Business blogging tips and news for professional bloggers

Darren Rowse, one of my blogging heroes, has started and repeatedly updated a growing list of well over 100 links to professional blogging tools and resources.  I highly recommend that you peruse the list - no, actually scour it.  Dig through it as though you were a beggar in a gold mine.  Darren wouldn't include lame links in his list, so give as many tools and services there a whirl and see if your blogging becomes more profitable and successful.

Here are the five links I'd most quickly recommend to you from Darren's list:

Akismet - You have to have this spam-killer.  It's incredible.  It toasts nearly all junk comments and trackbacks before they can appear on your blog.

FeedBurner - This service wraps your bare blog feed in a malleable coat and places a tracking device in its back pocket.  In other words, it enhances and measures your feed's success.

Skype - You must look into this communications tool.  Skype lets you do all kinds of things with your voice, such as public call-in broadcasts, conference calls, and PC-to-phone calls.  It also enables free audio/video calling to any other Skype user, anywhere in the world (or any non-Skype user for a usually cheap rate).  My Skype username is my first name, underscore, my last name.  I'd love to talk with you about blogging (or the blow-dryer Arizona summer heat if you like).

Technorati - Still the best blog search engine, even with its occasional hiccups.  Show me a blogger who makes the most of Technorati and I'll show you a successful, savvy soul.

YouTube - Spend an hour roaming through YouTube and you'll catch the vision of why the Web will never be the same now that online video sharing has hit the bigtime.