Average Joe Blogger - A Contest Review

 

If you still surf around the interweb on your 300 Mhz Packard Bell with the 28K modem, you may not have heard about the contest over at Average Joe Blogger. Nate (aka - Average Joe) is giving away ad spots on his blog as prizes and considering the going rate and the traffic he gets, it's a heck of a deal.

 

As with most blog contests lately, there is a tiered system of entries to the drawing. The more effort you put in, the more opportunities you receive. Having already been a subscriber and having already mentioned the contest and linked to it in a post, the only thing left to do to improve my chances at one of those ad spots is to write a review of Average Joe Blogger.

 

The Background

 

Average Joe Blogger was born 2 months ago today and is posting some impressive numbers for its short existence. Nate explains his reason for starting the blog as, and I paraphrase, an average Joe blog fan (me or you) decides to give the problogger thing a whirl and invites us along to share the experience.

 

The Blog

 

I've always been impressed with Nate's choice of logo design. I don't think you could find an image anywhere that communicates "Average Joe" better than the one he uses in his logo and social avatar.

 

The blog itself is setup with the popular Word Press 3 column layout. This, combined with the white background, blue links and pale pastel accents are easy on the eyes and make for a clean look.

 

The layout makes it obvious this blog is all about two things; quality content and creating income and he seems to be succeeding at both.

 

The Negative

 

Any review has to have something negative and this one is no exception. But, to be perfectly honest, I had to look really hard to find anything and it is totally my opinion and really is pretty nit-picky.

 

You can tell Nate has his readers at heart because he hits every button in his sidebars. He has his Popular Articles, Recent Comments, Categories and Top Commentators displayed. He even has a poll asking for reader input along with the obligatory MyBlogLog widget.

 

In light of the placement and success of the banner ads and sponsor links, I would recommend dropping the AdSense skysraper to allow the Categories and Top Comments to move up. Also, the "I Follow" and "Site Information" badges seem a little out of place but I honestly don't know what I would do with them.

 

See what I mean? Nit-picky.

 

Summation

 

After reading Nate's work for over a month, I have come to regard him as very knowledgeable and always take his blogging tips and Word Press tips seriously. 

 

If you're looking for a content-rich blog, written in plain English, Average Joe Blogger is a must-read and should be in your feed reader. I have personally learned a lot from this blog and look forward to learning a lot more.

 

 

If you've enjoyed your read, grab my feed!