the definition of a Community Manager to our own personal insights. We hope to extend this blog out over the next year into the number one resource for Community Managers, and community development and management in general.

I am very excited to be working with Deb on this project, and hope that you will all take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

After our messages, people started using the same tag for their Twitters, and other things, until we got to the event, and the organizers let us know that the hash tag should be #wct08. Despite this set back, I continued to push out as many tweets as possible under the one my cousin had created, and when Joseph Thornley took the stage, it only got more complicated as he announced that the hash tag for the event should be #wpto08. We then had three event tags on Twitter, for a single event. It was safe to say that many people were confused, and slightly annoyed.

Questions started circulating if people should just add two or all three tags to their Twitters so that they are easy to find. No one wanted their tweets to be ignored for the event, especially as it was a great bulletin board of communication.

Over time, thanks to my constant messaging on Twitter, and my work at converting others, the #wcto08 hash tag showed up on the trending list, as an event tag that was being used fairly often. The other tags not getting a mention at all, and so over the course of Saturday, messages went out with the #wcto08 tag at a rate of ten to every one message that included the “official” #wct08 tag.

The second day began with the same confusion, as it was stated at the start of the day that we should be using the #wct08 hash tag on Twitter, and ideally on all sites we post WordCamp Toronto content on. It then became apparent that, while we still had many supporters, the #wct08 hash tag might win the day. It quickly appeared on Twitter’s Trending list, and over the course of the day the two fought out for their spot.

Interestingly enough though, my cousin, a few others, and myself continued to use the tag that Mark had come up with, and we were the heavier Twitter users, so by the end of the second, and final day, I think we had created enough messages that the #wcto08 tag was pushed out at around a rate of three or four messages to every one that was tagged as #wct08.

I know this all seems silly, but the issue could have been fixed quite easily. Since the #wcto08 tag was trending higher, and faster, the organizers, instead of sticking to their guns, could have adapted and promoted the more popular tag, so that people didn’t feel the need to tag their messages with both hash tags for the event.

Next time though, I think the tag for the event will be chosen much earlier to avoid such confusion, but for histories sake, I want to say again that my cousin, Mark Wood, selected the Twitter hash tag that became more popular than the official one, at WordCamp Toronto 2008.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

My first thought is how great it is to see the list grow, but also, it makes me wonder how many high quality blogs about blogging are out there? I guess we will see as more blogs continue to submit their sites to be ranked.

Also, for those that have feedback about the Uber Blogs list, please head on over to my contact page, and let me know what you think, or leave a comment on any of the posts about the list.

If you want to add your blog about blogging to the Uber Blog list, just head on over to the list, scroll to the bottom and fill out the form.

Please note: if you blog is not about blogging, writing online, blog management, blog networks, getting a blogging job, please don’t submit your site as it won’t be approved to be listed.

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Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Kevin
Jason
Michael
Jeff
John Leschinski

What is really interesting to me is how many people on that list would be in my top comments contributed list month over month, and how few new people take the time to add to the conversation here.

I also want to give a big shout out to Tom, a friend of mine that was away camping for almost half the month, and a consistent voice here on XFEP.

An extra big thanks to everyone, old and new that has commented on XFEP recently and don’t forget to check out PerfCast tonight at 7pm EST on Talkshoe.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

There were some amazing comments, including an analysis by Kevin Muldoon, Blogging Tips owner, and I feel really humbled by those that chose to participate.

Kevin drew a little flack from coming up with a set of criteria for entry, but I think that he handled it well, and I look forward to seeing which other blogs get put under the magnifying glass.

The biggest tip for this blog was to work on scaling back advertising, which I have already started, and work on moving items around to give the site a better flow. Many people seemed to enjoy the content, as well as the branding, but overall it seemed like there were many things people thought could be done better.

It is very humbling to have people put their opinion out there, and while I am still digesting some of what they said, I am definitely thinking about hunting down a great designer to take my current branding and help me take the design of this site to the next level. Don’t get me wrong, DesignDisease is absolutely amazing, and I will probably contact them first, but I think this site is ready for another slight design shift.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

The first blog up for the critiquing process is this one: Reader Blog Critique : Xfep.com.

Kevin asked me what main issues I wanted people to cover, and so I gave him my insecure list of questions.

Please, if you have any opinions on this blog, jump on over to BloggingTips, and leave a comment. You have a chance at one in three $10 prizes, or a domain registered at eNom.

Thanks again to Kevin and everyone that comments over on BloggingTips.

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1.) WTL – 62 Comments
2.) Kevin Muldoon – 46 Comments
3.) Mark – 39 Comments
4.) Steven Snell – 26 Comments
5.) Jeffro – 23 Comments
6.) Kiltak – 20 Comments
7.) Bill – 15 Comments
8.) Chris Garrett – 14 Comments
9.) knupNET – 12 Comments
10.) Tay – 12 Comments

If you haven’t visited their sites, I ask that you please take a quick minute and look at them. If you are disappointed you didn’t make this list, and who wouldn’t be (*that was sarcasm*), then start leaving some more relevant comments, and next time I look at my top commentors, I will be able to link to you.

Thanks again to all of you that take the time to voice your opinions on this blog. Without you, there wouldn’t be any reason for me to continue doing what I do here.

Also, note that comment counts and placements are not entirely correct as people have used multiple e-mail addresses when leaving comments here, and the plugin doesn’t take that into account.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Aaron Brazell started me thinking about this thanks to a video on his blog Technosailor about blog consolidation.

Then I saw a post on Inquisitr talking about what Aaron said and Duncan added his own thoughts and opinions on bringing blogs together under one flag to sell advertising as a group.

These are both people that I highly respect, and who probably have more knowledge about the business of blogging than I do, but in this area, I don’t think they know what the heck they are talking about.

I am the co-founder of Grand Effect, a great blog network, with great blogs, written by great bloggers. We were all independent and came together for the purpose of passing traffic to each other, as well as a bit of link juice and of course banding together for network wide advertising sales.

I assumed because there would be a great deal of higher quality, focused blogs that we could get some high advertising rates, and when you bring our traffic together, we have a fair bit of page views, but still the advertisers aren’t running to our doors. I’ve shopped around the network a bit to some companies trying to gauge their response, and so far it has been a really lukewarm response.

We just don’t have the five or ten million page views that the big brands are looking for, or a tight enough demographic or the required star/networking power to make those big deals with friendly companies. We also aren’t high enough currently on the thought leader chain in the blogosphere for certain brands, making things even more frustrating as we work hard to show how powerful our brands have become.

While we have a lot to offer an advertiser that can come in with a three to five dollar CPM rate, we haven’t been able to secure that yet across the network of nine sites, and so bringing together a few blogs under a banner is definitely not enough to entice companies to sign up and tap into that combined traffic.

Also, I have found that the more page views that you bring together, the lower these companies want their overall CPM rates to be. So while a 50,000 page view blog might be able to sell some advertising space for a consistent $2 CPM, or $100 per advertising spot per month, a 500,000 page view blog, won’t instantly get $1000 for the same advertising positions.

Everyone also seems to be forgetting the time and effort that needs to go into selling these companies on buying advertising from you. This can take an immense amount of time depending on the company and it can also be difficult when the coalition is young and thus the brand everyone is flying is unknown. I always thought 9rules should have done something to help its membership make money through a network advertising service, but I realize now, in working with Grand Effect, that it just takes so much time.

You either have to develop an advertising platform, use one that already exists (thus giving them a cut) or do things manually. Development costs a fair bit of time and/or money. Using one that already exists can be frustrating because it might not have the features you want, and they’ll want their cut. Doing things manually can take huge amounts of time, and lends itself to mistakes.

How does everyone expect to manage network wide advertisements? Who will take the lead to create relationships with companies and sell them on advertising positions, and does this person get extra money? Who will handle the receiving and disbursement of advertising payments?

The information that the others have put up don’t really cover the important questions, instead lingering on about other less important things like freedom of creative control on your own blogs, and trying to quickly pull everyone under your wing in hopes of selling big advertising blocks.

Too many unanswered questions. I think people are going to jump in with both feet, only to find themselves disappointed. Doesn’t anyone plan things out properly in the blogosphere anymore?

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.