Getting started - Search for Blogging tools

My second post
I chose to blog on Blogger (same as blogspot.com) which is owned by Google. www.blogger.com or www.blogspot.com takes you to the same page from where bloggers login to manage their blogs. www.blogspot.com is the actual domain which your blog name gets prefixed to, like yourblogname.blogspot.com

This site offers ready templates which are not very attractive and do not have many choices one might expect. Many templates are very familiar since many bloggers use them. My template is very common and widely used, I think it will do for now will change to some better one or may create a custom template later.

I need many blogging tools such as social bookmarks, counters for keeping a track of my visitors and other social catalogs to find bloggers with similar interests. I will start by looking for some good free counters.