• Leaving Quality Comments
• Use a friendly, inviting tone on your blog
• Don’t steal other people’s content
• Write quality content on your blog
• Be appreciative towards those who help you

Now some of you may not care about what kind of reputation you have. After all, any publicity, even bad publicity is publicity, right? Well, I’m going to examine a case that I think might change your mind.

This case involves the site The Geek Boys (I won’t link to it because I don’t think what he did was right). As some of you may know, Alexander Batista, the man running The Geek Boys, developed a sort of notoriety for stealing the theme of Darin.cc. Alexander received a lot of backlash, and a lot of pageviews from this little scheme. In the end, he claimed that he only did it to prove a point, that you don’t need to pay a huge amount of money to a company like Unique Blog Designs in order to get a good looking theme. He did prove a point, and that is that developing a bad reputation can hurt you big time when it comes to blogging.

Alex has since attempted to redo his theme, and his approach towards making money online. Now he is using a different theme, and is aimed towards “buying his way” to the top. While it is an interesting concept, it appears that he is having trouble gaining advertisers who want to show his ads. His first attempt was with Carl Ocab. Carl decided to back up Darin and asked Alexander to clear things up with Darin first. Carl and Alex did appear to make up, as Alexander now considers them “best friends” but I haven’t seen anything on Carl’s blog, or seen an update on Alex’s blog in quite some time.

He developed a nice spike from the bad rep that he got, but it appears to have gone away just as quickly.

So what do you think? You can take a visit over to www.thegeekboys.com to check out Alex’s blog. I personally think that what he did hurt him a lot in the end and damaged his brand. Do you attempt to develop a good relationship and reputation with other bloggers? Or do you not care?

When you take a look at it, you know right away what the blog is about. A lot of the big blogs out there are distinguished by their logo. Look at Shoemoney. You immediately recognize the “S” that he has as his logo. When you see that logo, you think Shoemoney.

If you’re just starting a blog, you have time to develop your logo. Don’t rush into it and create something that you don’t like, only to change it a dozen times as you refine your look. As you post more, you may develop an idea of what you want as a logo. Changing a logo as you develop can give a sense of instability. Remember, you want people to remember you. An ever-changing logo does not allow that.

Now you might be wondering if this will cost you anything. The answer is… that is entirely up to you. There are dozens, if not hundreds of companies out there that will be willing to design a logo for you. It can be anywhere from free to a couple hundred dollars. If you’re just starting out though, you probably don’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars on just a logo. There are better things to do then that. Here are some alternatives:

• Get a friend to do it for you - Do you know a good graphic designer? If you do, he/she can do it for you, and they might even do it for free! (I had a friend do this one, and it came out great!)
• Photoshop - This is another option that you might want to consider. You will use photoshop not only for logos, but other things you may want to design on your own! You can order Photoshop through that link from Amazon. It’s a great deal for anyone looking to create their own visuals for a blog.

Using your logo is a great way to develop your brand. There are many other ways to do it also though, so don’t focus all of your time just making a logo. I’ll be sure to go over many other ways to help brand your blog. Branding is something that can make or break your blog!

Have you had any experience with logo design? Please share them in a comment so that others can learn more about it!