What can 8,952,087 combined readers do for the world? That is what Blog Action Day is asking, and I am sure you will be hearing much more about it from here and other popular blogs.

I am just putting together my post to go out on 15th October for Blog Action Day because I will be at an affiliate conference on the day, but I hope to be calling in to Blog Talk Radio at some point. What are you going to do on the 15th? read more

ReadWriteWeb asked 20 top-tier bloggers how much money they make, and analyzed the data. Naturally, the span is great, but the average top tier blogger made $25/post.

RWW also analyzed in-house bloggers, either employed, or with special contracts, and got the following:

Our respondents reported annual pay rates ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits (!) up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. We’re tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were.

For more, like where the big money is, check out the post.

Now, what does this mean? read more

At least that’s the feeling you get when reading Duncan Riley’s post on Crikey Blogs over at The Inquisitr. He reckons the Australian blogosphere is some 5 years behind the US, which is interesting.

The network brings together some of Australia’s leading political blogs, including PollBludger and former Senator Andrew Bartlett under the one roof. The Crikey blog network is live now, but I understand that other blogs are to follow, including some leading Australian blogs in excess of 1 million page views a month.

They manage this by buying existing blogs, rather than just recruit bloggers and build from the ground up. The actual blog network is powered by WordPress MU, which the WordPress Publisher Blog gladly points out.

Crikey is an independent online media service, according to their own words, which costs money. You can read more about it here.

Among the dozen plus iPhone RSS apps out there, Byline (an iPhone app developed by Phantom Fish) separates itself from the pack in two ways: its steep price (at $10) and its ability to flawlessly sync with Google Reader.

(Update: Milo of Phantom Fish contacted me with some good news regarding the price. See the bottom of the post for details.)

While version 1.0 left me underwhelmed (and $10 poorer), Byline 2.0 (which is currently awaiting Apple’s approval) pretty much destroyed every reason for me to even keep the Google Reader web app on my home screen–or even consider defecting towards the competition. read more

Earthcomber is suing TechCrunch, along with Loopt, for pretty dubious reasons. I’ll let Michael Arrington speak for himself, from his post:

I called Earthcomber President Jim Brady this morning to verify the lawsuit. At first he wouldn’t answer - all he did was try to explain how he’s been wronged by Loopt. When pressed he did confirm that the lawsuit was filed, but quickly added that he didn’t really mean to press it with us. He wants to go to court with Loopt, but is willing to quickly work something out with us to make this go away, he told me, hinting that he’d like to partner with us. He also said he’s been desperately trying to get me on the phone but hasn’t been able to, so he decided to sue us instead.

You know, this sounds like a really bad idea to me, and I certainly don’t think that taking legal actions against someone is a good way to connect. At least not if you’re looking for a partnership. And obviously that won’t happen with Earthcomber and TechCrunch either: read more

Look out Technorati and Google Blog Search. BlogCatalog is gaining on you.

BlogCatalog.com has just announced the launch of a new “total aggregation search engine” that helps you find anything on their blog directory and social network as well as on more than 20 other social media websites.

For instance, you can select “All Results” above the search box and search for blog herald to get a section-by-section list of BlogCatalog members, BlogCatalog discussions, other slice-and-dice results from BlogCatalog, and (perhaps most interestingly) results from StumbleUpon, Delicious, Twitter and many other popular social bookmarking or social networking sites. read more

Here is a question for you.

What is the most important quality a blog can have? read more

Version 9.6 of the Opera web browser is now available. It is supposed to be faster than previous versions, as well as include feed preview and new synchronization options. More news here. You can download the Opera web browser for free from opera.com, and read about how you can help spread it in the official blog.

Lijit has launched its ad network, which CEO Todd Vernon talked about in an interview previously. He outlines the beta in a blog post:

In this release, publishers will be able to opt-in to the search-based ad network and begin receiving a share of the revenue for ad units displayed in your search results. As a thank you for your patience while we’ve been developing and testing these features, your account will be pre-loaded with a credit for estimated revenues based on your search history during this period (a minimum of $5).

We’re not done yet! In the near future those publishers who have opted in to Lijit’s Ad Network will be able to sell their search based ads directly to advertisers with whom they may already have relationships, targeting just their own publication and making even more money for themselves. This is going to be big!

Maybe this is what’s needed to get more websites and blogs (in particular) to switch their standard search box to a Lijit powered one?

Aweber, a mailing list service that costs money, has added Twitter support. This means that you can send a tweet automatically, when a new email is being delivered to the mailing list. Darren Rowse, an Aweber users, has screenshots.