Bloggeries Blog

Bloggeries is looking at a blog pertaining to the music industry today, and you can find ‘My Life My Music’.The blog is owned by 22 year old Carl who is blogging from the Phillipines. The blog is entirely about the music industry and entertainment news related to music in popular culture. Carl expresses his love for music in his blog header, which says, ‘Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul’. You can see this philosophy in action by checking out any of Carl’s latest bloggeries: My IMS Family; Winehouse Scraps Awards Gig, Heads to Rehab; Beyonce, Rihanna, Underwood Performing at Grammy’s; Keys Still Atop Album Chart in Slow Sales Week; Florida Remains No.1, but Brown Closes in, Heath Ledger Found Dead in NYC at age 28; American Idol Ratings Down from Last Year; Brad Renfro, 25, found Dead in Los Angeles Home; and Meet the Funky People.

The blog is well organized and nicely laid out which makes it very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are in white text on a black background with red colored musical bordering and links are in red. I personally found this theme to be difficult on the eyes and made reading difficult, so this may be something the blogger wants to look into changing. Bloggeries are left marginalized and there is a right navigation bar. In the navigation bar there is an advertising offer, Recent Posts/Archives Menu, Interesting Blogs Menu, Feeds Information, Blog Directory Buttons, Comments Window if you would like to add something to the Blog Main page, MyBlogLog Readers widget, Friends List, and an About page. Each bloggery is accompanied by relevant pictures, which works well for the blog and adds meaning to each piece of content. What I do not see is a Categories Menu which would be a great addition to this blog with its niche being in Entertainment. Categories would definitely add to the searchability of the blog and provide the blogger with more search engine traffic.

I am going with a 3/5 for this blog. My first suggestion would be to remove the annoying pop-up that occurs as the blog is loaded. This is extremely distracting from the point of the blog and as a result, affects both the overall appearance of the blog as well as navigation. The content scores well for the blog as it is written by outside news sources. Despite the fact that the blogger does not write his own content, he does cite each source which, while it loses some of the point of a personal blog tone, he still maintains active content. I would suggest the blogger hire someone to write his About page if he does not speak English, as the about page is not in English and thus the blogger will be unable to connect to his English readership through this about page. Otherwise however, despite not having a true personal voice and having some appearance issues, this blog is a good read for those interested in the music industry.

-Chrissie

Bloggeries is going to look at an artist’s blog today, and the blog is about pencil sketching. The blog is called Pencil Drawing Sketch Art. The blogger is an amateur artist, but only in the sense that she has never been formally schooled in the field of either drawing or painting. She enjoys drawing and painting on different objects, and makes a point to use recycled materials. Her theory is, if she can make something useful out of something someone threw out, it’s one less thing in the landfills. If you enjoy stopping to look at those with a gift in the visual arts, then you will definitely enjoy this blog. Have a look at some of her recent bloggeries at Hendrix and Vaughan – Guitar Legends, Custom Pencil Sketch from Photo, Feedburner Widget Text Not Working, Horsin’ Around – Farm Heritage Shows, Biker in Paradise, Criss Angel by: Sierra, and Jim Morrison – This is the End My Only Friend.

The blog is fairly new and this makes it very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are centralized in white text on black background and links are highlighted in red. I normally don’t really like the black background/white text in blogs, but this blog has more to offer with its visual pieces and thus I think the black background is very fitting as a showcase for her art. The blog contains both a left and right navigation bar and a top navigation bar as well. In the left navigation bar you will find a Categories Menu that contains items such as Aerosmith, blogging, Criss Angel, Gifts, Island lake tanning, paintings, pencil sketches art, and so much more. The left bar also contains an Archives Menu, Blogroll, and blog Meta. In the right navigation bar you will find feeds, MyBlogLog widget, Advertising, and from the blogosphere widget. The top bar you have the Home links, About links, and Contact Susie link. I think the only thing that would make navigation easier here would be a recent posts menu so the blogger’s readers could find posts easily without scrolling through the main page.

I am going to give this blog a 4/5, which is a very good review for such a new blog. The blog scores well on all accounts. It is aesthetically appealing and scores well for appearance. The navigation system is very easy and I did not have difficulty finding anything or moving around on the blog at all. Other than a recent posts menu, or even a recent comments menu as the readership will support it, I have no other suggestions for this blogger. The blog is well organized and it certainly is providing good content for its niche. The blogger’s content is very good as well. This is clearly a personal blog on her personal art, and the voice of the content has a beautiful personal touch to it. The activity is doing very well as well, with content coming in just about every day. This blogger clearly understands the necessities for a good blog and she is doing very well at it. As her blog grows, I am sure her readership will as well.

-Chrissie

Bloggeries is going to look now at another blog about blogging, but this one comes with a twist which I think you will find interesting. The blog is called Blog About Your Blog, affectionately known around its home on the net as BAYB. This blog is a blog dedicated to quality in the blogosphere. Quality blogs, quality bloggers, and quality people. The blog itself is more of a project, where quality bloggers come together in collaboration of a project to bring bloggers together, and to make bloggers better. It’s all kind of a help us help you mentality that the owners of the blog want your quality blog to be a part of. BAYB is in a never-ending effort to seek talented bloggers on this project and if you are interested, drop them a line. Too shy? While you are getting up your courage, read some of their most recent bloggeries on how to make your blog a better place to be: VidSearchLive Video Search Engine, Forget Page Rank, Comment Friday for January 25th, Search Engine Traffic is Easy with Tech Support Posts, Shopaholic at Entrecard, Conduct Interviews for Easy Content and Traffic, How Often Does Google Crawly You?, and Create Your Own E Store with Wholesale.

The blog is very professionally laid out in clean design and organized template. Bloggeries are left marginalized and in black text on a beige background with links highlighted in black. There is a right navigation bar that contains just about everything you may need to know about this blog, and about blogging in general in several well organized menus. You will find here subscription information and widget with an impressive count of 563 readers; Pages Menu containing About Us, Authors List, Contact Us, and Free Blog. You will also find in this navigation system Are you In my Top Spots Widget, Blogroll, Our Members Blogs, Recent Posts Menu, Recent Comments Menu, Archives Menu, Categories Menu, and Popular Articles Menu. The Categories Menu is comprehensive and contains just about anything you want to find on blogging such as Blog Promotion, Blogging News and Information, Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, Comment Friday, Contests, and How to Increase Website Traffic among much more. The Popular Articles is something that is very handy as well, and a menu you will want to check out. You can see articles here like 6 New WordPress Plugins You Haven’t Seen, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, and 10 Firefox Addons to Supercharge Your Blogging.

This blog is getting a 5/5 from me as there is little I can offer suggestion wise to a blog that is maintaining and sustaining a regular readership of over 500. The blog scores well on all accounts. It has a professional appearance with a clean layout and organized design and its navigation offers no issues. The activity is consistent and is coming in daily which is keeping the search engines happy along with its healthy readership. The content is very well done, so the owner of the blog is clearly finding the right authors to represent the blog. All tips and articles are done in a user-friendly but personal voice that lends credibility to the advice that is being offered. The only suggestion I would offer at this point would be a change to the font size in the menus in the navigation bar. There are *ahem* older eyes that may have more of an issue when it comes to reading the fine print. But otherwise, this is an excellent blog, and an invaluable resource to its readership and anyone else that happens to, and should, pop in and have a look.

-Chrissie