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Good list - and I found it first after Tara Hunt twittered it. 
I wanted to point out that I think you meant AdSense, not AdWords (even though your point is very well taken - and I can be guilty as charged). 
Finaly, great post, very true.
Listen to PWills, he’s right, lines could be shorter.
Talking about blogs, Guy used to be one of my favourites, but he is so into ads nowdays he
doesn’t even need random pictures any more. I got the impression lately that he just throws something in a hurry just to have a fresh page for the ads 
Good points all, though I like meta-blogs and am a staff writer at Daily Blog Tips. If there are sites about being a better wind-surfer, cook, programmer, why not sites about being a better blogger?
And what about this post? It’s great, but it’s meta-blogging too.
I wish I could have linked to this article in a piece I wrote a few days ago, 50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog.
I think my blog scores 0/13 (or 13/13, depending on how you look at it) on this … however, I have recently embraced the missing 14th clich: “loooong time since last post!” …
John Lam (the IronRuby guy) in each blog entry puts an image not always referring to the post content. It’s still a good blog. (Here: http://www.iunknown.com/ )
I think you need to come clean and admit that the only reason this was posted was so you’d have an excuse to show off that pretty pink journal you purchased!
some of us want to remain anonymous and infrequently read. not everyone is ego driven you know. some of us write to write.
Alex is the dog BTW so I don’t think he took many pictures. But my guess is your actually seeing if anyone is paying attention. :-p
Greenspun’s images, although random, were purposeful. He was the founder of photo.net one of the first true communities on the net and the artful pictures certainly attracted people to that community. Also, as he states in the preface he wanted the first coffee table computer book – because the book looked accessible I bought it. It led to me Greenspun and his free three week bootcamps – an incredible learning experience that jump-started my web career. Btw, maybe you should allow commenters to post images
A very thoughtful post. However, regarding #6, I believe that it really depends on the writing style of the blog’s author. If the author focuses on one and only one topic in each blog, I think a hierarchical categorization system works fine. Otherwise, tags seem to be a better choice.
cough Speaking of tagging… With ~1000 entries the old search box doesn’t always cut it here. Although your back-linking to old posts relevant to the topic helps a lot (and helps suck up more of what little time I have!).
My other meta beef here is your URI names. I like having the title in the URI such as …/blog/thirteen-blog-cliches.html because it gives me immediate feedback on links that link back to previous posts.
"…I can’t think of a single time I have ever found the blog calendar widget helpful…"
One blog site I go to uses it to make it easier to retrieve articles in archives. Keeping your initial disclaimer in mind, I personally find it easier to use than the standard archive menu.
Hey! Stop blogging about blogging!
Pretty good list, actually.
standing on lots and lots of midgets.
LOL, thats funny!!
I would have put a 14th:
It comes off too condescending IMO, feels to me like the blogger is saying: “there you go, I’ve come up with this astounding piece of prose that will inevitably arouse your minds, thus, you should discuss…in fact, you must discuss this amazing topic I’ve just layed out for you, I’ll return to the olympus now, and leave you with your fellow mortals…”
well that was a bit dramatic, but it comes off too cocky.
Man, oh man! You’ve been reading my mind, Jeff!!
And what is it with people and widgets? The consensus seems to be that if you aren’t a WordPress blogger, you’re just some kinda moron. And some of the biggest selling factors on WP blogs is the plug-ins, gadgets, and gizmos. Like I need a blog to feature an analog clock when I wear a watch and have the time displayed in the system tray anyway?
Even aside from websites, just look at how everyone is all aflutter over Windows Vista because of its glossy widgets and resource-hogging eye-candy. FireFox is another great example of this - people are so gaga over the plug-ins, widgets, and greasy monkeys that they seem to have forgotten to use the dang app for - dare I say it - web browsing.
Lately, it sures seems that fluff, rather than substance, is the order for the day…
I agree w/ everything here except the top (n) lists… I think they serve a purpose, readers eyes like to browse bullets and numbered lists, it gives them something to do.
Number 1, replicating standard OS functions as widgets, is probably my biggest pet peeve.
If you’re at somebody’s blog, you’re already at a computer and can use your own system to figure out things like today’s date. DUH!
It takes up space that can better be used to lay out your content more logically.
Oh, I just love tag clouds. I love how they work exactly backwards. The biggest, most prominent links are the ones that have been applied the most liberally; the ones that will be the least helpful in narrowing your search. Genius.