I'm not writing this piece for my associate bloggers here on BloggingStocks. The fact of the matter is that most, if not all of them are far better, more well versed and more professional than myself. I don't even consider myself a professional writer. Basically I'm a hack commentator with some creative potential. But be that as it may, I do know a thing or two about presentation, and if there's one thing I've learned about blogging is that the presentation is what garners the healthy numbers. So, for the aspiring and struggling bloggers out there who want to expand their potential, this one's for you.

I get quite a lot of my material from three major news services. United Press International, Associated Press International, and The Financial News Wire. The angle is that I tend to quickly skip past the stories that I know everyone else is reporting. I know what's being reported because I research that fairly well. So when I get down to sifting through the news to determine what I'll present to you, I already have a pretty well formed picture of what stories are not requiring another go around. Sometimes I do present a piece regarding a story that has been hashed over pretty well, but in those cases you'll notice that I don't just put out a carbon copy of the press release. In the cases when I grab onto a hot headline to present content to the readers, it is my purpose to give them more of a scoop of my opinionated brain matter than just another carbon copied dateline.

You aspiring bloggers out there (and I've read many of you), need to know that your readers are not interested in getting just the news from you. If that was the case, then they'd just go into their favorite bookmarks, click up the news services and blogging would soon become a fallow field. No, the public doesn't want your news. They want a trip into the more interesting regions of your thinking. They want a slice of your world view. The people who surf the blogs by the millions want to know what you think. They want you to shape their opinions. They want you to give them the basis for their beliefs. Yes, that means often times you must expose yourself to the grief and abuse that will be dealt to you by those who disagree with you, but honestly writers, if you're just in it to make a few bucks by shuffling the alphabet around then you'd be much better off writing copy for grocery coupons or something else less dangerous.

So the next time you're tempted to fatten your blog by clipping and pasting a news story that can be had at a hundred other more professional sources, think for a moment and decide if that's really what you want and mean to do. By taking the day's top stories and coloring them with what you personally are thinking about them, you will create a following of like-minded people who will come to regard and respect you. Eventually, you will become used to the abuse that accompanies the expression of strong opinions, and you may even make a name for yourself. At the very least you should become recognized as not just another news source and that can make the proposition a whole lot more fun.