This post was inspired by Janette Toral of Influential Blogger Dot Net. Janette Toral is a writer, SEO consultant, trainer, blogger, policy lobbyist, and entrepreneur from the Philippines and has a myriad of sites ranging from personal thoughts to successful business models. You can find a full list of her sites here, on her blogger profile (if I have missed some, please comment Janette )

Janette is always finding ways to promote new and existing blogs so that they may find their way to you the reader and she has asked for help in that bloggers take part in this writing project and name some blogs which have gained readership and have a following. The blogs must also be no older than July 1st 2007, so look out bloggers that are not even one year old!

My list that I have come up with to date is as follows and please note that I can name up to ten blogs and edit this post as I add to it so here goes:

I know you have heard me mention Sean Rasmussen from Sean Rasmussen Dot Com a few times on this blog already and the reason why is because he truly writes a great blog! He’s motivating, inspiring, walks the talk and has gained a good readership since starting his personal blog in September last year.

Durano Lawayan aka Brad Spit, is another blogger who has a great following. The Spitting Vessel is a place where you can spit your mind out, in disgust or in jest, so long as you feel it is a wrong that must be corrected, as the tag line suggests. Great reading for anyone.

Carole Fogarty from the Healthy Living Lounge has many tips for exactly that – Healthy Living – and a must to see and read. Carole also runs women’s retreats in Bali and has extensive knowledge in Yoga and all things alternative to keep your body, mind and soul at peace. Well worth the read.

For now I will leave it at that and update as I come across more outstanding blogs. There are so many and I have to be wary of their start up dates as there is a restriction as to how old your blog can be. Janette will add these blogs to a list on her site as she updates on a weekly basis. If you would like to take part, please feel free to get the word around so that other great blogs may be discovered. Thank you Janette for running this project.

Yes, I am one day behind and it’s always better late than never. Blogger Appreciation Day [Unofficial] began with Darren Rowse from Problogger and as I received some love from Derek Semmler at Derek Semmler Dot Com (thank you for reminding me Derek) I wanted to join in and give my own bit of link love away to my readers who have commented on Buzzing with Ange (not original I know), and also to some random peeps I come across on a daily basis online on one social network or another. I would like to acknowledge you as without you, the conversation wouldn’t go on, and please know that I do appreciate your thoughts and support recently regarding my Dad who will be home in a day or two! He is doing extraordinarily well.

Like Darren, I also receive from time to time, emails and messages from people who have appreciated something I have said or written about and I have to tell you that I feel very blessed to have this opportunity of meeting and sharing with you online and I do enjoy our dialogue so keep them coming!

Now to a list of bloggers who all have something to contribute in their own way so if you haven’t already visited them, please make a point to check out their wonderful sites.

Kate

Durano Lawayan

Alice Seba

Jim and Emma

Mike French

Mr Grudge

Peter McCartney

Jamie Le Souef

Rod Sherwin

Paul Burman

Sandra

Jyoti Mukhia

Allan Cockerill

aussiecynic

Heidi

Iconic

Saul Maraney

Carole Fogarty

Zack

Dan B

Swubird

Jack Payne

Lia

Tondy

Pearl

Soa

Jessie

Allison Reynolds

Janette Toral

Rob

Marc

Camilla Ricketts

Yasmin

Sean Rasmussen

Aaron Wakling

Jonathan

Bridget Jones

WAHM Tara

Diane Aldred

Lunes

Oza Meilleur

Megan from Imaginif

Shane Vander Hart

George Kedourie

Alexander Alaric

John Harmon

Bec Le Souef

Bambi

Nez

Nadine Touzet

Thank you for making my experience online a positive one.

You may be aware that I also write posts over at GO! Smell the Flowers blog and right now, they are running the Blog Idol contest. Mike French (whom I am racing for comments to posts, LOL) has very cleverly put this visual together to get the ball rolling. Please fave this and leave a comment to get it out there to the world.

1) Describe yourself in less than 20 words.
2) Details of your blogs URL and why you bother.
3) Why GO! Smell the flowers appeals to you.
4) What you can bring to the community.
5) What you’d like from the community.

Whether you have a story to tell, or you want exposure to your business, or you have had a book published, or are travelling the world blogging as you go, or not and want to start blogging… whether you have something to teach or even having a voice wanting to be heard… whatever your circumstances and expertise, Flowers Wants YOU!!

The contest closes on the 18th of March so get on over there and leave your details. One thing before you do… there are thorns as well as flowers in the garden so make sure to have a good look around to see your way through them Most of all, have fun and tell all your friends!

I have been away with my family this past week in Perth, Western Australia and not due to return home until Sunday. I managed to slip away for a while to see what was going on online and time has slipped right by me. So here is a quickie post to let you know that I haven’t slipped into oblivion.

Being away with little ones means that you have to get into their world a little and find something magical for them at times so it was timely to come across this wonderful mime Fairy (pictured above) who sprinkled them with fairy dust Those are my girls to the right of the Fairy.

Do you remember as a child whether or not you could see Fairies? I had a conversation with a friend of mine once who told me that very young children often seem to be looking at something we as adults cannot see. He described them to be like firefly’s and that children would follow them with their eyes. I know this may seem a little outrageous to some, but let me know if you have ever noticed this with your kids. I am leaving my mind open as I don’t like to discount things and would love to hear your opinions on whether or not you believe it to be true or not.

Who else aside from me is still recovering from the whole holiday season? Here at our place, we are preparing to go away for a little R & R and keeping the kids entertained while I get things in order and keep up with all my favorite haunts and getting some work done is proving what else, but a challenge

Having said that, I wanted to update you on what has been happening in my cyberworld. I was pleasantly surprised and honored to be in amongst this list of bloggers awarded by the spunky Mauro of 1 Million Love Messages with this Inspiring Great Blog Award. The list of all those awarded blogs are included here and thank you Mauro for including me in this list.

Well this was a first for me and once I settled in, I didn’t want to stop talking. I want to say a big thank you for those of you who took time out and dialed in to listen live. If you missed the interview, George Kedourie has posted it on his site in mp3 format.

This is a list of some online free resources that I use which I mentioned in the interview:

StumbleUpon Toolbar for sending pages to my network of friends when I want to share something with them. Please note that you have to be registered with SU in order to use it. It is also available in IE browser here.

Strip Generator for creating comic strips which are fun to use to add into a post.

Thirty Day Challenge where I met George Kedourie and teaches about how to get free traffic to your blog.

TaggZilla dot com is a follow on from the Thirty Day Challenge and a fantastic resource site for support in with your Internet Marketing.

Off2Trade dot com is a site which you can surf to find free online resources to help your internet experience which have helped me streamline my time online.

HeadSpace2 is a great wordpress plugin for meta-tag generators making it easier to get search traffic for individual posts.

CommentLuv wordpress plugin as it parses the commenter’s latest post from their blog.

PodClass which is a Facebook application for running classes.

Camtasia Studio 3 free download to enable the making of tutorials or videos.

I Want Sandy is a virtual secretary.

Jott – I learned about this from Pearl over at Fresh Perspectives which sounds really great, however it is not available in Australia yet! I’m sure it will help some of you so I wanted to list it here.

I am sure you will all find something useful in this list so let me know what you think of them.

Thanks again to George Kedourie for suggesting this interview.

It’s very late here now, but I could not go to bed without posting this. There was a list of the Top 100 Australian Blogs posted by Meg Tsiamis over at Dipping Into The Blogpond which is a blog with an Aussie focus, and I was thrilled to find out that I made that list! As far as I know, it is the first time I have made it and at number 81, it is a great start for me. The top three blogs are Problogger, Entrepreneurs Journey, and lifehack.org.

Meg uses three variables which are the Alexa ranking for Australia, the Alexa ranking for the US, and the Technorati ranking of a blog to determine the numbers. To learn more of how she does this, read it here.

Aside from this successful blog, Meg also facilitates the BUMPzee Australian Blogs Community and owns and runs dlook which is an Australian Online Business Directory, and from what I saw, there is also a dlook dating site if anyone is interested! Kudos to Meg for running such successful businesses.

Blogging is quite a community affair. I remember when I first started Buzzing with Ange and I used to wonder how to get people to read it. Twelve months later, I have made it into a Top 100 list. Not bad for a stay at home mother of two who has had quite a varied number of roles in her lifetime to date.

The social media has been a worthwhile area to be involved in with building a blogging community and learning how to drive traffic to my site. I must say that it has all been a very fun way of getting to know people too and the reasons why they blog.

Now it is really getting late here.

I will go to sleep smiling and grateful.

Dedicated to Success

It seems that recently, I have been very blessed with many new friendships and community building here online. I have received not one, but two Be The Blog awards from Diane at Much of a Muchness, and also from Colin at Life which I am honoured to accept.

The blogging badge was made by Mark at Me and My Drum to be given to bloggers who make their blog their own, stay with it, interact with their readers and have fun. Mark also said that these bloggers are showing time and time again that they are true to themselves and that they ARE their blog. So here it is:

To show my gratitude, I will pay this forward to:

Cardiogirl
Self Improvement Journal
St Vincents Hospital Darlinghurst-Male Nurses
The Healthy Living Lounge
SU Comments
The View from Here
Imaginif
JamieLeSouef
Derek Semmler dot com

… and guys, don’t worry as it comes in three color choices

Also, Mike at The View from Here, has just sent me the Community Blog Award and I will pay it forward to Simon at Simons Money Notes, a young entrepreneur who has come back to blogging after setting up some other business’.

The Community Blog Award celebrates people who reach out and makes the blogger community a better one. It also underlines the importance of a blogs readership community, one of the most rewarding parts about blogging. It’s the people that come back to comment, adding to the conversation, making you feel like someone is listening and interested.

Prosperity Blessing

For all of you reading this, I would like to pass on this Prosperity Blessing which came my way today. It has been a rather busy day!

• May you be blessed with an amazingly abundant day today.
• May the clouds break and the heavens pour down upon you more joy, more love, more laughter and more money than you could have ever dreamed of.
• May the sun shine its golden light of prosperity through every cell of your extraordinary body.
• May you be cleansed today of any resistance or feelings of unworthiness that you may still be holding onto.
• May your false illusions of doubt, fear and scarcity gently fall away like soft white feathers on a gentle breeze.
• May you be willing, simply willing, to allow the Universe to shower you with miracles today.
• May the Angels wrap you in their shining wings of opulence.
• May the fairies deliver you to their pot of gold at the end of a majestic rainbow.
• May your eyes shine with the glorious truth of who you really are and may that truth uplift others in your presence to their own inner knowing.
• May your ears hear the sound of perfection ringing in your soul.
• May you taste the deliciousness of every precious bite of life as your day unfolds moment by moment with amazing grace, heartfelt love and a bounty of magnificent money.
• As this day ends, may you slumber wrapped in an exquisite blanket of enduring peace and profound gratitude.
• And may the last words you speak today be Thank You!

This was passed on to me via email from Veronica M. Hay who is the author of In a Dream, You can do anything. A Collection of Words. You can visit her website at: Insights and Inspirations Dot Com

Thank You