We all know that the first impression is everything. Do you know how your website make a good first impression? It is by the good design. An excellent layout. That is what gives your website a good first impression. But you can never keep up with technology on your own. New technologies are coming out every day, so in order to keep the competitive edge, and know the future trends, you must read design magazines.

In every business, the entrepreneur must be updated with the market. Online business is no different. You need to know what is going around the web. It does take a lot of time to find a good magazine. Sometimes you might not even find a good magazine. Well here is a list that you can start from:

Web Design/Development Related Magazines

Smashing Magazine

Web Developer’s Journal

Before & After Magazine

Web Design from Scrach

Noupe

Read the whole post to get the entire 22

So this is the first sweet monday post of 2009. Not only that but a lot of things are going around in my life as well as in the blogosphere that I would like to share. There are other things that are going on in local areas that you might want to see as well.

Well first of all, I don’t know how many of you guys keep track of NFL, but Pittsburgh Stealers defeated Ravens and Arizona Cardinals will be entering Superbowl for the first time after six decades. So that will be an interesting game to see. Also Superbowl advertising hits to to its records high in this dreadful economic period. 3 million for 30 seconds. Insane isn’t it.

Second major news is that Circuit City is closing down, so there is a liquidation sale that means good bargain. But fellow bloggers, make sure you compare prices before you buy anything. Second, I would recommend not to buy something very expensive because all sales are FINAL. So be careful.

Third news is for my female bloggers. I know a lot of females are interested in getting make up and other cosmetics. Well due to a major lawsuit big brands are giving out free $25 gifts. It will start on Tuesday. For detals read here.

Now lets come back to my life. I think it is time that I buy my own house. What do you guys think? Well I have already started paperwork with the bank. I have started looking around, and I have also started to call realtors and such. It is a long process, but I am hoping that I get a house. Lets see how that goes.

Well coming back to the blogosphere. There are a lot of interesting reads that you guys should see.

12 Useful Web Tools for designers (My Favorite)

80 Best of Adobe Illustrator Resources, Tutorials, and Freebies

Top 10 fonts of 2008

The Ultimate Collection of Free Vector Packs

How to create your own Firefox themes

17 Really Useful Wordpress Plugins

10 Twitter Tools to Get Information About your Twitter Stats

Those are some of the suggested readings. I read them during the course of this week. I recommend you read them too. Specially the freebies ones because there are some good stuff there. Things that you should’ve read on Balkhis in this past week:

7 Reasons Why Your Website was Penalized or Banned by Google

What if you Never Make Money Blogging?

7 Personality Traits that are found in Successful Bloggers

Big Bloggers Desperate for Subscriber Count

Do you use digg a lot? Well I certainly don’t. I don’t have 500 diggs in the last 48 hours. I don’t submit about 25 stories a day. But what I do use digg for is to find nice articles. Articles that I can learn more tips and tricks from. Mostly article in the designing section. But it is always good to read what weird things are happening around the world. So well any who. Now get to the real point. Among my friends I am known as a Computer Wiz. Yesterday evening I get a call from a friend of mine asking me that if I had a Windows XP Serial Key. I said sorry, but I don’t. My windows stuff comes with my computer. I have a Linux CD. So he is like where should I look for one. I said google it, and you might find some. Well later in the night we met up. So I asked him did you find that key. So he is like yea it was very easy.

He says: “I typed in the term ‘windows xp serial number’, and the first one was it.” Now from my experience, the site have to be dead good to provide good serial numbers and stay up there for a long period of time. Now why did you think I thought it was for a long period of time? For competitive keywords new sites don’t rank really high. Google tend to rate older sites. But when the sites get some authority and have age, Microsoft usually catches the serial and disables it.

Well apparently when I went and typed the term, I saw the site and it was DIGG.

While it was no surprise for me to see digg rank high in google. But it was very surprising to see that it was ranking high for this. Usually either Microsoft, or Digg administration catches these things and remove it. But this submission was 1 year and 260 days old. WOW! And even sadder point is that it has 202 diggs up till now.

So what the fuck is the point of buying windows XP CDs if you can just get a torrent for it and use these keywords to make it work. Chances of getting caught is so slim. It just promotes more and more software piracy. I feel like a dumb ass for spending a lot of money for expensive softwares. But I do it because it is the right thing to do.

Well anyways after reading all the comments, This serial has been working. My friends say it has been working.

I think Digg’s Spam Control and Microsoft Spam Control need to do some work. Usually digg catches stuff like movies and what not. I know I stream movies and often times digg rank high for free stuff, but they remove it. I think this one just slipped their eyes. So I am hoping this get fixed.

Every blogger have their own unique style of blogging. They have their own unique way of structure and so on. So how do we classify the success of bloggers into traits. Well It is very hard because each blogger have their own personal touch, but there are some characteristics that is found in almost every good blogger.

Innovative Personality

Good bloggers always come out with innovative ways to cover their topics. An innovative blogger is someone who would find new and smarter ways to build his blog. Innovative Personality distinguish between the leader and a follower. People like to follow leaders that is one of the traits of a successful blogger.

Community Enablers

Successful bloggers know how to get their audience to read the blog. Not just read but much more than that. They know how to get them involved into the articles and provoke their passion. They get their readers to build a community around their blog by writing articles that appeals to the audience.

Originality and Creativity

As this blogging world expands specially the niches of web development and MMO, it is really hard to come up with original content. Many times bloggers are talking about same topics. But only good bloggers find ways to make their content look original. They add their creative touch to the article and make it far better than the rest. That is why people like their articles more and they are considered successful bloggers.

Entrepreneurs

Successful bloggers have a mind of an entrepreneur. They are always finding ways to get to the next level. They try to get the edge over their competitors by coming up with new ideas. They don’t wait for others. If they want something, they go on and take it.

Good Communicators

Successful bloggers don’t just throw information at you. They are actually very good communicators. Their style of writing gets through people and make them understand what he is talking about. Successful bloggers know what their reader wants and desire, so they come up with those type of material. This skill is which makes them be a community enabler.

Interesting and Focused

Sometimes bloggers think it is good to be interesting, so they write about some weird anecdote or so on. But in the course of trying to be interested, they lose focus. Successful bloggers are both interesting and focused. They know how to get their audience interested in by writing good titles, good intro paragraph or what not. They are very focused as well. They write an article and stay to the point. That is what makes them good communicators.

Imagination / Curiosity

Successful bloggers have this crazy imagination. They see things that are so weird, but make them work. They are curious. So they try new things. But they never get distracted. So if there is a new service in a market. They will experiment it, but they don’t get distracted from their old focus.

While above are just a list. Every blogger is different in their own ways. They always find ways to be different. Heck that is why there are more than one successful bloggers. So if you ever want to do a case study, a good idea would be to interview multiple bloggers at a conference or so. And see what their traits are.

There is this retarded thing around blogosphere which bloggers are getting obsessed about. That is the Subscriber count. I am very sure when feedburner came out with there system, the goal was for bloggers to get sort of an idea of how many people read their blog. But now number of subscribers has become so important, some bloggers are taking their strategies to an extreme. They would do just about anything to get another subscriber.

You guys heard of the system called Aweber right. Yeah this is the email newsletter service. They actually can be combined with the feedburner stats to make your subscriber count look high. The concept of Aweber is nice, but with the way people are now abusing it is F**king ANNOYING. I loved reading Shoemoney’s blog. Heck this guy was the reason why I started this blog. My first design was inspired from Jeremy. Now I am annoyed by his blog. Every time I visit his blog I have to deal with this extremely annoying pop up that asks me to subscribe to his news letter. Ok one time is ok. But every time I go on his site I get that. If I don’t want to subscribe, then it should just ask once and never ask again. I am so frustrated with this popup that I have decided not to go on his site anymore. So there your chances of gaining subscribers might be costing you your old loyal users.

John Chow is an awesome guy. I met him at Izea and had a blast with him. I loved reading his blog, and I was a top commentator at his site too. My thing is I don’t subscribe to Newsletter. I subscribe to feeds, but I have to go to their site to comment and so on. Well there is this annoying pop up on his site also. I close it each time and it comes back the next time I go on his site. So John, I will not be commenting on your site again either unless I am really really desperate.

Following these big bloggers a lot of new bloggers are following this path also. I can’t remember the site I went on a few days back which I recently discovered. I got to the blog and saw the pop up. I exit out and now I don’t even remember the url. Great job on that pitch to get me as your subscriber.

By no means I am saying that Aweber is a bad service. I think email newsletter are a great addition to a blog. But keep it on your sidebar. If I want to subscribe, I would. But don’t force your readers. If you force them by throwing a pop up at them each time they visit then most likely they will leave. Like I did.

The choice is yours.