It’s that time of year again . . . time to get your trick-or-treating gear ready.

Trust me, this year you’re too old to troll the neighborhood begging for miniature Twix bars. Your neighbors are wise to you and your “Eminem costume.”

Instead, how about putting a little thought into what your blog will be this Halloween?

Sure, you can go the cheap and easy way and get a Perez Hilton mask, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, look through this collection of spooky archetypes and see if you can spot your blog on the list.

The devil

Instead of a pitchfork, the devil blog sports a yellow highlighter and screaming red headlines.

The devil blog is all about setting up scams and systems so you don’t need to show up to write every day. Sure, the convoluted "blueprint" you paid for that combines scraped content, Adwords arbitrage, and finding a source for counterfeit Acai berries is going to take you about three months to build. And that's if you don't sleep. But one day it’s gonna pay off big, baby.

The devil blog is all about the blogger. Your needs, your income, your rewards, and to hell with your readers, or anyone else for that matter.

Double bonus points if your blog is about making money online and you have yet to make your first twenty bucks.

The angel

You’ve been blogging since 1968, back when your posts took the form of hand-embroidered manifestos passed from coffeehouse to coffeehouse via traveling folk singers. Readership really picked up once the Internet got invented.

You’ve given thousands of hours of your life to your community and never asked for anything in return. You are saintly beyond reproach.

Ok, there was that one time, back in 2002, when you asked your audience to do you a favor. They flamed you like a campfire marshmallow. You blamed Al Quaeda and global warming, and have never tried it since.

The zombie

This is the blog that actually died about 18 months ago, but somehow it just keeps limping along, looking plaintively for brains.

You keep meaning to get serious about your cornerstone content. You fully intend to get your blog moved over to your own domain name. And you’re definitely going to write a new post since that last one you did on Groundhog Day. But frankly, Farmville takes a lot of free time, and you just don’t have the bandwidth.

Our advice: Put the damned thing out of its misery and give it a decent burial already.

The sexy witch

You’re tough and smart. You’re ballsy. You’re outspoken. You swear, a lot. You’re prickly and inconvenient, and possibly a little nuts.

You’re not afraid to mock your male compatriots for having smaller/less effective testicles than you do.

You look pretty darned good in that costume, and you know it.

The trendy costume

You’re swine flu or Dead Kanye or the Public Option for U.S. healthcare.

The main thing is to get people talking, stir up lots of controversy, and get some buzz going. Six weeks after Halloween is over, even you won’t remember what exactly the point was.

To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the future, everyone will be a trending topic on Twitter for fifteen minutes.

The power ranger

You do everything right. You have superhuman strength, agility, and you can fly. Your content is strong, your headlines are sharp, your Twitter etiquette is impeccable.

You’ve got everything going for you, except no one can tell the difference between you and the other 10,000 power rangers that showed up at their door on Saturday night. Find a little spark of something genuinely different and you’ll be ready to actually unleash that ninja storm and do some damage.

So how about you?

I was trying to think of the canonical cool costume to end with, but there really isn’t one.

Because really good costumes can be funny, weird, interesting, creative, insane. The things that make for great Halloween costumes are pretty similar to what make great blogs. But they can’t be lame me-too copies of what some other cool person is doing.

Let us know in the comments what your blog is this Halloween. We can’t wait to check you out.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

President Obama pushed hard today to convince small business owners that they would gain from health care reform. His speech to small business owners in Washington came as House Democrats released a reform bill they could vote on as soon as next week. The White House this morning also published a new report selling the benefits of health reform to Main Street. Among the talking points:

• 3.6 million small businesses could qualify for tax credits to subsidize insurance. These include businesses with 25 or fewer employees and average wages under $40,000.
• Health insurance exchanges could save firms with fewer than 50 employees 25% off the expected cost of single premiums in 2016.

Small business is center stage in the public debate during the week when both chambers of Congress released new versions of their health reform bills. Obama's latest push comes late in a week that began with small business health costs leading the Sunday New York Times. And it follows the administration's focus last week on extending recovery efforts by beefing up loan guarantees and encouraging community banks to expand small business lending. As Robb Mandelbaum reported in the Times, the lending initiatives seem intended at least in part to court Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe's vote for health reform.

As for the House bill out today, BW's Jane Sasseen looks at the battle ahead:

The House bill includes higher penalties on businesses that don't provide insurance for their employees; those with more than 100 workers would be expected to cough up a penalty of 8% of payroll. And individuals who don't get coverage could face a penalty of 2.5%.

But the biggest difference -- and the biggest fight ahead -- comes in how the bill would be paid for. While the Senate wants to tax so-called "Cadillac" health care plans in order to fund health care reforms, the House wants to impose a surtax of 5.4% for individuals making adjusted gross incomes of over $500,000 and couples over $1 million a year to pay for a chunk of their bill.

Companies with payroll under $500,000 would be exempt from the employer mandate. The new tax proposal on high incomes (which seems unlikely to make it past the Senate into a final bill) is sure to draw sharp criticism. Prepare for a rush of rhetoric about how the House's proposed tax would fall on the shoulders of small businesses. For the record: Most small business owners aren't earning that much. (Remember, AGI is income after business expenses and other adjustments.)

In separate statements, the NFIB panned the House bill and struck a cautious tone toward Obama. The group remains opposed to employer mandates and a public plan, even under the "opt-out" compromise in the Senate. The Small Business Majority supported today's House bill. Now that Congress has concrete proposals out of committee, we'll look past the rhetoric and unpack the details that matter to small business owners in the coming days.

Video of Obama's speech today is below.