September was a great month for BlueJar.com with the group writing project and continued growth. Tomorrow I will have my stats ready to post up and compare to previous months, so far it looks great and serves as great motivation to continue blogging. Today I am going over a few milestones I’ve reached and the direction of BlueJar.

Bloggers 3 Month Itch

The 3rd month of blogging seems to be the death of most bloggers. I have to say I’ve been feeling it a lot myself. My time to blog has gone down drastically and I’m not able to write as often as I’d like. My goal was to post once a day, which I have been able to do so for the most part but the posts are not of the quality that I’d want to see on my blog. I’ve also seen 3-4 other bloggers who started out around the same time as me, sell their blogs but I don’t think that is the direction I want to head!

BlueJar.com Reaches 100 RSS Subscribers

Last week BlueJar.com finally hit the big 100 RSS subscribers! It was amazing to reach 100 and all along I feel it is the number that I really felt would validate my blog. Thank you to all my subscribers and other bloggers who continue to support me. It took me 3 long months to reach this number and I’m excited but also feel the pressure at the same time. I think once you reach your own personal goals you find it easier to fail or keep up the same pace.

BlueJar.com Wants Guest Bloggers

At the end of October I will be going on a 2 week trip! That is a long time, but I am going to be opening up my blog to guest posters during my trip. If you are interested in writing a guest post for BlueJar.com, please contact me. Subject matter will need to be closely related to being a webmaster, bloggers, or the Internet.

Updated Design Including Ads

This week I will be updating my design to include ads. There will be ads from the winners of the group writing project and also I will be adding Adsense ads to posts over 7 days old. I like the current clean look, so will try to stick as closely to this as possible. Since my main goal is to gain search engine traffic, that is mostly who I am targeting for my Adsense ads.

BlueJar.com and the Future

I’ve decided to post less often, but higher quality. Essentially I will take 1-2 days to write a really good post/article instead of having to come up with quick articles. I wanted to stick to posting daily, but my time just does not allow to keep up with my daily posting and I’m not ready to stop blogging or sell my blog. I just will continue blogging at a slower pace.

Thats it for my updates and I look forward to the next month of blogging. Tomorrow I will have my stats to post up!

This week I have been a busy bee! But now that group writing project has ended, I need a little vacation to recoup. Will be heading out this weekend until Sunday, but since I will be bringing my laptop I probably won’t be completely disconnected. It is almost the end of September and there are many new blogging adventures ahead of me next month.

Coming up next week I hope to do a series of articles on how to run your own group writing project and give you some details on what to and not to do, so you can avoid making the same mistakes I made. Also I have charted my stats since I started and hope to share them with you in hopes of encouraging others to do group writing projects too!

Now it is on my Jar Full of Links! Again this weeks comments have been great and don’t be shy to join in. You might get featured here next week as one of my top 10 commentors and I’ll toss you a Stumble too! Here are this weeks top commentors:

• Madhur Kapoor informs us of the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 release.

• Monika asks us What is your favorite RSS reader? Mine is the new Bloglines beta!

• YC tells us his top 7 reasons why he hates StumbleUpon.

• menopauseprincess is sharing with us her humor again. If you love dogs, you won’t do this to them!

• Dj Flush has found a great solution for online post-it notes, a service called note2email. Allows you to quickly send yourself notes!

• pelf wants us to evaluate if we are using too many plastic bags.

• david wants us to learn how to distribute our own commercials online.

• Adnan is educating us on anything and everything about myLot.

• Adam shares with us his list of social networking websites he has joined.

• Em Dy is a Filipino physician who likes watching movies, eating out and surfing the web. Pulse is her personal blog!

I just want to say thanks again for all the participants and supporters of my first group writing project. It was a great success and it would not have been without all of your support. Have a great weekend everyone!

Today is Bloggers Against Abuse day, where bloggers around the world can help raise awareness on abuse and related topics. I wanted to write about a book that I found earlier this year called Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe by Gavin De Becker. While reading this book for the first time, I wished somebody had shown it to me sooner. The book is about protecting children, however if I was a single adult I would still find it tremendously helpful in protecting myself and others. It is great resource for any parent and if you haven’t read a book about keeping your children safe, this is the prefect book to start with. De Becker was physically and emotionally abused as a child and has a lot of insights into how abuse starts, how to identify it, and ultimately how stop denying that it happens and take steps to prevent it. Another book he wrote, Gift of Fear is geared more toward adults but both books provide a lot of great information on abuse and how to help prevent it.

If you are a blogger, you can join in on Bloggers Against Abuse by making a post or letting others know about the event. For continuous updates on protecting children from abuse, please visit Imaginif, a blog dedicated to child safety.

I was going to announce the winners tomorrow, but I realized that tomorrow is Bloggers Against Abuse day, so I tallied up the votes last night. But first I must make you wait a few seconds to just say, thank you! Thanks to all the participants and bloggers who have helped support my group writing project. It has been a great success and I hope to hold another group writing project again in the future. So without making you wait any longer and without assuming you haven’t skipped this to browse the winners already, here are the winners of BlueJar.com first group writing project:

First Place Winner: $100 + 125×125 Banner Advertising Spot

Not only is Rhys on vacation, he wins the top prize! If he is having a bad time, this will surely cheer him up.

How To Track New RSS Subscribers Google Analytics in 3 Easy Steps by Rhys (8 votes)

Second Place Winners: $62 + 125×125 Banner Advertising Spot

There was a tie for second place, so I’ve split the 2nd/3rd prizes between both second place winners. Shaun has since sold his blog, so stay tuned to find out what he wants to do with his advertising spot!

How To Review A Blog by AdTracker (6 votes)
How To Prepare For The Perfect Date by Shaun Low (6 votes)

Runner-ups: Text Link Advertising Spot

When I said bonus prizes, I didn’t just mean for the winners! Runner-ups will get a text link advertising spot on the right sidebar too.

How To Promote Yourself (When You Don’t Want To.) by Dee (5 votes)
Contains Zero Trans Fat - Truth or Creative Advertising? by JoLynn Braley (5 votes)
Beginners “How to” Guide for SEO by Steve (5 votes)
Mind Map Tutorial on Blogging by Monika (5 votes)
How to Sleep on a Plane by Sheila (5 votes)

Congratulations to everyone! It has been a busy 3 weeks for me and now I must go modify my theme to make room for these ads spots. Thanks again to all the participants and hope everyone had a great time, found some new blogging friends, and learned something new too!

With these techniques you will be able to position your photos and images anywhere you want on your website or blog with CSS. It doesn’t take much CSS to get your images displaying exactly how and where you want them. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the CSS code! Lets start with the quickest way to position your images using CSS:

Position images to the left or right with inline CSS

This is a great way to quickly position your images to the left or right of your text. The following example will position your images to the left.

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

To position your images to the right, simply replace your CSS float value from left to the value right:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Position images to the left or right with external CSS

If you want to position images regularly to the left or right, you might want to consider adding classes to your external CSS file. This will allow you to add the class tag to every image you want to position without having to re-type your inline CSS. Add the following CSS class tags to your current CSS file:

External CSS:

Now add the the class tags to your images:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

You can also add margins to your CSS tags to add extra spacing around your images:

External CSS:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Position images to the left or right with taglines

Sometimes you might want to add text under your images. This can be easily done with the use of a <div> tag.

External CSS:

Code:

Result:

Colorful Chester

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Position images to the center with external CSS

There is no float tag for centering an image, so you will have to use a <div> tag to position your images to the center:

External CSS:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Special thanks to Cartoon Clipart for providing such colorful free cliparts!