Karen Schneider is a unique soul in the Blogosphere. She wrote a piece today that’s sure to give Bloggers of all types, and experience level many tips to incorporate into their Blogging routine. It is important even as Amateurs to constantly be improving on our writing techniques.

Not only is her post note-worthy for AmBloggers, Karen can certainly be an ambassador for the AmBlogging community! Free Range Librarian contains a wealth of information from Karen’s experience. You’d be hard pressed to find any bit of advertising or promotional affiliate links in her posts and Blog design. Yet she keeps churning out posts after posts with consistency and passion in her words. Her topics and content provoke thought and serve to educate. She is articulate and a pleasure to read.

In her Blog design, she focuses only on the bare essentials. Sidebars exist simply to draw out recent posts, comments. The space-saving and useful nagivational menus, quickly invites her readers into the archives. In her post pages. She makes sure that nothing will distract from her words by only having the posts and the comments displayed prominently with no distractions.

I’m sure glad this Librarian has gone Free Range. I found Karen thanks to a LifeHacker post about writing tips, and will be putting her feeds in my daily reads.

Do you know of any Bloggers that exemplifies an Am Blogger? Let me know through the contact form! I always want to learn more about Am Bloggers and perhaps even profile them on AmBlogger!

ProBlogger, Darren Rowse, contacted me through my Contact Form a couple days ago and I’ve been too busy to respond to him until now. I’m honored to receive his correspondence but truthfully I’ve been expecting him to come calling anyday now!

Darren wanted to approach me about the design of AmBlogger.net which is very very similar to his ProBlogger.net. You would not be inaccurate to consider this a copy or spoof of his website. I’ve informed him of my pending response and will definitely offer him a forum to respond on AmBlogger if he so desires. In fact, let me iterate my interest in getting fellow AmBloggers to join in and contribute to AmBlogger.net. This site is here for you!

Where should we start? Why do I choose to respond in a Blog? Simply Link Bait? (Update: If you think that’s the case, please don’t link to this post) I think there are a issues here at play here that are begging to be examined. What are the copyright issues? Darren himself has been a fair reporter and has written a few posts on this particular subject:

• Clipmarks and Copyright
• Using Other People’s Content
• Copycat Blogging - Open Mike
• Copyright and Blogs - 14 Guidelines
• BlogStars - Infringing CopyRight since 2005
• Are Explicit Copyright Notices Necessary for Weblogs and Web Pages?
• What to do When Someone Steals Your Blog’s Content - Blog Plagiarism

To formulate my response, I decided to re-examine why I adopted this design in the first place. I also wanted to address the issue of web site design copyright? Lastly, I should be accountable and let Darren know about my response in simple terms. (more…)

ProBlogger Darren Rowse recently invited Dave from PSP Culture to guestblog about what bloggers are trying to achieve with their blog design. You can read the post here. Dave summarized 3 common points that most bloggers would like to achieve with their designs.

1. Income from Advertising Streams
2. Reader Loyalty
3. Personal Satisfaction

From an amateur blogger’s perspective, I have to say that adverstising income streams would rank as the lowest priority for most AmBloggers. AmBlogs seek to build a voice and carve a Blog personality for themselves; wishing to differentiate themselves amongst the many blogs out there. Some of the most beautiful and functional blog designs have been done by amateur bloggers. Honestly, there’s only so many Chitika eMiniMalls ad that a reader can tolerate.

One of the best quality that I’ve seen Amateur Bloggers make excellent use of whitespace or blank space. Many AmBlogs have advertisting that blend visually into the Blog design. Let’s take a look at a few examples!
(more…)