Changing themes is very common for bloggers. In addition to the option of changing from one free theme to another, many bloggers develop their own theme, make some customizations to an existing theme, or pay someone else to design one for them. Even if you are paying someone else to do this for you, you should still be very involved in the process to insure that you get the best possible end result. Regardless of whether you are doing the work yourself of having someone else do it, here are 11 factors that you should consider to create the perfect theme for your blog.

No one wants to attract spammers to their site. They scrape content, post junk comments and turn search engines off to your site.

Unfortunately, the bitter truth is that all blogs, regardless of age, topic and readership, will attract at least some attention from the purveyors of junk. That is a simple byproduct of having a blog and publishing an RSS feed.

When I was first starting out as a freelance writer, I remember talking to a friend I knew who owned his own business. I asked him what he'd look for if he wanted to hire a freelancer, and he told me one thing: experience. It made sense--why would you hire an outside contractor who had no demonstrable experience?--but it also made me worry. Not because I was just starting out and didn't have decades of experience in the field, but because of something more personal--and less easy to fake.

Over the past week I've shared five strategies that I'd use to promote my blog if I were starting from scratch again today.

We started off by looking at how the majority of your efforts need to be focused upon Readers You Don't Already Have (obvious but important) and then looked at the five strategies of:

I've become increasingly frustrated lately with the issue of what writers should charge for their services. It can be disheartening to peruse web designer or marketing websites to find that $100 per hour is average and hardly worth comment, while writers who charge the same amount often find themselves on the receiving end of an outraged chortle or a proverbial door in the face.

A big THANK YOU, dear readers, for the outstanding marketing tips you contributed to the Best Kept Marketing Secrets roundup. 

As promised, we took 100 submissions and turned them into a downloadable PDF document.  

It's 33 pages of tips for marketing, including relationship marketing, marketing strategy, selling, messaging, online marketing and social media.  (more…)

Several weeks ago I posted How to Blog Like a Buddhist on Blog-Tutorials. Since I believe it's valuable information, I'd love to continue the dialogue with a larger audience.

This blog entry is not looking to convert anyone to anything. Rather, we are going to briefly explore several fundamental Buddhist principles that can help take your blog to the next level. Or, at the very least, earn you some good karma.

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Have you ever tried to visit a web page only to get the dreaded 404 error or another message, even though the site was working just fine an hour ago? You might be trying to determine if your favorite software and technology blog has crashed due to billions of page refreshes as we liveblog the launch of OS X 10.9.7.1.5.2.4.7.1.3. Or maybe you're just trying to see if your own hosting company has dropped the ball. Either way, there's a service that can help.

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Have you ever tried to visit a web page only to get the dreaded 404 error or another message, even though the site was working just fine an hour ago? You might be trying to determine if your favorite software and technology blog has crashed due to billions of page refreshes as we liveblog the launch of OS X 10.9.7.1.5.2.4.7.1.3. Or maybe you're just trying to see if your own hosting company has dropped the ball. Either way, there's a service that can help.

If you are in the B2B vertical and are thinking about adding social media marketing to your marketing mix, here are 3 questions you should ask yourself before launching your social media campaign.

1. Who is the target audience?

Who are you trying to reach via social networks and does your target audience participate in social networks? Understand the demographics of the social networking sites that you are looking to target before you begin your campaign and make sure that you can reach the right people online.