Welcome to Blog Day, 2007. I wish I had heard of it sooner, but I’m glad I caught it before the day was out. What ever will I do without being able to plan?! I guess I’ll have to just wing it.

So what is Blog Day? It’s a day created to help bloggers connect. So what I will do is list for you some sites I think you should see. And I’ll tell you why, too. I won’t do new sites like they say because I don’t have that kind of time (sorry!).

1. Pajama Mommy - I chose Pajama Mommy because Amanda did a great job monetizing this niche blog. She had a lot of help with the content (writers) and was able to concentrate on turning the site into a money maker. She doesn’t just make money from her blog, she gets free stuff, too.
2. The So Called Me - Jenny is a great girl and really knows how to get page rank. She doesn’t try, she’s just so well loved that she gets people to network without even trying.
3. PreBlogging - This site helps you get started blogging. She has an easy 5 step guide (looks more like 7 steps to me) to get you up and going. Then you come back here and I’ll help you monetize!
4. Deaf Musician - I agree with the site name. I love to play cell but I’m tone deaf. However, he has a really great site, too. Great designs and great content.
5. Free Samples Blog - You can’t ever get enough free stuff.

Blog Action Day is quickly approaching. It is a day picked by the Action Blog where bloggers will address issues related to the environment. They’ve chosen October 15 as the day all participants should post about environmental issues.

If you don’t have a blog, or if you don’t feel it will be seen, there are other ways to participate. They also ask that you donate your day’s earnings on October 15 to one of their ‘official’ charities. On this day I’ll probably donate anything my blog makes along with accepting donations (even pennies) from my readers and sending them to The Nature Conservancy.

Or maybe, if you’re like me, and you don’t really understand the issue well enough to write on it, you can also just post about the cause to help spread the word. Maybe someone who reads your blog can offer their own blog on the topic. I will try my best to write about an environmental concern on the 15th, so please come back and look for it.

I decided yesterday that I would go around and check out some other websites. I’ve been commenting my visitors and following links from their sites to other sites I haven’t seen before. A couple of times I followed links from some amazing sites and ended up in a dark alley. One site in particular was so messy I could barely read it and it took me about 5 seconds (the time the site took to load) to close it. It was ugly.

I know we all have something to say, we all want to blog. And I know we don’t all have design skill or talent, but that’s no excuse for what I saw on this site. There are a lot of free designs out there, or you can buy designs from a site like Prime View.

Prime View is a leading Arizona web design company that has been around for 11 years. The ‘WWW’ only came about in 1995, so that puts this company right up and out there in the beginning. They specialize in design, e-commerce, and marketing (such as search engine optimization). They have some pretty big names under their client list, like Nissan and The Univeristy of Phoenix. You can take a look at the kind of work they do with their cool before and after gallery.

Building websites is not just about the content anymore. You need to put the effort on both ends to earn your readers and to get them to return. Your design doesn’t have to be cutting edge, but it does need to have functionality and appeal.

Please take the time to look at your own blog’s design today and tweak just one thing you think could make your visitors leave into something that will make them want to stay. And leave me a note to let me know. If you’re feeling up to it, and you need something to blog about, let everyone else know, too. I would live to see some before and after screen caps.

Some blogs have gone as far as to buy advertising on other blogs or sponsor review posts. You’re doing this to get more people from other sites to come to your site. Have you considered getting more people to go to the sites you advertise on will be beneficial to you as well?

Comment - Comment on the blog you’re advertising with. The more activity a blog has, the more interest it can maintain. And if you have a sponsored post, comment there as well. Usually blogs will reward their commenters with a link back, which also brings an honorable mention to the post they commented on.

Stumble/Digg - If you have Stumble, Digg, Sk*rt, or any of the other sites like these, make sure you vote for the site and the post. With Stumble you can vote for the site itself, the post, and your comment. Ask all your friends to do this as well.

Search Them - Check them out in the search engines and help them rank higher. If you’ve found some free places to promote your own site, promote your advertising site there as well.

Make A Freebie Blog - With a freebie blog you can help raise your own site and the sites you bought advertising on even just a little bit. Here you can decide what anchor words to use and how to use them. Writing a post a day is an easy way to get traffic to your sites and to help them out in the rankings.

The truth of the matter is, the more your advertising site is seen, the more your ad or post is seen. This can be helpful in getting your topic out in areas it may not have seen before.

If you were to advertise on a pet lover’s site, you could begin promoting them as a pet site. If you’re a domain registrar, you can get out there in any topic. People will go to this site and want to make one of their own, so the pet lover will post about your company and give others the idea to get their own domain to make a similar site.

It’s all common sense, really, but sometimes with so much going on the simple things slip our minds. Let me know if you’ve tried this. Maybe exchange links with a friend and promote their site to expand your own visitor base.