Pardon me while I give myself a little credit. I didn’t invent blogging. I wasn’t around when this phenomenon was being born. I came relatively late in the game. Nevertheless, when it comes to the adult Internet, I was pimping blogs way before almost anybody. I first heard about the blog thing in 2003. As far as the World Wide Web is concerned, four years ago is ancient history. I opened my blog in December of 2003. Since then, I’m all about the blogs, baby. I’ve written several articles for Cozy Frog on blogging, so many in fact, I was told to stop. Today, I was given the assignment to write an article that revisits the blogging realm and catches you up on where the medium stands today.

Yeehaw!

"What's really changed since I jumped on the blog bandwagon is the legitimization of blogs in general. If blogging is a fad, it's a fad with a heck of a shelf-life."

In a nutshell, blogging is bigger than ever. Practically any minute of any day, someone is either signing up for an account with Blogger or downloading a copy of Word Press. Blogging is hella easy and the interest in it is far from waning. The biggest change from when I wrote my first Cozy blog article and today is that adult webmasters have finally learned to love the blog. Four years ago that was not the case. Four years ago, most adult webmasters thought blogs were just glorified AOL homepages for surfers. Today adult webmasters have been infected with RSS fever.

RSS is the hidden hero in all this current blog madness. RSS is a syndication standard that allows newsreader software and RSS channels to scan the web for new content. Blog software automatically generates an RSS compliant page that can be pinged and indexed by reader programs and RSS channels. In turn, search engines and directories pick up blogs that are pinged by RSS readers and channels. At the moment, the most popular search engine in the world, Google, owns the most popular blogging service, Blogger. I won’t accuse Google of favoritism but it’s obvious that Google loves the blogs. You can thank RSS for that.

Tagging is fairly established in the blogging scene. The concept has taken a couple of years to become solid. You can hyperlink text on your blog to open a tagging page on sites like Technorati. Tagging directories list topics by keywords and search terms. The keywords and terms that are most popular will display larger fonts on the page. There are also topic-based directories such as Digg where blog posts are shared among the community through the Digg button you put in your entries.

Advertising as a way to generate income is still pretty much controlled by the non-adult Internet. Still, at one time, the only place you could find a decent ad network was at BlogAds. Now there are all sorts of these advertising network companies like Ad Brite. The idea behind them is that you can either buy ad space on other blogs or allow other blogs and companies to buy space on your site. There are the beginnings of this type of ad networking in the adult Internet but my hope is it will catch on like wildfire. The fact is, adult webmasters already have the tools to make money with a blog by reserving their sidebars and site copy for sponsor ads and glowing product recommendations.

What’s really changed since I jumped on the blog bandwagon is the legitimization of blogs in general. If blogging is a fad, it’s a fad with a heck of a shelf-life. Bloggers aren’t just in the news, they are making news. This last month, it was bloggers that broke the story of the US Attorney firings at the DOJ. Bloggers appear on news programs. They are influencing politics, technology and even gourmet cooking. Gossip bloggers are breaking celebrity scandals way before the press and television media. Lifestyle bloggers are commenting on everything from parenting to bicycling. There are video blogs. There are music blogs. There are blogs where the owners do nothing but post YouTube videos and silly photos.

What hasn’t changed is what makes blogging such a web sticky hive of interest for surfers all over the planet: INTERACTION and DEDICATION.

There are two absolute rules for a successful blog. One, you must update your blog religiously. That means posting every day, if not more. The traffic surge is nice when another popular blog links to yours in a post. But just like a good day at the Hun, the surge passes. Whatever fans you garner will leave if you slack off on the updates. That’s what I mean by dedication. Post something, anything each and every day.

The second rule is Interaction. If your blog doesn’t feature the ability for visitors to comment, make that happen. Crank up the database on your hosting server or use a commenting service like HaloScan. Give your surfers a voice. Give them the capacity to write live comments on your individual blog entries. And when they do comment, acknowledge them within those comments. Comment back. Interact with your fans. Create your own cyber community.

To recap the revisit, blogging is a fad with a future. The adult webmaster has embraced the blog. The distribution of your blog is dependant on RSS, which syndicates your copy as well as enhancing your search engine popularity. You can buy ads on other blogs through ad networks or you can make money by selling ad space on yours. You can also promote adult sponsors on your blog.

NOTE: Get your own paid hosting if you intend to advertise and post adult content on a blog. Free blog hosts like Blogger forbid porn blogs. You can create a blog on any subject you desire but your prosperity depends on your dedication and interaction.

I could go on and I will in future articles. For now, it’s just nice to revisit blogging and see the reality exceeding my expectations. It’s nice to be right once in a while. Blogging is still hot four years later. Hotter than ever!