I am nearly complete with a couple big projects I was working on for the last couple months (site re-launch and another secret project), and wanted to try a fun viral blogging experiment. If you ever wanted to interview me, or wanted me to guest post for your blog now is your chance. You can choose the topic(s) and I will try my best to answer your interview questions or write a post for your site.

I only have four conditions

1. your blog must have a non-default theme
2. your blog must not be hosted on Wordpress.com, Typepad.com, or Blogger.com
3. your blog must be at least 6 months old
4. you must love publishing, marketing, SEO, and/or the Internet (or else)

Comment below with your URL and the word “interview” or “guest post” and I will reply to the email associated with your account. First come first serve, and I am not sure how many of these I will do as it may get a little overwhelming if many people say yes. But it is all in the name of fun.

Michael Arrington, writing about how many blog networks are trying to raise capital, describes the natural state of linking on the web:

And now that the big guys in the Gang are being injected with capital, hiring tens of employees and expanding their businesses, they suddenly have a lot more to lose. Linking is never done just because. Rather, links are your political capital that must be expended appropriately. Don’t link at the right time and in two weeks when you’re pushing your own headline, you’ll wish you had. When you stop seeing other blogs as people you admire and want to discuss things with, and start to see them as your competitor, your brain shifts and you stop linking the way you had previously.

Luckily, the newbie bloggers are there to fill in the links when they’re needed. That’s why, if you are a mid-level blogger, you are likely courted by the bigger blogs looking to get your support. If you know what’s going on and are willing to play the game, you can see your blog rise very, very quickly. Choose the wrong blog, though, and you may find yourself alone and lonely in your forgotten blog.

Launch something new? You better beg at least a dozen people to help spread it if you are in a saturated market. Hopefully you just them some favors too! This fending for your own self interests + backscratching is the new reciprocal link. Depending on how selfish we get, bloggers could make the mainstream media irrelevant or just make ourselves irrelevant.

If you are new to blogs and feeds, I recommend watching this 4 minute video to understand how RSS feeds work, and then spend an hour trying out a feed reader or iGoogle to subscribe to a couple of your favorite blogs.

I had some RSS issues with iGoogle that I think are cleared up now. The upside is that rather than only offering full or partial feeds, we now offer both. You can subscribe to either feed using your favorite feed reader on our feeds page.

If you are a blogger, it only takes about 15 minutes to set up a feed page like mine, and if you get a few new subscribers each month, that creates a cumulative advantage over time. Don’t forget to also link to your RSS feed page in the sidebar of your blog.

So my buddy Joost who puts out some kick ass wordpress plugin’s has started a wordpress SEO Newsletter. If you’re a fan of wordpress, you should subscribe because there are some good tips and plugins discussed, and I’m a wordpress mac daddy, so that means something.
Sponsor:: Need help with Social Media? Check out my SEO […]

This 7 minute and 30 second video evangelizes blogging to new internet marketers. The reasons I am such a big fan of blogs are:

• they are easy to set up & update
• they offer many feedback channels
• it is easy to track how ideas spread through blogs
• it is easy to join the conversation
• there are many channels to spread ideas quickly
• blogs offer many ways to show social proof of value
• blog posts typically do not feel like ads, even if they are

I am not sure how well it came out. Please let me know what you think of the video. Did I talk too fast? Was it too information dense? Was I clear enough?

And if you have not yet seen The Blogger’s Guide to SEO, please check it out.

Hey Yahoo Shortcuts Wordpress Plugin People, here’s a suggestion for improving your plugin, give me a checkbox to let me toggle the “Creative Commons” AND “OK to use commercially” settings.
For example if I was writing about my upcoming trip to say Hawaii and wanted to drop an affiliate link or two, while being perfectly legal, […]