The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

Recently, I’ve been using Mybloglog a lot more and more. People keep banging on about it, saying how it’s “Myspace + Blogs – Emotionally Unstable Teenagers”. I am not 100% sold on it, but I have noticed that more and more of my readers are coming here through Mybloglog. So, I’ve thought about refreshing my Mybloglog Page for a while now, not least the little “avatars”. I’ll be honest, mine was thrown up as a stock image of me (the one on my “About” Page). It was a bit pathetic, plus I’ve lost about two stone since then. So I set about designing one that stands out from the crowd of faces, flags of nations that were former British Empire nations 100 years ago, and hideous Microsoft Clipart images of those stickmen with the hat doing stuff that crop up on every Powerpoint Presentation Ever. So, with that in mind, I had a look at a few avatars that stand out, and then go onto mine.

Dgeezer from Diamond Geezer

Simple and effective, not only does it stand out, but it’s also instantly recognisable and you know exactly what’s associated with it (he uses a playing card in his header image), it’s almost like a brand name and image. Ironic really that this in my opinion is one of the best Mybloglog avatars, because he doesn’t seem to use Mybloglog much!

Kumiko from Cash Quests

Bold, bright and straight to the point. You can kind of guess something about the blog is going to be “Kumiko” (in this case, the author). She also blogged about her avatar here, and it is very effective. See it on your “recent readers” list and it stands out like a sore thumb.

Mike from Mike Money’s Making Mission

Some people like using their photo, as it gives a personal touch, like Mike for example. However, just by sticking a bright border around his photo, he makes it stand out, and more likely to be clicked on.

Sonja from Quantum Leaps

Of course, you could forsake the whole human thing, and go for a different creature. This is exactly what Sonja has done with her avatar, with a picture of a parrot. It is associated with her (she loves birds), but also it is bright, and a little mysterious (I couldn’t work out what it was until I took a closer look at it)

Merrick from Perfectly Flawed

Of course, you could always post a picture of yourself naked to get more clicks. Only applicable really for 50% of the population, and you’ll get chatted up by people like “Mysterio” – somebody who probably couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison. But if you’re building your blog, and if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it?

So, looking at the above (first three especially, largely because I don’t own a parrot, nor if I was naked in an avatar the women of the internet would drool so much into their keyboard it would break them), I decided to spend a bit of time coming up with one, then two avatars.

Damn my creative spurt! I don’t know which is better, but which one would you more likely click on? The one on the left, or the one on the right?