[webmaster]

We are still deliberating on who should take the second place prize - but it's official, the judges unanimously agree that the first place winner of the REW Blogging contest is Joe Lane for his blog account (Username Spoken Gently)

Why did Joe Win you might ask?

#1: He posts a great combination of personal interest pieces such as his Salmon Post

#2: Creative use of the "Relevant Reading" section. Instead of doing what a lot of bloggers do, and trying to cram as many links to his internal pages as he could to artificially inflate link popularity, Joe goes above and beyond, posting links to interesting REW Forum threads, funny posts, links to causes he supports, relevant information for consumers from Realtor.org etc

#3: Great use of images to support his blog posts and make them more interesting like this "Ducks" photo

#4: Good attempt at creating a bio (Use of html such as HR to break up his long bio and graphic at the bottom

#5: Makes use of Categories, static pages and tags

#6: And probably most importantly - Joe (Although knowingly competing in a blogging contest) made many posts here in the blogs forum, and also wrote some great articles aimed at helping other REW community members create better websites, and better blogs. Posts like "This one on image linking" help everyone here make better blogs - they are selfless, and it is these kinds of actions that really make use proud to have members like Joe in our community - "Givers gain" (Stolen from BNI) is a philosophy I live by, and I love it when our members exhibit this quality.

So congrats Joe - You now have $1000 credit at Real Estate Webmasters to use as you see fit (Graphics, writing / editing, programming, hosting, SEO consulting) whatever you wish

Thank you again for being such a great member - and helping others as you do - you are an example worth following.