After Darren Rowse’s recently concluded Reviews and Predictions Writing Project, when things have slowed down a little, I’ve finally a chance to look at the other entries.

As Darren mentioned, whether anything you write actually gets read, depends on your title. Whether it’s a website, a blog entry, the name of a blog, the title of an ebook, everything depends on:

• Keywords in the Title: Examples include monetary amounts: “$100,000”, names of prominent individuals “Britney Spears”, “Matt Cutts”, “Shoemoney”, “Yanik Silver”
• Eyecatching Phrases: “Blog in Your Sleep”, “Autopilot Income”, “Floods of Traffic”
• Scarcity: “Christmas Promotion”, “Limited Edition”, “Next 5 Readers only”

I’m looking through the titles and there’s a very obvious contrast between a generic title like “Looking Back at 2006” and “My Predictions for 2007” which are all-encompassing, while laser-targeted titles which are loaded with specific keywords will draw in traffic like bees to honey.

• Reviews and Predictions from a Canadian Problogger

Presents us with an intriguing title. Just imagine if you’d included a title like the “Californian ProBlogger” or the “Jamaican ProBlogger”, you’re bound to have a decent number of hits.David Peralty gives us an personal insight into his year. Besides developments over at BloggingPro, he talks about starting his new personal at Starting A Blog Over and you might find yourself heading over to Digital Life News to check out his other projects too.

If you’ve planned the layout and flow for your blog post, the transition from blog to another blog or website will be very smooth.

Especially if you’ve using multi-tabbed browsing in FireFox, Flock or IE7, you’d be able to traverse through the various sites easily.

• 2007 Prediction: Blogs will be replaced

Josh Maher’s entry is an interesting read, because it’s very self-reflexive. (Imagine submitting an entry like The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star” for a radio station’s songwriting contest).

As you read further, Josh’s bottomline “This is all strong evidence that the essence of the blog is dead” which is always a great conversation starter, especially if you have a battalion of blog commenters waiting in the wings.

This is a really great piece, especially if you’re reading Josh’s post back-to-back with David’s post about venture capital dollars going into blog networks.

Are the 2 perspectives in opposition? Or do they dovetail somewhere in the center?

I suspect with the coporatization of blogs and the buying into blogs (with likely stronger profit motives), blogs could become a little less personal and less hobbyist and more mainstream (does anyone remember when personal computers were used mainly for databases, spreadsheets and wordprocessing? And before that hobbyist programming?) The field will merely evolve.

The death of blogging? Maybe in it’s current form, but maybe more like the ‘death’ of a larvae and the emergence of a butterfly?

PS: inevitably readers are likely to click on Josh’s About Me link.

• New Year’s Resolutions for Bloggers

Dom Tan’s blog is an interesting one, especially since it’s targeted towards the writing project’s core audience.

Dom seems to be a newer blogger and he goes into what he should do to be a better blogger.

Which shows you that blogging can give you multiple perspectives, as I’d probably focus on why I’d want to improve and take it from there.

Comment Roadblocks: I discovered this the hard way when I’d started, that requiring your blog readers to register to post comments like Dom’s got his blog set up, will usually result in fewer comments. (I sometimes give up, because the process of getting the password sent to my email is a little too much effort).

Build Your “Me” Brand: Including an “about me” page makes big strides for your ‘me’ brand and it’s something I recommend all bloggers, whether blogging in a personal or corporate capacity to do. (Because the blog is all about you…)

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My ProBlogger Writing Project entry:

Kickstart Your Blogging Business and Make Big Money: 7 Reality Checks