The world of blogging was once seen as little more than a hobby for coders who were striving to make their rather dull lives seem more interesting. As the years past the blogosphere benefitted from advances in technology which opened up blogging to non-techs.

This in turn lead to an explosion of more interesting blogs and of course the opportunity to make money from blogs. The ability to drive traffic and generate revenue has led to more corporate interest in blogging. However, now that blogging is moving ever closer to the mainstream there is an increasing amount of regulation being proposed or enforced on bloggers.

If you are a serious blogger then you need to keep up with these changes as they can have a very material impact on how you conduct your business.

A few days ago the High Court in the UK ruled that bloggers identities could not remain hidden. They made this ruling in connection with a blog that was being written by a serving UK Police Officer. However, the implications are very broad, by removing the cover of anonimity for bloggers it imposes a sense of self editing. Some people will see this as a good thing, some as a bad thing. I make no judgement yet, but it is certain to change how bloggers behave in the UK.

Later this summer the FTC in the US will rule on the use of giveaways and sponsored posts by companies and bloggers. No doubt they will be watching how things work out in the UK and make a decision as to whether to incorporate some type of language into the new guidelines that covers anonimity as well.

Do you keep up with the changing laws and regulations that affect bloggers?

Popularity: 4% [?]

When many bloggers launch their first blog they miss out on some of the essentials. Some will cover the basics, but miss the more intermediate steps that will make their blog successful.

Doing this is pretty standard. Everyone learns as they go, even if you read extensively before you create your first blog you are bound to miss somethings, things that can be difficult or even impossible to correct later down the road.

So what is the solution if you find yourself at a stage in your blogging where you now know some of the things you would do different if you started over? Well the solution is exactly that. Start over. Start with a clean slate and then transfer your content or even go so far as to start completely from scratch and keep your original blog as an archive.

Applying the lessons you have learned from your first venture will make your second and subsequent ventures into the blogosphere that much better and the learning curve that much shallower.

What would you do differently second time around?

Popularity: unranked [?]

Ok for all you math geeks out there I know I am taking liberties, only 7 is a prime number of three in the title. However, what you may not know is that those three numbers are the prime numbers of blogging, especially when constructing lists.

List posts, along with How To’s are currently the most popular posts in the blogosphere. However, lists of certain lengths are more popular than others. The magic lengths, yes, list of 7, 10 & 12. List of 3, 4 & 8 are the least popular.

The reason for the popularity of lists of 7 ? Well, while no one is absolutely certain, the theory according to psychologists is that human beings cope well with retaining thing between 5 & 9 items in length. 7 being right in the middle of that seems to be the most readable. Bearing in mind that most blog readers scan your posts, a list with 7 elements will be retained well by them.

Popularity: 2% [?]