In addition to the fees necessary to attend the damn things, there are consultants who set up booths selling their services as consultants. For a fee — sometimes THOUSANDS of dollars — these con artists promise to attract readers to their blogs. Or to help them gets “followers” in Twitter or “friends” on Facebook.

I’ve been known to do consulting, basically to help folks set up their blogs. My fee is no where near thousands of dollars and I don’t promise to lure hundreds of thousands of readers to your site. But i do have some advice on how to attract readers who keep coming back. It applies blogs and social networking sites:

1. Your content must be of interest. I cannot do this for you.
2. Learn to write well. How to learn to write well? Write a lot.
3. Post regularly. There are sites like FARK and TMZ that I visit many times a day because they UPDATE ALL THE TIME.
4. Don’t talk to your readers like you are trying to get them to sign up for a vacation time share.
5. Post links to your posts on Facebook and Twitter. Remember, FB and Twitter might be tomorrow’s Technorati. Or worse, USENET.
6. Moderate your comments with a gentle hand. But then it comes time to delete, ban and block, do it ruthlessly.
7. Blog mostly about your site’s chosen subject matter. Occasionally post a funny story about your cat, or how bad traffic is. OCCASIONALLY.
8. Send condolences. Send congratulations. If you are not a sociopath, you should already be doing this.
9. You can make money from blogging. But unless you post pics of pantie-less starlets, you won’t make a lot, But you will keep you dignity.
10. If a commenter disagrees with you, you really ought to entertain the possibility, however slight, that it might be YOU who is wrong. In other words, try to be humble, no matter how smart you think you are.
11. Do NOT plagiarize.
12. Before USENET (aka “newsgroups”) was taken over by spammers, it was a place to give & receive help. Make your site like USENET used to be.
13. But down the Doritos and Mountain Dew Red and go outside and go for a walk once in a while.
14. Talk to a pretty girl once in a while with no ulterior motive other than it will put a smile on your face.
15. Numbers 13 and 14 have NOTHING to do with blogging or social networks, by the way.

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And some of BBP members have never changed their theme or even made any adjustments to their sites, like add a User Widget or upload a new header image.

I’m not going to lecture people about how to make their blog look pretty or functional. But I will link to this site that tells people how to pick a new blog that fit their needs and sensibilities.

And my offer to help anyone migrate from Blogger to Blog Peoria stands.

Suddenly everyone had the power of the press.

I won’t go into the ramifications this had on democracy and the printing press-based media. But the ramifications were GOOD.

But Blogger and Prya Labs ought to get a Nobel Prize.

But it’s been 10 years and now, Blogger sucks. Granted, it sucks less than it did before, with nearly daily outages and lost posts. But it still sucks, relatively speaking.

Consider this site. It’s a wish list that long time users want Blogger (read “Google,” the company that owns Blogger). They want the ability to create stand-alone Pages (just like WordPress has had for years). They want support for Gravatars (which WordPress has had for years). They want to be able to add captions to images (which WordPress has had for years). They want a wide selection of themes that work on wider monitors (which Blogger has had for years). They want an easy-to-use MORE button (which Blogger has had for years).

We’ve got that HERE. You can get NOW here at The Blog Peoria Project that Blogger MIGHT offer in the future. Blogger won’t reply to your email with a phone call if you ask nice. Blogger won’t go out and look for a theme or a plugin you want to try. Blogger won’t take a look at your HTML. Blogger won’t help you migrate your site somewhere else. Trust me on that. I hate to lose members, but I am committed to the idea that bloggers OWN their own posts, pics and comments.

And Blogger won’t tell lawsuit-threatening attorneys to take a hike.

And blogger won’t help you syndicate your site. Take a look at the expanded blogroll now in use at Peoria Pundit. I cannot do that for ANY site hosted by blogger. I can do it with any self-hosted WordPress or Typepad site. Not blogger.

And Blogger doesn’t give Peoria-area bloggers the power to link to nearly 50 of their neighbors by dragging a “Global Recent Posts” widget or a “Global Recent Comments” widget onto their sidebar.

So hears MY deal: To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Blogger.com, I am extending my help to ANYONE who wants to migrate away from Blogger to WordPress here at the Blog Peoria Project. I’ll help you move your posts, your comments and your photos. I’ll set up redirection so that people visiting your old Blogger posts will be sent to your shiny new WordPress site.

I have never charged anyone to blog here, and I don’t charge for support.

If you want to move, contact me.

I long ago dumped Akismet on Peoria Pundit and my other blogs. I switched to a plugin called Wp Spam Filter. And all the problems with spam and false spam positives vanished.

Today, I decided to activate this plugin across the entire Blog Peoria Project.

Akismet is still an option. If you were using Akismet before today, it is STILL operating on your site. I’d recommend deactivating it.