Finding blogs

Yesterday when I was going through some blogs and doing my own blog entry I read Blackhuff's entry where she was asking the question how people go about finding new blogs.

Ever since I started blogging in 2007 I have found hundreds of blogs.  It doesn't mean that right at this moment in time I'm following hundreds.

Right when Bianca was diagnosed and I entered the world of blogging, I remember thinking that each time I did a Google search I would come across some or the other medical paper.  It wasn't what I wanted or needed.  I wanted real stories of real people with real feelings.

I can't remember how I came across the very first blog (or even what the first blog was that I found), but when I found that first blog I started going through the comments and so started a journey of finding more blogs.  After a while I had so many blogs that they were simply too many for the side of my blog and so I created a new blog called Bravefighters.  It was a blog entirely consisting of blog links.  And I sorted it by type.  So if you were looking for blogs where people were fighting leukemia or brain cancer or neuroblastoma or whatever, you'd be able to find the relevant category.  I was very proud of this blog and it became a little bit popular where I actually started getting some requests from people to add extra links.  I did delete the blog after a while because it became too much work for me, but for a while that was a resource where others found blogs.

I still do it.  If I am looking for new blogs, I tend to look at their blog list on the side of the blogs I follow.  See if anything interests me.  I might visit some of the blogs, have a bit of a look around and if it is the kind of blog I think I would enjoy following then I'll add it to my bloglist (although in saying that sometimes I'm lazy to update my bloglist and I simply bookmark some of the blogs I like reading).  A number of the blogs I'm currently following have been found this way like Blackhuff and 123Blog.  Sometimes I stumble upon a blog because I was doing some or the other Google search like with Sharon.  Or I manipulate make innocent suggestions to people to start their own blogs like with Paul ;-).  Other times people find me because I left a comment on somebody's blog.  I think this is how Maria found me.


The main thing I think for me was to find a blog, go through the comments, visit some of the people who left comments, leave some comments there and slowly but surely I built my "family" of bloggers.

The other aspect that Blackhuff discusses is comments.  I have to admit there are a few blogs I follow where I don't ever comment because they literally have hundreds or thousands of comments already and there is no way they'll probably pay attention to what I have to say.  But I read them because maybe they are quite uplifting to read or funny or positive.

I do try and comment regularly on most of the blogs I follow.

It is nice getting comments, although with me I have a few loyal followers who leave regular comments and most of my readers don't.  Certainly I can see that I have way more readers than people who comment.  So if you are reading here today "Hi! Lovely to have you visit me and don't be shy!".


So how do you go about finding new blogs?  
How did you find me?