Are You A Desperate Blogger?

Rocky Tayaban of Blogging Mix wrote a good post a few days ago that asked the question, "Are you a desperate blogger?" In his post he detailed what he called The 9 Acts of Desperation. Here's the basic rundown:

The 9 Acts of Desperation

1. Create lots of free blogs and link to your official blog.
2. Fake your own comment and use positive feedback.
3. Create numerous accounts with Digg, Reddit and Delicious then submit and vote your own post.
4. Nominate and vote for your own blog.
5. Fake your traffic.
6. Pick a fight with other bloggers to become controversial.
7. Steal concepts and ideas from other bloggers.
8. Lie on your title, site description, etc.

Terence Chang even added a few more of his own.

So Am I A Desperate Blogger?

Thankfully, I've only been guilty of one of them. Well, sort of. I do have a Digg account and I have submitted posts of mine in the past. But I don't see that there's anything wrong with that. It's not unethical at all. It's just another way to reach new readers when you've got a really good post to share.

But what about faking comments? Luckily, I haven't felt the need or desire to resort to that. But it does continue to be a hot topic of debate among bloggers. Here's what Darren Rowse of ProBlogger had to say about it:

I’ll be honest and say that on my first blog I did do a few fake comments in the very very early days. I used them in the same way that you’re suggesting here - to get conversations going and to make the blog look a little more active.

Though it's important to point out what he says right after that.

So I understand the temptation to use them - however I can say from my experience of them that they didn’t work very well for me and the conversations that I had on my blogs in the early days that had a more lasting impact were natural ones with real readers.

Your Intellections

So what are your thoughts? And where do you draw the line between being "desperate" and just plain actively promoting your blog? We all need to self-promote; there's no doubt about that. And if even you've done some of these, is it really all that bad?

I mean, there are certainly a lot more evil things being done by bloggers these days. I won't mention any names, of course, but most of you know at least one person I'm referring to (hint: evil).

So where do you draw the line? And is it really all that bad to be little desperate (for lack of a better term) when you're first starting out? And lastly, how many licks does it take to get to the Toostie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?