I discovered a new blog today which has just joined 9rules: Newly Ancient. Newly Ancient is a blog by a high school freshmen called Arthus (I think that’s equivalent to Y10 in England & Wales) who writes about education, amongst other things. Arthus’ articles include things like 5 qualities which make a good teacher. It made me think.

Education is probably one of the industries where the last thing anyone thinks about is ‘customer satisfaction’. In the UK, teachers and schools are judged on statistics and I imagine it’s the same abroad. Sites like Newly Ancient provide feedback to teachers from their customer and will no doubt help them improve.

Other sites on the internet also try to help teachers improve their teaching based on feedback from their customers… albeit in a much more controversial manner. Rate my Teachers caused a minor storm in the UK last year when it came under fire from teaching unions, but perhaps if it were used correctly (which it isn’t, how does ‘Don’t really like him … He is very anoying’ help anyone?), it could actually help people’s educations.

Instead of ‘rate my teacher’, why not have a ‘rate your lesson’ site which isn’t personal to the teacher but where people can comment on certain trends and styles in education. This would provide a wealth of knowledge and feedback from the customer and I’m sure many new ideas.

As great as having a blog for educators by someone being educated is (or people being educated, as is the case with Students 2.0!), I doubt many educators (besides the most open-minded and innovative) would read it.

Colin Blakely of Tech Status Quo emailed me for some help in promoting his blogs, which he hopes will help him pay off his student loans, so I decided to lend him a hand (why not?!).

Tech Status Quo is a general technology blog where Colin writes about technologies, the internet, software and hardware which interest him. Whilst he doesn’t have a more specific niche such as internet, he writes fairly detailed and passionately about topics which interest him (whether that may be offshore windfarms, social search technologies or funky wallets).

Colin is a fairly recent blogger having only started 5 days ago! His posts are all of a fairly high quality but I do have some tips for him:

1. Change your design to something more refreshing; it doesn’t suit your blog’s tone
2. Keep up the work!
3. Choose a niche when you find one. There are too many general tech blogs (I’d know!)

So go, check out his blog, make a comment and subscribe for his feed.

When I joined Grand Effect, sarahintampa described me as having done ‘the blog thing for a long time’. Personally, I’ve never seen myself as a veteran blogger but how long does it take these days to become an experienced blogger?

sarahintampa is more experienced than me, having started blogging in January 2004 (I started in May 2005).

I would like to think I’ve come a long way as a blogger. My first posts were significantly worse than my latest ones and I originally used to just ‘repost’ other people’s stories mixing them with a bit of my sarcasm and cynacism!

Since becoming a blogger, I’ve switched from Blogger to MovableType and MovableType to WordPress. I’ve also joined 9rules and Grand Effect, and stopped relying on traffic exchanges like BlogExplosion and BlogMad for traffic. I like to think that as a blogger, I’ve matured.

So can experience as a blogger be measured in time? My answer is probably not. Someone like Jason Kottke is definitely experienced, having a blog which is popular with its readers and one which I’m sure he enjoys writing (I personally find blogging sometimes get a bit tiresome!), and based on the time he has blogged (since ‘98!) makes him a veteran. I would personally say anyone who started blogging before 2003 is a veteran because after 2004 it was starting to become mainstream!

To you what makes a veteran blogger? What makes an experienced one?

About 2 years ago, I was fortunate enough to join 9rules, an exclusive blog network. Today, I have joined another upcoming (albeit much smaller, with a maximum of 10 members at this moment) blog network called Grand Effect.

Grand Effect is a network specifically for technology bloggers and I am joining some long-time blogfriends such as Sarah (in Tampa) and Ghacks. I look forward to becoming blogfriends of other members of the network such as eXtra for Every Publisher, WinExtra and SheGeeks, ParisLemon, The Last Podcast and Mark Evans Tech.

Even though Grand Effect already has a fairly worldwide range of writers, because Mark Evans and David of XFEP are Canadian; Martin of gHacks is in Germany (Guten Tag!); and several others are in the US, I hope to provide another European voice!

As well as being a collection of fantastic tech bloggers, Grand Effect is a great advertising opportunity for start-ups and tech companies who wish to penetrate the tech blogosphere as they could easily find themselves on several tech blogs.

I have already received a very warm from network members, so thank you!

On a sidenote, 9rules is currently having an admissions round so apply if you fancy joining!

Former fellow 9ruler Mashable has covered Grand Effect twice. (link, link)

This summer I’ve found that blogging became less and less enjoyable: I found a solution. I spent too long worrying about statistics: how many people visited my blog, how my blog compared to others (Alexa ranks etc) and what people were visiting.

I tried to write for my audience and not for myself. Ironically, as a result of this audience participation fell. I realised this but realised I’d continue to do the former until I stopped worrying about statistics so I uninstalled my Alexa, Compete and Google PageRank Firefox extensions.

I enjoy blogging again; I want to blog. I don’t put off writing a post as long as I can but I do one whenever I feel like it (which is fairly frequently again ). I don’t have to spend hours brainstorming for ideas; they just come.

More observant readers might have noticed a shift from reviews which became tedious to write towards a more ‘general’ style of blogging.

So to put it briefly: blog for yourself and the odds are your audience will like it. Don’t worry about statistics, either!

Tags: blogs, bloggers block, blogging, writing, blog, blog tips