Few months back I had written about a fantastic new service started by Text-link-Ads called Reviewme. Though I hadn’t got any opportunity to review any sites through this service but yesterday I received an email in my inbox stating Blogcatalog.com has decided that I should review their site.

Blogcatalog as far as I vaguely remember was bought in January and the new owner has made lot of useful changes to the blog directory. The change can be very well reflected in improved traffic. Blogcatalog traffic has increased from 2000 visitors a day to over 5000. The new site has more powerful search feature and the much needed ranking algorithm. I always like ranking mechanism as it helps to find the best in a short time. Blogcatalog also offers a sponsored category positions for a low as 5$ to 8$. Pretty cheap considering the amount of exposure and traffic you would gain from it. After all, the primary concerns of the site it to give maximum exposure to the bloggers and increase their traffic.

So the next question arises what more improvements can one do to such a popular blog directory? Personally I feel they can increase the number of featured blogs on the front page and perhaps create a section or archive of featured blogs which might contain all the featured blogs till date. Also if they can add a bookmarking featured for all the registered users who can bookmark their favorite blogs and share them with their friends, it would be great.

Still it is surely worth adding your blog to their blog directory. Also I would love to hear comments, suggestions from you all bloggers as to how they can improve their site.

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It was a usual situation as Jim Coudal put forth in his article. I was sitting in the other chair while my friend was trying to sell his product. ( In this case garment, he is trying to start his business in this field and was looking for a loan ). So the banker shoots “what’s your brand name ?”. And as discussed earlier (I had a long discussion with my friend before about this topic ) he replied “Lemon”.

So the next question as expected “Why this name ?” and I smiled as if I knew that my friend had almost won the battle with just one word ( though lot of research went behind it). I took time to gaze at my friend only to see him nodding his head to me as if to say thank you and then he started his conversation with banker.

Outcome he did get a loan and now I just hope he does good for himself and others around him.

Now for the main part of story …… as to why he won battle with just one word. I don’t know if you have realized but some of successful brands today are fruits. Take for eg Apple, Orange , Mango

Apple now more famous for its iPod . Orange the nation’s leading cellular service provider. Mango a famous clothing brand. Yes fruits have become brands and not just ordinary brands but brands on whom people look upto.

So while going through articles on some site on how to decide your brand it just strucked me that why not continue with trends and use fruits as a launching pad for branding. So next I sat down and made a list of fruits well known by most of people and still not in use by companies. Here is a list that I came up with.

1. Lemon- My favourite , beautiful name , really cool logo can be made for this and just gives a feeling of freshness.
2. Grapes - The other well known fruits can be extensively used for some research group company .
3. Chickoo - I know it sounds stupid to some choosing this as a brand. But come on this is the most common name everyone has heard , atleast in India and if some company goes about using this brand, there will be quite long talks about it . This kind of talks actually really helps in building a brand for company.
4. Almond - I know it doesnt come in fruits category but still its a cool name and could be used by any company . Its a rich word.

So any takers for fruits??. It might happen in future when a kid says i need Orange , Apple & Mango what he really means is he needs orange connection , apple ipod and mango styleware. So much for branding. Brand of Fruits

In today’s automated scripting world , constructing sites which I prefer to call as “Base site” is like 5 minute job. Tools like Fantastico have made it possible to set up a blog , forum , cms … almost everything at just a click of few buttons. Even Hosting companies have realized the need for automated systems and are trying their best to equip their customers with what they term as One Click Installs .

So that’s leave a little bit of worry in minds of web designers, programmers that how would they market their experience , talent when it is becoming more and more simpler for a common man to start his own site. Well here comes the entry of foremost important part of a site which some people tend to neglect CONTENT . I think its time now for Web Programmers , Designers to take a look into this if they want to exist in this industry. ( kinda harsh line but its truth)

A real life experiment here shows how important content is then just online marketing. I too have experience the same thing. For eg for a couple of instances it took me 5 min to design base site and 2 weeks to design full site . The reason but obvious was lack of content in base site.

So start getting into reading habits my friends. Maybe you can start from Here to get hints. Start blogging , develop skills to write , learn what to write and more important what not to. Maybe that would help you heave some sigh of relief from today’s automated world.

Undoubtedly Google is a great search engine in world. Here is a comprehensive article from PC Magazine which teaches some great tricks relating to Google

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