Having maintained this blog for well over a year, I sometimes get the question - "do you know if anyone is reading what you are writing?  What I do know from my statistics program is that I get between 15 to 30 unique visitors a day.  I also get enough questions from readers through the "contact Jonathan" button that people are reading my posts.

I also feel strongly that my blogging about consumer bankruptcy has made me a better lawyer.  If a reader is nice enough to send me a question, I will make every effort to provide an accurate answer.  Also, this blog is a place where I can comment about new developments in the law - and you have to understand what is going on before you can comment intelligently.

Additionally, because I publish this blog, I have become much more aware of other bankruptcy blogs out there in the "blogosphere."  Scott Riddle's Georgia Bankruptcy Blog and Kevin Churn's Bankruptcy Lawyers Blog are two regularly updated blogs that I subscribe to (I use my Google home page as an RSS reader) and read regularly.

I am also always on the lookout for new bankruptcy related blogs.  There are surprisingly few out there.  For my money, blogs are much more relevant than static web sites because they are current.  As people become more comfortable with blog formats I can see the day when the blog format outpaces the traditional web site format.  I am fairly active updating both my blogs and my web sites and I can say without hesitation that updating a blog is significantly easier and more user friendly than updating a web site. 

Blogs and traditional web sites do have one issue in common - if you want high search engine rankings for your blog or web site, you need references or links from other blogs and web sites.  For those not aware, the search engines operate in a manner similar to academic papers or court cases.  If your paper or case is very important a lot of other people refer to it in their papers.  The referred to paper or case gains authority with each referral or link.  For example, if I said "Roe vs. Wade" you would immediately think of the term "abortion."  On the Internet, if I type in the term "news" the home page for CNN comes up first.  If I type in the term "sports" the ESPN web site comes up first, and so on.

Woudn't it be nice if this blog or one of my sites came up at the top of the search engines for any number of bankruptcy terms like "Chapter 7" or "Chapter 13," or "bankruptcy?"

The only way for this to happen would be for a lot of other web sites and blogs to refer to my blog or any of the posts on their web sites or blogs.  If you are reading this and own a blog or web site, I would be happy to speak with you about mutual references.  Besides building link presence through individual contacts, there are number of services out there that purport to automate or even monetize this process.  For example a new service called ReviewMe is something I am testing.  At ReviewMe, bloggers like me register our blogs and identify our topics.  For example, the topic of this blog is law, consumer bankruptcy, Chapter 13, Chapter 7, repossession and foreclosure.

Should a blogger with a related site want me to write a post about their site (kind of like this "review" of ReviewMe) then I would do so for a small fee.  In this case, the reviewee would pay ReviewMe $40 for the review - I would get $20 and ReviewMe gets $20.  I am, in fact, receiving $20 for this review of ReviewMe.

One nice thing about ReviewMe's service - there is no requirement that any review I write must be positive.  On the negative side, I could lose credibility if my blog becomes cluttered with topics other than consumer bankruptcy in Georgia.

If I chose to "buy" a review of thebkBlog, then I would, in theory, create more links back to my site, thereby increasing its search engine position.  I have not yet bought any site reviews - if I do, I will post about my experiences on my Internet Marketing blog.

Finally, if you do read my bankruptcy blog regularly, please fell free to email me a question or comment - feedback does serve as greatly appreciated reinforcement. 

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