This week’s implosion brings us the winner of the contest that began on Monday.  If you didn’t know about the contest and wished you’d signed up for it, a new one will be up tomorrow. Stay tuned for that.

The Randomizer
There were quite a few entries into this week’s contest. But not so many you didn’t have an excellent chance of walking away a winner. I found the random.org site to be the best solution to a fair turnout. I did the two 125×125 month long ads first. The winners are…

 Erz from Blogodise

and

Andrew Pavelski from www.andrewpavelski.com

The next set of random numbers revealed who would win the 3 available links on the sidebar for a month. And the winners are…

Carl from ThatBlogSite.com

and

Sensei from ContestU.com

and

Chuck from www.southpawgolfclubs.com

Congratulations to all the winners! I’ll be putting the ads up this afternoon. I hope you all receive a ton of traffic from the deal. If you didn’t win, be sure to check back on Monday for another great contest.

The Meat and Potatoes
This week has been met with a ton of success. I’m continuing to explode on the internet, and meeting some great people along the way. I’ll recap this week’s accomplisments, and see just how far Jason Boom has gone since its inception. To see a recap of the first two weeks, take a look at The Big Bang Experience.

1. My guest post to John Cow dot com was published on Tuesday evening.

2. I received a flattering account of my own explosion on the internet from LinkBaitMe.com.

3. As a result of the LinkBaitMe article, I talked to Joe from JoeTech.com about ways to give out excess EC credits. The EC slots were born of that discussion.

4. Lorelle, writing at the BlogHerald.com, used some of my musings as a catalyst for a very interesting article.

5. I’ve become a part of the growing forum community at Bloggeries.com.

6. I’m currently on the frontpage of www.blogintro.com. So if you want, go there to vote for The Boom.

What’s Next?
It’s a new week on the horizon. I have plans to engage everyone with some awesome content, the weekly contest, and the possibility of a Fantasy Friday series. I’m exploring what sticks with my readers, so your feedback definitely matters the most around here. I enjoy the writing, but I need to know what reading you enjoy.

So stick around…as a commenter recently reminded me, this is just the beginning.

There are few things as rewarding as having our words and thoughts validated. We can write for ourselves all we want, but until someone claims to relate, to understand, to agree with our ideologies, then we cannot know blogging bliss.

What better way to experience this than through a competitive blog in your niche? Can you write a guest post? Do you know what it takes? I’m here to tell you it takes time to do a little homework. I’ve outlined each step I take before pursuing a guest post.

1. Read the archives - Every blog has a history. I read through topics to get a feel for the blog’s voice. As a writer, I’ve been trained that magazines and literary journals seek out similarly themed material. Every writer, who submits work to these institutions, reads the journal’s back issues to get a feel for their particular interests. It makes the likelihood of a submission’s acceptance climb much higher than a blind submission. The archives give an idea of the breadth of topics a blog engages, while the comments on each post give an idea of the audience (see number five).
2. Write as if - As a freelance writer, I’ve had the opportunity to write content on varying topics such as auto insurance, online education, stairway creation, wood types, Google applications, computer problems, travel stories, and so much more. When I write content, I focus on writing as if I’m an expert. Are any bloggers experts? Do experts even exist anymore? It doesn’t matter, because we write as if. Eventually we will be.
3. Write to the blog owner - When possible, write the blog owner a quick message to let them know you’re interested in a guest post. Certain situations dictate different approaches. If you are familiar with a blog, then you likely know the pace of the writing, the voice, and the topics that have been covered. So when you write the blog owner it may be a good idea to give them the post topic. Don’t just say, ‘I’m going to write about nuclear energy and wheaties.’ Tell them how you will tie in other posts from their blog. It will let them know you’ve done your homework.
4. Use our voice - It can be quite easy to slip into someone else’s writing style. This can happen transparently after we’ve spent hours reading past posts of another blog. We can set out to write and find ourselves falling into their idiosyncrasies without thought. I challenge you to purge other writer’s ghosts and use your own voice. While we can keep the tone and approach similar to a blog’s owner, we should ultimately use our own rhythms, idiosyncrasies and syntax.
5. Know the readers - This is one case where we can get a “read” on the readers of a blog. We literally read their posts. We can ask ourselves several questions while we do read the posts.
   • Do the readers engage the author or each other?
   • Do they compliment the post or seek to argue points?
   • Do they respond more to factual writing, emotional, or something else?
   • What topic seems to always draw out comments?
   • Do certain posts always have “0 comments”?

When we reach higher altitudes, we sometimes have to fine tune our machinery. The thing to remember on guest blogging — write with a strong, knowledgeable voice. Do it with gusto. Do it with pride. Fine tune our writing so it speaks to a new audience, for whom we may be writing in the coming months.

The most important thing, though?

Leave our flavor behind, so they know where to come when they are hungry for more.

I’ve had some friends in the past few weeks ask me, “How did you come up with the name Jason Boom dot com?” Can you guess my favorite response? I’ll give you a hint — it’s a scientific creationist theory.

“It was a Big Bang”

Even more people have asked how I received so much traffic so quickly. That’s a little more difficult to answer with one phrase. For that reason, I’m writing this post to blow apart what’s happened since January 12th and look at each individual piece of the experience, with a little back-story.

The Big Bang
My About page describes my situation fairly well. I’m a technical writer, freelance writer, small-time web host, and computer savant. For about 12 years, I had a ‘fuse’ that I refused to give up — cigarettes. January 7th of this year, I quit. I threw the fuse away. With that came increased energy and a renewed interest in pursuing my dreams.

One Friday evening, I sat down at my desk to surf popular blogs. I revisited my Google Reader which I’d largely ignored for several months, and sifted through some posts. One post from ProBlogger attracted me to the idea of writing my own blog. I read so many of his posts that day that I can’t pinpoint now which one it was. I’ll think of it eventually.

So then I went to my GoDaddy account to see what domains I owned. There were around eight to ten in there. Of the ones I had, I only considered one a viable name. I setup the domain and installed Wordpress. This was a Friday. By Saturday, I posted to this blog, under a different name.

Read more »

In our first installment of the powder keg series, where we take a look at a new upcoming site that can help ease our blogging woes, we take a look at a unique rss related site. The powder keg review site should have a lot of potential for blowing up across the blogosphere. We better take this seriously. We don’t want to get burned.

rssHugger.com
The deep RSS orange of the site coupled with a dark grey makes this site visually appealing. The cutsie factor aside, the logo does the site justice. The only thing that struck me as odd — no RSS icon anywhere on their main page. Not sure why the rssHugger site wouldn’t have an RSS icon, but I’ll leave that to the graphical gods to determine a punishment.

 Above the fold, we can clearly read the intent of the blog. The site informs us we can either do a review of rssHugger or pay a $20 fee to have a page on their site for ten years. I would much rather do a review than pay $20. Times are tight. I need all the money I can get to stock up on gunpowder.

rssHugger intends to bring bloggers and readers closer together. Oh, I’ll just lay it out there from their site. Here’s their blurb:

rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader. rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in. These subjects include: internet marketing, making money online, charity, sports, gambling, and many more. If the visitors find a blog that they had not previously heard about, they can easily add it to their RSS readers or bookmark it.

So it apparently works like this: you submit your RSS feed to their site, they enter you into a category, and finally they list your most current blog titles under your feed name on their site. Sure this build backlinks for your site, but will this really benefit your site that much? They could at least use the MSN Safari thumbnail creator to pull in an image of your site.

The rssHugger site comes to you from the creators of wordHugger, a seemingly pointless buy a word for $60 page. The wordHugger site seems to offer you one word that you monopolize on their site (or phrase) like “make money online” or “memory foam“. The two sites seem to mirror each other, except rssHugger costs less and offers a free way to enter. Overall, I think both sites have more flash than bang.

Conclusion
I’ve asked non-bloggers what RSS feeds they read. The most common answer? What’s an RSS feed? The biggest hurdle for rssHugger seems to be attracting readers aside from bloggers. As soon as RSS feeds become like radio stations, then the internet will be jumping with sites like this. For now, it seems the site will be pandering to the same crowd, with a few perks. Not too much to get excited over just yet. In their defense, they may be adding more functionality in the coming months. We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Do you know of a site, service, blogging tool, widget, plugin, or advertising opportunity that has gunpowder spilling from its barrel? Write us a quick message to let us light the fuse.

Is there a turf war among bloggers? Do we protect our niche with the ferocity of inner city bangers? Gangs are no laughing matter - they are a violent, abhorrent part of our society. This is why I cringe a little when I ask, do bloggers have gang tendencies?

John Chow of the MMTs (Money Making Thugs) challenged Shoemoney in the recent past to a showdown for the most RSS subscribers. The classic turfwar was on. Who could amass the largest gang to lay the smack down on the other? In the end, Shoemoney was victorious.

Bloggers tend to belong to many different blogging networks, like mybloglog.com, blogcatalog.com, blogrush, entrecard to name a few. This natural instinct to survive by joining a group connects bloggers to that gang mentality. And those with killer instincts know that the middle of the pack serves as the best protection.

While a blogging network does not bring up images of Scarfaceto most, it can help you survive in this vast blogosphere. How else can we get the word out to our prospective audience? We need these services to survive. Otherwise, we’re out cold on a street corner, looking to re-up (been watching too much The Wire).

The John Chow vs. Shoemoney RSS feed contest may seem like a common contest, but in reality it was a marketing ploy for each of them to gain massive new subscribers. I’m sure they both benefited from their RSS feeds climbing so quickly.

This post, while tongue in cheek, should provide bloggers with a key understanding - we are all better in a group. We’re stronger with our homies at our back. Let’s face it - there’s been a blogger who has helped your blog immensely since you first started out in the biz. Someone who helped you fix your faulty css, create your logo, install a difficult plugin, or just link back to you from a post.

You betta recognize!

I read a day or two ago (God knows where - thanks Entrecard!) about a blogger who refused to link to his competitors, even though they were friends and he enjoyed their writing. He was afraid his readers would slink away in the night to read his competition’s writing and then never return. I’m here to tell you - if they go, then you need to step it up. Stop sheltering and start supporting your readers. Let them know what’s out there. You can’t shield them from the harsh world of the blogosphere forever.

What am I saying? I’m saying we need each other. We can’t worry about what colors the other bloggers are wearing. We must focus on our similarities and work together to survive. Regardless of rank, we can all benefit from link love, a helpful comment about stylistic material, a favorite in tehnorati, a digg, or a simple comment on a post.

Represent Bloggers! Do something for someone who helped you out recently or even when you first started out blogging. It won’t go unnoticed.