The Blog Judge

Tadd Mencer is a personal blog.

From a man that does graphic design for a living I would expect more.
The design is awful.
The blog ranks pretty low on Technorati (around 4 million).
But I must admit I do like how he writes. His text is clear, it’s usually accompanied by images or video, and it’s original.

So, the numbers
Original content : 10
Popularity: 1
Design: 2
Banners: 10
Age: 1
Information: 7

Tadd Mencer’s blog has been found GUILTY.

That’s what most people want to do with a blog : make some money.
Blogging is a relaxing thing, because everyone likes writing their thoughts down in a diary, or in this case a weblog.

But to make money from a blog you need more then knowing how to write your thoughts.
You need to know how to make the money and how to maintain the situation.

I’m not an expert in making money online, but I did read about it, and yes, I have two ugly AdSense banners on this blog (in an attempt to get some money).

To make money from a blog you need a lot of traffic. Traffic sounds a little too cold, so we’ll call them people (because that’s what they are). For people to visit your weblog you need content, you need to give them something they want (information, pictures, your thoughts on something) and you need to make your blog recognizable (by posting in a pattern or your own unique style) and popular.

I’ll talk about the “recognizable” and “popular” factors in later posts.
To make money online you also need a service that’ll give you money in exchange for content on your weblog.
Google AdSense gives you content-targeted ads, other companies ask you to review a product for them, other companies just pay you to show their ad.

Having a service that pays you (or more then one) and traffic should get you some internet wealth.
Good luck

Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s Blog is a woman designer who’s famous for writing “WordPress For Dummies”.

In my opinion, she’s also a pretty good blogger.
I would clasify this as a personal blog, because she talks a lot about her day and family, and occasionally has entries about events and design-stuff.
Her blog design is nice but a little too crowded for my taste.
She has nice colored titles for every post, and each of her entries starts with a big black italic text (which works pretty well in getting some attention).
She owns a lovely 386th place on Technorati, which is in the TOP500, so she’s pretty popular.

Ok, now the review
Original content : 10
Popularity: 9
Design: 8
Banners: 9
Age: 8
Information: 7

Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s Blog has been found NOT GUILTY.

The Jets Blog is a sports blog.

It’s a pretty grey-green-ish … the colour palette is all wrong. Again there’s too much text on the page, but this time it seems to be a little more organised then other blogs, so that’s ok.
It ranks around 63.000 on Technorati, has some banners, has ticket offers, news, pictures, videos, all about The Jets.

So, my review
Original content : 7
Popularity: 4
Design: 5
Banners: 5
Age: 6
Information: 7

The Jets Blog has been found NOT GUILTY.

Hillary Clinton also has a blog, because she has to have one to get votes from fellow bloggers.

I’ll try to be as objective as I can in this review, and ignore the fact that she’s running for presidency.
As one would expect, Hillary Clinton’s Blog is a very pretty, organised, clean, colourful blog. I would also add “expensive”.
The blog ranks around 12.000 on Technorati.
I actually browsed around a little bit, and didn’t manage to see anything written personally by Hillary.
It does offer information about her campaign, it is original, it has a nice design with no banners …

Anyway … here we go
Original content : 9
Popularity: 6
Design: 8
Banners: 10
Age: 3
Information: 8

Hillary Clinton’s Blog has been found NOT GUILTY.