=

After an exhausting month of continual blogging challenges from Darren Rowse from Pro Blogger and his 31 Days to a Better Blog project we have finally come to the end. The winners have been announced and it was a unanimous decision to award the miniLegends a class of year 3 students (8 & 9 year olds) from Glenelg in South Australia as not only the blogger’s who have gained the most from the project but also the best commenter’s.

It has been an exhausting month and I still have days 23- 31 to post about. I have met a wonderful group of people through the Chocolate Challenge part of the project and wish to thank Marion from The Chocolate Box for their support and offer of a $25 voucher for Chocolate and also James Farmer from Edublogs who also came to the party with a similar offer of a voucher. Please pay them both a visit.

Now I am just trying to organise the delivery of the chocolate to the kids, as you can imagine they would be looking forward to its arrival.

Even though this challenge has finished we have decided to keep challenging ourselves and Michele set up a community at Ning, Betterblog.ning.com. This will mean that we can continue to help one another and learn from each other. Members welcome come and have a look whether you are an old hand at blogging or new to all of this.

Visit my Chocolate Challenge page to find out all about the project

Running out of Time – 1 weeks tasks – Done

Unexpected work commitments has propelled my into a state of feeling like I am chasing my tail and defiantly running out of time to get my blog tasks completed.

A run down of the tasks for days 8 – 14 include a few things that I have already done.

Day 8 – Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented On Before just being part of this challenge has seen me visit lots of different blogs and leave comments. – Done
Day 9 – Run an Advertising Audit On Your Blog Not relevant to this blog – Done

Day 10 – Declutter Your Sidebar As I have worked through the different tasks in this challenge I have been constantly changing the look and functionality of my blog. I made a lot of changes after the First Time Reader Audit and have removed several widgets from my sidebar since then. I like the clean lines of this template, what do you think? should I add more sidebar functions? – Done and continuing.

Day 11 – Dig into Your Blog’s Statistics This has been a fun thing to look at – my statistics. If it wasn’t for you coming to read my blog there wouldn’t be any statistics to look at. As the saying goes a picture paints a thousand words. Unlike Sue I added Google Analytics a few weeks ago and use this along with Sitemeter and Statcounter. They all seem to give a different view of visits and when I get more time will probably cut these down to just two. AS you can see from the image of my stats below, from being involved in the 31 Days to a better blog project I have gone from 0, 1 visits a day to a whopping 95 visits and 200+ page views. This was very exciting, especially with a blog that has only been going for 5 months. So thanks for visiting – Done

Day 12 – Introduce Yourself to another Blogger Over the past 12 days I have introduced myself to many other bloggers. Both through people involved in the 31 day challenge and also twitter and my del.icio.us links. – Done

Day 13 – Search for an Affiliate Program that Fits Your Blog – Doesn’t fit with my blog type – Done

Day 14 – Analyze Your Blog’s Competition – I looked at this task as a way of finding other blogs that cover a similar field to me. This is an on going process and one of my biggest “Competitors” would have to be Sue – friendly competitors. The wealth of information on Sue’s blog is testament to her dedication in seeking information and passing it onto others. I like using Digg Google Blog Search but most of the time I wander from one article to another on different blogs. I would be interested to hear how you find articles and blog that you are interested in? – Done

Even though some of these task are not relevant to the way that I am using my blog I have added them to this article and provided a link to Darren’s original post in the hope that it may help some visitors and you never know maybe one day I will need this information also.

miniLegends Join the challenge

Today we welcome the newest members to the 31Days to a Better Blog Chocolate Challenge. I met Al Upton through Sue on twitter and we have been trying to encourage him to join the challenge and last night he and his class the miniLegends did. The miniLegends are Year 3 students – 9 year olds from South Australia. It is the first class to join the challenge and Al did note on the blog that chocolate was definitely a motivation. I wish them good luck and hope they have as much fun as I am. We hade better watch out for this lot they have 30+ years start on us. Wow that sounds a lot doesn’t it!!

I have visited their blog and already learnt something that I didn’t know before. I read the post about googlepages and went and investigated. What a fabulous service free web pages that allow you to upload 100mb!!!  You need a Google account and then it is simply a matter of going to Google Page Creator and it took me about five minutes to create a simple page. This would be great for on the fly work, notes for students or even meeting minutes. I think I could even use it as a message board for my kids if I needed. A Great simple tool with 100’s of uses I am sure. I would love to here if you are using it.