Although blogs have technically been in existence for a while now, it’s clear that they have exploded onto the scene these past couple of years. With free platforms like WordPress and Blogger readily available to the average Joe, just about everyone has a piece of online real estate where they yak it up about whatever topic tickles their fancy, with posts arranged in reverse chronological order.

With millions of blogs on the ‘net, it’s hard to choose just ten bloggers who are the most improved in 2007, but here are ten that caught my eye this year.

1. John Chow – In December 2006, John Chow’s blog made about $2,700. This is a very respectable blogging income, but the self-proclaimed root of all evil was far from satisfied. Fast forward to today and John Chow dot Com is one of hte most respect “make money online” blogs on the web, raking in over $20K every month.

2. Chris Bibey – While everyone else is focusing on making money online, Chris Bibey’s blog provides an excellent source of information for freelance writers. A new blog design is said to be in the works and there are even rumors of a Chris Bibey online freelance writing course.

3. Derek Semmler – While his personal blog talks banter, bucks and bikes, it’s over at Dad Balance that we really see what Derek is capable of. Fathers need work-life balance too.

4. Investor Blogger – Kenneth Dickson went from using the generic MistyLook WordPress template to a fully customized (and currently festive) theme. From layout to post quality, Kenneth has come a long way this year.

5. John Cow – What started out as a parody of John Chow has grown to become an entity of its own. Bob Jones — the man behind the cow — has done a terrific job with branding, even expanding his online ventures into paid wikis.

6. Ms. Danielle – The lovely Danielle stormed onto the SEO and SEM scene this year, starting out with “just another ego blog site” and evolving into a respected source for PPC and online social networking tips.

7. Nate Whitehill – While it is hard to say whether his personal blog has improved much this past year, Nate has really made a name for himself with Unique Blog Designs. WordPress themes that are pleasing to the eye and functional to boot!

8. ijustine – The girl behind Tasty Blog Snack is partially credited for the recent interest in livecasting, which is live video blogging 24/7. She is perhaps best known for the 300-page iPhone bill video.

9. Preblogging – Becky S. has erected a blog for people who are new to blogging, rather than addressing the more advanced niche occupied by guys like Shoemoney and Problogger. You gotta crawl before you walk.

10. Etienne Teo – A new theme goes a long way in changing the impression people get when they visit your blog and nowhere is this more apparent than at Etienne Teo dot Com.

This year there were a lot of books I read that helped us grow our business. If you do not have these books in your collection already then you should add them for your 2008 reading.

1. The Dip by Seth Godin

2. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al and Laura Ries

3. Sculpting the Business Body by Karen McGregor

4. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

5. How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

6. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

7. Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout

8. Full Frontal PR by Richard Laermer

9. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

10. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

Even though some great online marketing ideas were implemented this year, there were perhaps even more marketing flops. Here are ten marketing ideas that didn’t really pan out. In no particular order…

1. AGLOCO – The second coming of AllAdvantage was supposed to come with a better business plan and it even had the backing of John Chow. Unfortunately, the toolbar took ages to complete and even when it was released, it didn’t work properly. Advertising revenue was next to nil and users starting dropping out like flies. Eventually, even the AGLOCO people said that they gave up and the paid-to-surf service essentially turned belly-up.

2. PayPerPost/IZEA – With a major Google smackdown on any blogs that partook in paid posts, PayPerPost “posties” were hit the hardest, having their PageRanks reduced to PR0. Even with a name change to IZEA, PayPerPost still has a long way to go in regaining the massive growth that they were previously enjoying.

3. Guitar Hero Wii – The Wii is known for its casual games and so the rhythm game genre — best exemplified by Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution — sounds like a natural fit. Although both Guitar Hero III and the Nintendo Wii are hard to find in stores, they make the list because the Wii version of GH3 lacks downloadable content and it features only mono sound. They’re marketing an incomplete product.

4. Windows Vista – Microsoft’s next-generation operating system was supposed to “wow” us, if their television commercials and overall advertising campaign were to be believed. Unfortunately, in order to run Vista properly, you need a rather beefy computer and the average consumer simply doesn’t own a powerhouse. When people “upgrade to a more familiar experience” by switching back to XP, you know that Vista’s got some work to do.

5. CompUSA – After being one of the largest computer distributors in the United States, CompUSA entered the deadpool thanks to bad prices, bad selection, and what TechCrunch calls “customer anti-service.” As a result, all 103 CompUSA stores are now closed.

6. Digg – This social bookmarking site used to be huge and people loved nothing more than to have their story hit Digg’s front page. This year, however, we saw an onslaught of blacklists, content blocking, and lack of focus, resulting in several people abandoning Digg for other pastures. And now it’s for sale.

7. Think Secret – Blame Apple. We know that tech blogs on the ‘net are all about leaking company secrets, but Steve Jobs and the rest of the Cupertino crew singled out Think Secret for revealing numerous Apple secrets, eventually forming a deal that would see the cessation of operations at Think Secret. This might even hurt Apple, because Think Secret was great for generating pre-launch buzz.

8. Pownce – Kevin Rose is the big name behind this Twitter clone, but that big name wasn’t enough to keep it alive. Traffic has fallen dramatically and it’s only a matter of time before it falls off completely. I guess Twitter wins, because Pownce isn’t different enough.

9. E*TRADE – While still known as one of the largest online discount stock brokerage services, E*TRADE has come under some rather hard times. In November, they suffered a 52.2% drop in book value after rumors emerged about a possible bankruptcy. In fact, the trading price of E*TRADE reached a 52-week low of $2.36 per share (a 86.7% drop). That might explain the recent lack of TV commercials.

10. Google – You might be surprised to see the world’s largest search engine on the list, but with their recent PR “update” and new anti-click fraud “measures”, Google has gotten on the bad side with many web publishers. John Chow doesn’t even run Adsense on his blog anymore.

Marketing in 2007 online consumed over $27 billion world wide and last year we saw many new interesting ideas for marketing. This years top 10 online marketing ideas in no specific order are.

1. Online blog competition – This marketing idea worked well for many companies and bloggers this year. The person holding the competition could dictate the behaviour of what people had to do to enter which included link backs, comments, RSS subscribers and purchase products.

2. Sponsored blog reviews – Although there is a bit of negative press around paying others to review your service or product this marketing idea has been very successful. To get started you can sign-up as at ReviewMe and get started right away.

3. Sponsored blog themes – With 50 million blogs online and growing by the minute sponsoring a theme is a popular idea. The way this works is theme designers post up blog themes that you can purchase to sponsor where your link is added to the bottom of the theme.

4. Facebook Social Ads – Facebook launched a pay per click advertising model this year. This is a great way to advertise because you can not only geotarget who your ads are displayed to but you can choose age, gender and even specific interests.

5. Paid Wiki Page – There has been a rash of Wiki sites coming online where you can publish your own page which you can then advertise on. Although the long term benefits of this method of advertising is not seen I know that people like John Chow has already made their money back from purchasing a page.

6. Free eBook – Many site and companies created an eBook this year which they gave away for free. This not only drives traffic to your site but you can market your own product and services into the eBook.

7. Free Software – If you have staff that can build software or a script a great way to get traffic to your site is by providing your own free software. This year we drove a lot of traffic to our site and blog with our DealDotCom plugin and PhishPhinder Outlook plugin.

8. Affiliate Marketing – One of the bigger ways to make money online is to launch an affiliate program. If your just starting out you can choose a software like idevaffiliate which has an out of the box solution so you can get started today.

9. Online Radio Ads – A lot of people don’t now this but online radio stations are getting more and more listeners each year. To advertise on these stations is next to nothing to get your message across to a large volume of listeners who are tech savvy enough to listen to the radio online.

10. Viral Marketing Video – This year we saw more companies creating viral marketing video’s for YouTube and getting 1000′s of views. This is another unique way to market yourself but the long term benefits are still unproven.

There’s a reason why WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for bloggers, but many of us aren’t satisfied with the package “out of the box.” As such, a never-ending supply of custom WordPress plug-ins gets released each and every day.

Here are ten of the best WordPress plug-ins that we recommend you institute on your own blog. In alphabetical order…

1. Auto-Close Comments: Blocks comments on old posts.

2. Bookmark Me: Adds social bookmarking links to the end of posts.

3. Customizable Post Listings: Recent posts, recently commented posts, etc.

4. Democracy: For in-post and sidebar polls.

5. Exec-PHP: Allows PHP tags to be used within posts.

6. Feed Footer: Custom footers in your RSS feed.

7. N4R Most Commented Posts: Shows most popular posts by number of comments.

8. Show Top Commentators: Reward the folks who keep the discussion alive.

9. WordPress Database Backup: Automatic and easy backup of the WP database.

10. WP-Ban: Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name and referrer URL.

From all of our staff at BlueFur.com we wish you and your loved ones this holiday a Merry Christmas.