Without a doubt, Glenn Reynolds is the kingmaker of the blogosphere. If your blog gets mentioned on Instapundit you are guaranteed your 15 seconds of fame (everything is faster on the web). Every serious blogger writes in order to have an influence, however slight it may be. And if influence is the coin of the realm in the blogosphere, then Reynolds is our Alan Greenspan.

Even if you possess the necessary traits to become one of the Top 8 bloggers you'll still need his help to stay there. Obviously, knowing how to gain his attention would be invaluable knowledge for us lower tier bloggers.

In order to determine if I could find a pattern to his links I analyzed a week's worth of posts (Nov. 2-8 2003). As you probably already know, Mr. Reynolds is a prolific "linker." Over a seven day period I counted 196 links. If this can be taken as an average, he will have over 10,000 links in the course of a year.

While I couldn't find a definite method to ensure that you are included in that lucky 10,000 I have a few suggestions:

1) Write for a non-blog website – 76 of the links were to non-blog sites. (39%)
2) Be Glenn Reynolds – Reynolds linked to his own blog 12 times. (6%)
3) Blog at The Volkh Conspiracy – Volkh is Reynolds favorite blog (other than his own) with 10 links.
4) Be linked already – Once you've been linked once, the odds that you'll receive another link increase dramatically. Exactly half of the links to blogs (54) went to the same 15 bloggers.
5) Be a "higher being" in the Ecosystem --16 links were to higher beings (28 if you include Reynolds himself) (8% / 14%)
6) Be in the top 100 – This group received 47 links (59 if you include Reynolds) (24% / 30%)
7) Don't be ranked below #1678 – The lowest ranked blog that received a link was HipperCritical at #1677.
8) Blog about Iraq -- If you're an obscure blogger, your chances of getting noticed increase dramatically if you blog about Iraq.
9) Don't join the Alliance -- Out of the 196 links, I couldn't find any that were members of the Alliance.
10) Pledge allegiance to Glen -- Four members of the Axis of Naughty (Alphecca, Samizdata.net, The Bitch Girls, Wizbang) got linked.

I've included a list of every blog that was linked to Instapundit so that you can look for your own patterns. Leave me a comment if you notice any others: