Blog of the month is a new feature I’ll be doing here where I feature some of my favorite blogs as well as readers of this site. I have to admit that this is not an original idea, in fact I’m stealing it from John Chow. The first month I launched this blog (back in March 2007), John featured me as his blog of the month. Since then he has not done another blog of the month (probably all of those ReviewMe’s taking place ), and I remain the one and only.

His feature definitely helped kick start my blog, and it was a nice way for him to “give” to the blogosphere, and open his readers up to other blogs that he is interested in. Albeit the fact that I don’t get nearly as much as traffic (yet), I decided to do the same thing.

Who Is Derek Semmler and What’s His Site About?

For the first featured blog of the month, we’ll start with Derek Semmler dot Com. This is Derek Semmler’s personal blog. Derek is your average guy…working the 9-5, but trying to break free in the world of blogging. You may have noticed him around here posting comments from time to time, or me posting comments over at his blog. He runs a couple of other blogs outside of his personal one, My New Choice, which is about being financially responsible, and Dad Balance, which is about working dads finding a healthy balance between their careers and family life. That’s quite a bit on one persons plate for blogs that are always up-to-date.

Derek and I both started our personal blogs in March 2007, among others, but he is the only one that I has been keeping it up on a continuous basis. As a blogger, posting new content in a fairly defined pattern is important to grow your blog and gain trust among readers…Derek is making sure of that. The thing that I like about Derek’s blog is his interesting writing style and his choice of post topics. I will normally read his posts and get into whatever he’s writing, to me that makes somebody a good writer. In fact, that’s why I’ve posted comments from time to time, not just because I’m being nice, but because I feel impelled to.

So what does Derek write about? He generally covers a broad range of topics, from what pisses him off to advice for other bloggers. I could definitely say that we sort of have a similar theme in terms of content…we write about business, but then there is also our personal sides that are very apparent to the posts.

I highly recommend giving Derek’s blog a shot for a few posts and see if you like it. Make sure to subscribe to his RSS feed, and don’t forget to subscribe to mine Here’s a few posts you can start off reading:

• How to avoid airport problems
• How to improve public bathrooms
• Why I will never spend another penny at Best Buy
• Stop the insanity : Anti-Croc Movement
• A-List bloggers making excuses for BlogRush
• 12 blogging tips to improve my blog

How Can You Become Blog Of The Month?

Don’t ask to become it!? I will choose blog of the month on my own, but you can post comments and interact here to get on my radar. I would say that could definitely increase your chances of being featured.