Ok, so either you’ve got a new blog and it’s time for creating content, either you’re not really satisified with what sources you’re already using. This means it’s time for you to start looking for the best sources around. The auto world is very spread and you can write about a lot of stuff, like new cars, concepts, motorsport, new technologies, about the big companies (finance, future plans), analyze the gas price crysis, the environment (car related, of course), interesting things (crashes, celebrities and their cars, funny photos/ads). You get the point, a lot of stuff.

But the big question is What sources do we use?. Where do you find the trusted sites/blogs with the most interesting content?

The diversity of the auto domain means that you can also use a lot of sources such as: other auto blogs (absolutely neccesary), large auto news sites, the big news websites (reuters, bbc, yahoo news, google news, nytimes, wired and so on), big general social news sites like Digg or Reddit and the targeted ones, like Autospies (even though this one doesn’t send you thousands or tens of thousands visitors, like Digg or Reddit, the ones it sends are targeted visitors, interested in auto news, which are more likely to become regular readers).

How do we find the best sources?

First of all, don’t rush. Don’t expect to find all the valuable sources in one day, because it takes time to find and filter the best sources. Basically, when discovering a new site you could use as a source, it’s good to check a few things before bookmarking it or adding it to your feedreader:

1. Is the website frequently updated? You don’t want to subscribe to a website which is updated once a month, so I suggest you try and find websites that are updated daily (of course, there are exceptions, with sites updated less frequent than that but which create very valuable content).

2. Does the site/blog have quality content? Do you like what you read there? If the site/blog only writes crap (links to other articles, videos) than you don’t want to waste time reading that everyday.

3. Though not necessary relevant, you could also check the blog/site’s traffic. For that, you need to go to Alexa (maybe some of you are familiar with it). Alexa ranks websites according to their pageviews count. The higher the rank, the more visited the website is (Yahoo is 1st, Google is 2nd). Here you can search for the site you’re interested in. These Alexa rankings are not very relevant, but it will give you a slight idea of the site’s traffic. For example, Auto Unleashed has an Alexa traffic of 37,000 and it gets about 300,000 page views per month. Jalopnik has around 4,000 Alexa rank and it gets more than 10 million pageviews each month. Based on this stats, I’d suggest you search for sites with the Alexa rank below 150,000. Higher than that, the site is getting very few visitors. Of course, this doesn’t apply all the time, because you might also find very good sites/blogs that aren’t promoted very effectively but which produce very good content.

Ways to find sources

(the order is random)

1. Google. Yeah, I know it sounds basic, but Google can be a very good tool, if used properly. Search what you’re interested in (”auto blog”, “car blog”, “car news”, “auto news”, etc.) and then look for the things mentioned above.

2. Once you’ve found a few quality sites/blogs check out the sources they regullary quote. Usually, quality blogs give links to other quality sites, which you could also use as sources.

3. Official press releases. Want to be the first one to find out when something new comes from the large car manufacturers or from the tuning companies, for example? Then you should create an account on their media section and make sure you get notified every time they make an official press release.

4. Web directories. There are thousands of directories you could check out, like Dmoz, Blog Catalog, Blog Top Sites, Blogged.

5. Social news sites. You can find a very good list of the most important social news sites, written by Maki from Doshdosh, over here.

6. Large news websites. The auto domain being pretty popular, you’ll find a lot of interesting news on large websites like reuters, bbc, yahoo news, google news, nytimes and so on.

Ok, so I found a site a like, what next?

To know when something new shows up, I recommend two methods:

1. Use a feed reader. I consider this tool absolutely required. You can use desktop feed reader, like FeedDemon, or a web feed reader, like Google Reader or Bloglines. When you find a new interesting site, just add their RSS feed to your reader and know when it’s updated, without having to check out the site every 1 hour.

2. Add it to your bookmarks. Create a new bookmark folder, add the websites there and then check it out frequently to find out what’s new. I don’t really recommend this method, because, first of all, you can only open about 20 browser tabs (more than that and you’ll browser will go crazy) and, second, you don’t have the possibility to know exactly when new stuff shows up.

3. There’s also email subscription. If one website doesn’t offer RSS feed (thought these ones are pretty rare these days), try to search and see if they offer some sort of email subscription and subscribe to that.

Find the best sources is one very important part of blogging, many bloggers ignore. Find the right sources and you’ll be able to blog better. And these are a few things I recommend. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can come up with something new. I’d really like to hear about your experiences, so please feel free to drop a comment.