Its been a fantastic year for the Blazing Minds blog and over the past 12 months the blog has grown in its popularity with more commentators stopping by, some amazing guest bloggers producing some very interesting and informative posts and recently a loss of the blog due to it becoming so popular that I had to upgrade its hosting, big thanks to Tim @EvoHosting for sorting that one out for me

So as we are nearly at the end of the year I thought its time to bring you a tasty Infographic of the Blazing Minds Top Posts For 2011, thanks to @DragonBlogger for the inspiration on this and for the advice on how to get this working on my blog
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Hey everyone, it’s another month, so it’s time to let you all know who has commented the most in October here on the Blazing Minds blog.

So October’s lucky winner has bagged themselves an amazing prize, just for stopping by and getting involved with the blog, not only have they been commenting, but they also submitted their very first Guest Post to the blog as well.

Top Commentators Prize!

So congratulations to Thomas from Techwork for being Top Commentator in October and your prize which has been kindly sponsored by Brian from BlogEngage and is: A free Blog Engage Account (29.99USD Value) and a free year of our Gold Membership RSS Services (59.88USD Value). 

Check out Thomas’ blog it’s an IT blog with tips, tricks and reviews and certainly an interesting and informative read, I personally visit it a lot myself and have learned several things from it.

Blogging is a great way of beginning your own online business. The start-up costs are minimal and over time, you can get a loyal and impressive readership. When you monetize your blog, you will be able to make a decent income.

A blog can be set up in different ways. You could design your blog using Blogger, WordPress or any other site which will give you a free blogging account. Alternatively, you could build your blog from scratch under an original domain name.

Making Money From You Blogging

If you wish to make good money through blogging, you need to have total control over your blog. Free blogging accounts, which come with many terms and conditions, will not give you this kind of freedom. Many people have set up blogs only to have them removed weeks or months later without notice. Buying your own domain name and hosting your blog will cost you as little as $25 a year. This will buy you complete freedom over your blog.
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If like me you have blogged for a while, you will no doubt have a large amount of blog posts that are sitting in the dark corners of history and dwelling on the point of no return!

But don’t let your old posts just sit and decay, you should make the most of them and bring them back in to the limelight, showing your readers, old and new, that your blogging has changed over the years or some of your old posts can still be relevant today.

There are several ways of revitalising your old blog posts and today I’m going to give you just 5 simple ideas that will enable you to bring some of those old blog posts back to life.
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Image via Wikipedia

A travel blog is a very specific kind of blog – one that both serves and a virtual journal and one that serves as a voyeuristic pleasure for everyone else. It’s a great way to make your friends jealous, and there are fewer powerful ways to do that than going traveling around the world without them. Tell stories. Take pictures. Strategically leave things out so you can hint at them and make everyones imagination go wild. Be a storyteller and craft your own personal history. Of course, it’s all true. In any given travel blog there are a few key measures of success.

The Devil is in the Details

There are two big reasons to be specific – one for you, and one for everyone else. A main reason that people will read travel blogs is to get an idea of where to go when they themselves get there. So don’t just say, “Oh, I saw this really great city and climbed this really tall building,” say, “I went to Paris and climbed the Eiffel Tower.” Details make all the difference.

And who knows. Maybe one day your kids will go off and do the same thing and you’ll want to tell them the name of that great cafe you went to in Amsterdam – if you take the time to write down all the details of your journey you’ll have it right away to give to them, and you can be a smothering parent like everyone else. But just maybe a little bit cooler.
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A lot of you that read Blazing Minds will have seen me harp on a few times about Blog Engage and I’m going to start talking about it again today, this time I’m bringing you news about “The Blog Engage 1000 USD Best Blogger of 2011 Contest.

There are some brilliant sponsors for this amazing prize and they are listed below:

How To Win

1.Register for an account here and fill out your bio info. Please note this is separate account compared to your initial Blog Engage account. Contact Brian at admin (@) blogengage dot com letting Brian know your username and he will upgrade your account.

2. Login to our WordPress back end, write your Guest Article and submit it for pending review. At this time you can also e-mail me your article about our contest, help us promote the contest and link to Blog Engage. (500 bonus points) Once your Guest Article is published on Blog Engage you can start marketing and promoting it.

3. Guest Articles must be at least 450 words.

4. You may have as many links as you wish in the body of the article. However, please limit links to your projects or websites to your bio. Absolutely no affiliate links allowed.

5. Spread the word about your Guest Article through all your social media channels: Twitter, Blog Engage, Facebook, , etc. A high value will be placed on number of Tweets and overall social media promotion.

Brian will then total it all up and from that he will determine who will be awarded the 1000 USD best guest blogger of 2011 award. This is going to be the most exciting event for us in 2011.

It’s that easy, so stop on over at Blog Engage and join in the Guest Blogger competition as soon as you can, also why not enter the Blazing Minds Birthday Bash Contest for you chance to win even more great prizes as Blazing Minds celebrates it’s third birthday.

Good luck Everyone

Image via Wikipedia

For todays post, I thought I would get a little feedback from those of you that have either been reading the blog for a while and from those that may have only discovered the world of the Blazing Minds blog!

I was looking through the blogs stats the other day and noticed that there seems to be a lot of traffic coming from Google lately, so it got me thinking about how people find the blog and what they may be searching for or what makes them click on a link to read any of the posts here on Blazing Minds.

There are those that are probably LTRFTC (Long Time Readers First Time Commentators) that read the blog and also those that love to comment on nearly every blog post posted up, I do see from my stats recently that Stargate Universe and Birthday Bash are some of the most popular search terms for people landing on the blog, but I’m interested in what everyone may be looking for. So here are a couple of questions for everyone reading my humble blog.

1. How Did You Find Blazing Minds?
2. When Did You First Discover Blazing Minds?
3. What Is It That Appeals To You About Blazing Minds?

There you go, just a little something for you all to ponder on and thank you all for taking part and to everyone that reads and comments on my blog, you are all much appreciated