If you’ve visited my Blogrolls page, you would have noticed that I use a Blogrolling script which tells me which blogs have been updated in the last 12 hours and not surprisingly, only Skeet’s and Daniel’s blogs are indicated as “updated” all the time.
That is because many of us do not ping Blogrolling.
So girls and boys, if you’re using WordPress, you may want to set your blog to ping Blogrolling so that your blog is marked as “updated” every time you publish a new post (unless you don’t want anybody to know that you’ve just updated your blog).
To ping Blogrolling, follow these 3-simple-steps (for WordPress-powered blogs only):
- Go to your Dashboard > Options > Writing
- Under Update Services, add this line of URL into the box:
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
- Click Update Options to save the changes.
And you’re done! 
One of the topics currently being discussed at the Authority Blogger forum is the use of reciprocal links (also known as blogrolls) to grow one’s blog. One of the forum members asked:
What is everyone doing with their blogroll? I can understand why you’d want to link to your favourite ultra-popular blogs, like Seth Godin or Darren Rowse… But, do Seth and Darren really need more publicity? Why not link to your fellow blogger who you enjoy reading but who “needs” the publicity a bit more than Seth? Wouldn’t it be better to use your blogroll to mutually grow each other’s blogs?
I do have a blogroll page, which consists of 2 active blogrolls, in case you haven’t noticed it. One of the blogrolls is a personal favourite, give or take, because I don’t update it as much as I should. I mean, we do have new favourites, right? And we drop our favourites when they no longer are our favourites, no?
I blogroll my favourite blogs because they’re my favourite blogs, regardless of whether I get linked back in return. It is my way of telling my blogger friends that I enjoy reading their blogs, though I should also mention that the list isn’t exhaustive Moreover, with RSS feeds and feedreaders (e.g. Bloglines), I no longer have to rely on my blogrolls for updated blogs.
So what’s your take on this? Do you have a blogroll on your blog? How often do you use it?
I have just finished a very important task of unsubscribing from a number of blogs because I will be leaving for Chiangmai in 2 days and while I’m away, I want my Bloglines to only pick up feeds that I will read upon returning.
Which makes me think.. I am a fairly “quick” subscriber. It only takes me a couple of minutes on a certain blog and at least 2 posts with grammatically-correct sentences and I’m your new reader. It’s that simple. It doesn’t matter very much to me whether you’ve got a pretty blog theme though that does help since I love to look at pretty things 
But if your theme isn’t appealing to me, I’d still subscribe to it
But what makes me unsubscribe from a blog? I unsubscribe from a blog if one of the following situation takes place:
- If the blog turns from ads-free to full-of-ads overnight. I’ve seen this happen. I’m not a blogging guru but I’ve learned enough to know that it isn’t a good idea to surprise your readers with a blog full of ads that they have to sieve through them before getting to the content.
- If the blogger churns out paid reviews blindly. I’ve mentioned before that I’m OK with paid reviews because I see them as advertisements in a movie. But if a blogger writes about products that I know she’s never used, or places she’s never been to or loans and mortgages that she’s never had, that’s it. I’m sorry but I take that as you’re bull-sh*tting me.
- If I haven’t been clicking though to leave you a comment in at least 2 weeks. Yes, you may have passed your English test and I may have subscribed to your blog but if I haven’t been leaving you a comment after 2 weeks, it only means that I’m not very interested in what you’re blogging about. It doesn’t mean that your blog is no good, it just means that I’m not interested, so please don’t take this personally.
- If the blogger never replied my comments. You see, I used to reply to my commentators’ comments on my blog, so naturally, I go back to a certain blog post to see whether the blogger acknowledges my comment. And I have also recently started emailing my responses to my “irregular” visitors because they may not come back to read my responses to their comments, so it would be a good idea to email them and to show that I do appreciate their time and feedback. But if I do not hear from a blogger after following her blog and leaving her comments regularly, I give up. I’d like to feel appreciated and acknowledged too, so if you choose to ignore me, that’s just too bad..
You may want to read about a similar topic posted by Lorelle at The Blog Herald, entitled Are you losing readers? Why? She discusses the main reasons readers turn away from a blog, based on her research on the issue for many years.
So tell me. What will make you unsubscribe from a particular blog?
