Here are a couple of lists you may be interested in:

NorthxEast has put together a list of the 50 most influential bloggers on the internet. Although I don’t agree with all the placements, it still is an amazing list that obviously has taken a lot of effort to put together. Its found it really interesting to read through the list of bloggers and why they actually are influential. Give yourself a good hour to read this post so you can actually check out all the blogs and bloggers listed. Trust me, it will be well worth your time.

45n5 has also put together a list of the top 100 Make Money Online Blogs. Its rankings look to be a bit flawed and the whole page smells of linkbait, but once again I found this list to be interesting. Im pretty sure this blog would rank somewhere on this list but I just haven’t gotten around to emailing the author.

Even if you have no interest in either of these lists, I recommend still taking a look even if only to see an example of good linkbait.

Have you been included on one of these lists?

Everyone seems to be running blogging competitions these days and usually I just skip straight over them.  But when I came across David Airey’s comp I just couldn’t resist.   David is a great logo designer and has managed to put together an incredible selection of prizes for this competition.

There are too many prizes to list them all here but here are some of my favorites:

• Custom Blog Design from NateWhitehill.com
• Signed Copy of Blogging Tips from Lorelle on Wordpress
• $25 in Cash from Mom Gadget
• Blog Makeover from The Queer Chef
• 30 Day Text Link Ad from Contest Blogger

There are a ton of more prizes so make sure you head over to the site and find out how to enter the competition!

Directories - will they deliver visitors to your site? Yes. Will the deliver lots of visitors to your site? Probably not. Although many bloggers and marketers are trying to play down how effective directories are, I still strongly believe that directories play an important role in search engine rankings.

Furthermore, Directories do provide a source of traffic - although its not huge, it still is valuable. So here is my list of blog directories:

Directories

Blogarama
Blog Catalog
BlogStreet
Globe of Blogs
WeBlogAlot
EatonWeb
Blog Flux
Blogion
Bloghop
Bloggernity
Blog Search Engine
Technorati
All-Blogs
BlogCode
blogBunch
Feeds4All
FeedBoy

This is by no means a complete list, and im sure it will continue to grow into the future. Let me know if any of the links become broken, or if you have a directory you would like to see added to the list.

Disclaimer - I own the blogging related forum DoshTalk.com

Over the past few months I have been using forums to help promote and market my blog and I soon discovered how just a few posts on a suitable forum can deliver good quality traffic.

But there are few tips and tricks that you can use to get the most out of your forum experience.

Choose The Right Forum

There is no shortage of forums - in fact in recent months there has been a huge increase in the number of blog specific forums.

Some blogging forums include:

• Authority Blogger Forum (479 Members) - Although the purple design makes me feel sick, there is some great content from some great bloggers.
• Blogging Tips Forum (102 Members) -   This forum has been promoted on JohnChow.com yet it still seems like it is having trouble growing.   There are lots of different categories to post in.
• DoshTalk - (240 Members) - This forum is geared towards bloggers who are also interested in monetization.   This forum also uses a revenue sharing scheme which pays you a varied amount for contributing valuable content.

But don’t think you just have to stick to blogging specific forums as there are plenty of webmaster related forums which will also do the trick.  Some of these include:

• Digital Point Forums - This is a huge forum with a strong community.  I use this forum to find developers and designers as well as giving the odd plug for my blog.
• Webmaster Talk -Back in the day, this was a huge forum too, but it seems to have died down a bit.  However, there is still a great community with lots of categories to post in.

Be A Valuable Addition to the Community

If your register at a forum and straight away begin posting links to your blog everywhere, members are going to get annoyed and no one will take any notice of you.   Instead of being a forum spammer, provide quality content to the community, and respond to others discussions.

I don’t much like putting my blog URL in an actual post, instead I make it part of my signature which seems to work well.

Episode 2 of the live blogging podcast, Blogger Talk has just been recorded.  This week it was David Peralty (BloggingPro.com) and myself doing the show and we both had a lot of fun.

I have put the podcast player on this blog so now you can listen in without even leaving this site.  The player is located on the right hand sidebar.

If you would like to be a guest host on the show just give me a buzz and I will get you on.  For more info about Blogger Talk check out our website www.bloggertalk.tv

I was prompted to write this post after noticing a Google Adwords ad promoting JohnChow.com, on this blog.    It seems John Chow is trying out Google Adwords to further promote his blog.

But is Google Adwords a viable advertising option for bloggers?  I really don’t know the answer!

I have used Adwords for this blog in the past.  Obviously it delivered traffic, but these visitors didn’t seem to stick around and I was starting to believe that Adwords for Bloggers was simply cosmetic traffic!

But, I decided to further explore and test out Adword’s site targeting feature.  This allows you to place ads on specific websites.  Instead of paying per click, this form of advertising works off the CPM model (cost per 1000 views).    For my campaign I chose to advertise on the one only JohnChow.com.

And the results were great!  This campaign delivered targeted visitors who were interested in what the blog was about and many of them stuck around.

Since advertising with JohnChow.com, I have done the same thing on similar blogs and have had great results and I really encourage bloggers to look into the prospect of using Site Targeted Adwords.

For those interested in how much it cost - the campaign  had an average CPM of $2.44 which is proberbly a lot less than what you would pay if you bought other forms of advertising on JohnChow.com (which I assume is why he is discontinuing running adwords ads).

Is your blog getting a little tired?  Has it lost its glossy coating?

After a while your blog may start to get a little run down and so here are my 5 steps to putting the fizz back into your blog.

Highlight Old Posts 

Did you right a killer post back in the day?  Why not give this post another shot at life by highlighting it.  You could always put a spin on it, like calling it a “blast from the past”.  And You will find most of the top bloggers use this technique, by every now and then highlighting a series of past posts.  And if you’re blog has grown, chances are most of your readers will really appreciate this content.

Make a New Header

Changing your blog design can be a big step.  Try taking baby steps instead. Something as simple as updating your header image or logo could make a dramatic change.  Design trends change and if you’ve got a relatively old blog chances are you’re sporting an outdated look.   Don’t fret If you’re not creatively inspired, paying someone to do the design is a viable  and cost effective option.  In the past I have found designers on various forums including Digital Point, where I pay around $10-$20 for a new logo or header design.  My biggest fan, Cashquests recently did a post on updating your header which links to my designer!

Say Thanks

Take the time to thank some of your top referrers or commentators.  Not only will this encourage further backlinks, but you will be creating some valuable content for your readers.  But  Instead of just linking to your top referrers, link to an individual post of theirs, thereby creating a useful resource for readers.

Change Your Ads

Obviously if you are selling advertising directly, like this blog, you can’t just change the ads.  But, if you have affiliate ads on your site this ones for you.  Any ad that runs on your site in the same spot for too long, will suffer from ad blindness - ie. your visitors will start not seeing it.  Introduce new affiliate ads or swap the locations.   To overcome ad blindness on this blog, I move around the sponsors every week or so.   You would be surprised just how fresh this makes a blog feel.

Rewrite Your Early “Mistakes”

Take a look back at some of the first posts you made.  I have found looking back at these posts to be quite painful.  There often poorly written or contain outdated info.  Rewrite some of these posts and put them back to the front of your blog.  Make sure you inform your readers that you have rewritten these posts so as they don’t feel jipped when they look back in your archives.     Not all posts are suitable for being rewritte (such as the “Hello World” post), but content that isn’t time sensitive works well. (like this post).

BlogExplosion.com is a free blog specific traffic exchange.  The concept is simple - you visit a members blog and another member will see your blog.

Now although this does sound great, especially for a blog receiving little, is it really worth any of your time?

I can tell you now, that the majority of visitors referred to your blog through BlogExplosion will mostly leave as soon as the timer permits them too.  Why?  Quite simply, BlogExplosion members didn’t join the site to visit your blog - they joined so they could get more traffic.  This means that they will try and “earn” traffic as quickly as possibly, only staying on your blog for the required amount of time.

This isn’t to say you may never receive a returning visitor, but truth be told, this will be a rare event.  Will it improve your Alexa rank?  Maybe, although im not sure how Alexa handles websites that are show to you through frames (which BlogExplosion uses).

So really, all BlogExplosion does is create cosmetic traffic - it looks good, but its not real visitors who are actually interested in what you’re writing.

What about Adsense?  You may think that an increase in traffic from BlogExplosion, could increase your adsense profits.   Yet, Google doesn’t like traffic exchanges at all, and I have heard of accounts being closed because they used Traffic Exchanges.

BlogExplosion claims to be a “Blog Community” and I get the feeling they are trying to lose their traffic exchange feel.  Yet if this is a community, it definitely feels like it should be booted back into the web 1.0 days.  It could really benefit from losing its horrible user layout (a child could have done a better job) and include more social features.

So there is my spill, on what I feel is both a poor service and a complete waste of time.  My advice is use the time to create quality content which will deliver real results - although maybe not instantly.  But hey, good blogging takes time!   Have you used BlogExplosion?  Let me know what you think of their site.

Update: Well the show has been recorded, so if you missed out on it live then you can listen to recorded version on BloggerTalk.tv. I’ll see you next Tuesday at 8pm eastern for the next live show.

Im getting ready for the first ever episode of the live blogging podcast - Blogger Talk! The first episode is airing today (Tuesday 28th August) at 8pm Eastern.

This is going to be a hell of a lot of fun! Joining me for this first episode are Nate Whitehill and David Peralty. If you would like to listen in live or even chat with us just visit this page. For more info on the show check out BloggerTalk.tv.

I thought it would be time to do a quick jump around the Dosh Network to keep you updated on whats going on.

BloggerTalk! - Im super excited for the very first episode of BloggerTalk - The live blogging podcast!  Its happening tomorrow 28th August at 8pm EST.  Make sure you join in live cos its going to be a blast.

DoshTalk - I built this forum after I couldn’t find a blogging specific forum that suited me.  Nothing seemed to be well designed, have a good community or these forums were filled with spam.  So DoshTalk - The Bloggers Forum was built.  The forum is really growing quite well at the moment and has really good community feel.  Oh, did I mention we actually pay you to contribute to the site?

DoshPing - This is my little baby!  DoshPing was another personal project of mine.  This site will ping a number of indexing services for you with just one click.  Recently I added Ping-0-matic and Pingoat to the services it pings.  If you’re not aware, these two sites ping a further 30+ websites.  Im pretty sure DoshPing could be the most comprehensive pinging site online!

DoshPro - This was new blog I started to discuss making money online, simple because I didn’t want to do it here.  I havn’t really done much with it yet but stay tuned for a new author!

DoshBlogs - Currently DoshBlogs is a free blog hosting service.  It runs of Wordpress MU.  This site will come down soon and be replaced with a professional blog hosting service.  Stay tuned for that one!

DoshSale - What happened to this site?  DoshSale is a blogging specific classifieds site.   Im not going to lie to you, this site didn’t work out.  I can tell you now that DoshSale features will be integrated into DoshTalk.  So now you will be able to buy and sell things right from the forums wit built in payment processing.

Coming Soon - Ooh, Ahh!  One heavily discounted marketing product every 24 hours.