This is the follow up post to the previous Blogging From Scratch – Don’t Reinvent The Wheel and as promised here is your way to shortcut the shortcuts by not actually comparing top blogs about blogging yourself, subscribe to blogs like this for all the latest tips to help you with your blogging. Please feel free to share any more findings that you notice either in these sites or others. In comparing these sites we will just be looking at the landing page and the elements that appear above the fold. So lets get on with it:

5) Daily Blog Tips

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/

The Daily Blog Tips website has a very simple layout with no images. I assume the lack of images on this page draws the readers attention to the advertising on the right hand side. The ads seem to be either a combination of CPA (affiliate) and CPM (cost per 1000) or purely CPA. One of the ads that is interesting links to a post within Daily Blog Tips explaining why they use and recommend Doreo Hosting. Other than that it is just a simple 3 column split layout with content in the middle and 2 sidebars.

4) Quick Online Tips

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/

The quick online tips is also quite a dull layout with no pictures grabbing the readers attention. They have a landing page invitation to join their RSS feed followed by a highlighted post then the page continues from there. The page has advertising sneakily added below the top menu (Ads By Google in grey) and currently a blank “advertise with us” box at the top right. Overall a clean simple 2 column layout with some sneaky adsense placement.

3) John Chow

http://www.johnchow.com/blog/

John Chow always has some interesting ramblings and he has spent a lot of time perfecting his blog layout. His layout has a large Azoogle Playboy add which is bound to get tons of attention centre page. The page is actually sublty loaded with afiliate links without leaving you feeling abused. Just a list of the ads we can see 1) MarketLeverageTV at the very top 2) Click Here Peel in the corner (go to the site to see this) 3) Peper Jam Network in the header 4) Playboy Mansion Azoogle centre 5-9) links greyed out below the menu 10-13) ads in the sidebar under blog sponsors. Now that’s 13 ads above the fold, impressive! Did I mention the google ads if you use the search? Second thing that stands out is the offer for a free Make Money Online ebook upon subscribing.

A lot going on here and all built on a simple 2 column blog layout.

2) Copy Blogger

http://www.copyblogger.com/

Off the bat this is the first site to have the subscription options on the left hand side. Other than that the page has a great layout and is easy for the reader to digest. After Checking out John Chow its quick to notice that Copy Blogger doesn’t have any where near as much advertising just a CPM add for Thesis WordPress theme.

1) Pro Blogger

http://www.problogger.net/blog/

The Pro Blogger Layout is a super clean look, and very professional. You can see there are quite a few ads above the fold but still no competition for John Chow. The site dives straight into his most recent article which is held in a wide content column (630 pixels) and the Subscriptions are in the standard top right corner.