How I do it

How do I keep up with 50+ of my families, friends, and acquaintances blogs? Without wasting my life on the computer? Easy: Google Reader. A problem has arisen though, now that more and more people choose to have a private blog. I can see their reasoning. But still. They can't expect me to check their blog every day, just in case they decide to update, right? (I'm ashamed to say that even my sister's private blog only gets read by me twice a month)

While I was chopping kale in the kitchen for a dutch dish "boerenkool", it came to me. A stroke of genius. Or, at least that's what it seemed like to me. If all those folks with private blogs would just set up a public proxy blog, the updates would still come to my google reader. It would make it easier (and a lot more likely) for me read their blog, and they would retain a larger percentage of their readers. So here's how it would work:

Say my blog is http://www.nonworkingmother.blogspot.com/. I want to go private. So I set up a new public blog that's very similar say: http://www.nonworkingmotherfeed.blogspot.com/. Then, every time I write a new post on my real blog, I post a link on my feed blog, which links back to my real blog. Sure, it's a little more work, but at least I wouldn't loose 90% of my readership. The readers following that link would still have to log in with permission, so my original blog would remain private. You get your google reader update, and I keep you as a faithful follower.

Now if only blogger came up with an easier way to do this. Like, a way to click a little button while writing a new private post, that will automatically send a feed to google reader.... I'm sure they're working on it. I would think...

Click on my blog links and see this genius idea in action