Posts with tag "bloggers"

Donations as a blogging revenue

Category: Technology
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Posted 1464 days ago

donation_dog If there is one subject that will draw lines in the sand faster than mentioning Windows and Apple it has to be the discussions that rage over bloggers trying to earn a direct income from their blogs. On the one hand we have the Blogging Purity Patrol™ who say that any form of advertising or direct monetization of a blog is perverse and dirty. The flip side of this are bloggers who write for a living which means monetizing their blog in one form or another.

Some will go overboard with ads and drive readers to the point of wanting to commit unspeakable acts against said blogger. Other though, and in the majority I believe, try hard to find an equal ground between their content and methods of raising money. The problem is finding not only that right mix but also the right vehicle for monetization.

A blogger’s rewards aren’t always monetary

Category: Technology
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Posted 1470 days ago

thank-you As we know the blogging world is divided pretty well down the middle when it comes to making money. On one side you have the blogging purity patrol who think that making money directly from your blog is evil and dirties the profession. Then on the flipside you have those that see nothing wrong with trying to earn a living directly from their writing. It is a discussion that is probably as old as blogging itself. As one who earns a living; or trying to, from blogging there are times when the dollars don’t seem as important as something much more intangible – respect and appreciation.

It is great when you are linked to, or have your writing provide a spark for other bloggers, or have a great comment thread on your posts. Those are some immediate rewards that can build your confidence in what you are doing. However there is one other type of reaction that can provide a longer lasting feeling of success. For me that is when I receive emails about things I have written.

In most cases when we receive emails from readers it is in response to something we have written. Email responses while rare show that you have written something that made someone want to reach out in a much more personable way. Beyond that though, are those emails that just want to thank you for doing what you do. These are the type of emails that validate all those long hours and something I think all bloggers treasure.

I was lucky enough to wake up to finding one of those type of emails waiting for me in my inbox. I won’t say who it was from because I don’t have permission to do so, and really it doesn’t matter. What did matter was the kind words the gentleman had written and will be something I will treasure for some time

Hi Steve

I just wanted to let you know that I have been reading your blog and posts over at the inquistr for some time now and thank you for providing a voice of dissent.

There’s very few people willing to take an alternative viewpoint against the social media mob.

Don’t get me wrong there are some very good things about it, but many people, many ‘industry leaders’ are giving a one sided view. Trust it to be a Canadian eh?

That one email has made all the late nights and hard work worth every minute. Whether I never get another email like this doesn’t matter. What matters is that what I write about is enough to spark a reader to thank me for my effort. There is no price you can put on that.

Blogging isn’t all about the ad revenue, conferences attended, or books written. It is about our readers and knowing that they appreciate our hard work. You don’t need to click on an ad, or buy an eBook, or even leave comments to show how much you appreciate your favorite blogger.

Sometimes the best payment a blogger can receive is an email saying thank you.

(Thank you J. I appreciated that email more than you can know.)

I may be a lot of things but I am not a brand

Category: Technology
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20 comments
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Posted 1518 days ago

There are a lot of buzzwords being tossed around these days that really irritate me but if there is one that sits at the top of the list it has to be – personal brand. Whenever I hear someone using that term the first thing I think of is some poor blogger trussed up like a calf with their bare ass stuck up in the air waiting for the inevitable branding iron to sear their butt.

In the past I have even fallen for this idea of having a personal brand. I blogged about it as if it was the most important thing bloggers should be seeking to frame themselves with. Over the last little while though I have questioned this whole idea of bloggers needing a personal brand and it was culminated with a post recently by David Cohn where he suggests that it isn’t a matter of having a brand but more of just living your life online.

I’ve been thinking about that and come to the conclusion that if you want to be treated in a non-personal packaged way then by all means get building that personal brand. However if you want to be recognized as a person who is an individual and stands by what they write then that is what you should be recognized as – not as a pre-packaged version of buzzwords.

The moment you try and wrap yourself as something to be marketed you insert a wall of spin and marketing between yourself and your readers. It might work well for the Google Juice and living in the long tail but in the end your readers will be able to see that wall of marketing and that isn’t what they signed up for.

Being a brand might seem like a cool idea and for a while it will probably work quite well but at some point we begin writing for that brand instead of why we started writing in the first place – for ourselves and our readers.

Brands are for products not people.

Maybe if my name was Fred Wilson or Louis Gray

Category: Technology
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18 comments
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Posted 1537 days ago

Thanks to a really silly set of posts from Dan Lyons we have returned to the subject of bloggers and how they aren’t like journalists. In a much more sane way Fred Wilson picked up on the discussion this morning with a post about the furor that his screenshot of a Twitter page that is still in testing has become the subject of much speculation. I say sane because unlike the pretend blogger Dan Lyons Fred actually talks about the situation and rather than being condescending he makes a really valid point – almost.

The subject of Fred’s post wasn’t about the discussion over the aforementioned Twitter page but rather that it really shouldn’t be a discussion we are having. As he points out in the post (emphasis mine)

What Harrison did not know, because he didn’t take the time to call me, is that I was not in fact showing off Twitter’s new search results page. I was showing off the ability to follow the discussion of a TV show in real time via Twitter. I left a comment on Harrison’s blog post and thought that was the end of it.

The fact is that roughly 1% of all Twitter users have the integrated search feature turned on right now for testing purposes. Twitter is playing around with look and feel and scaling and will roll out integrated search when it is ready for the entire user base. I happen to be in that 1% and I just did the search and took the screenshot without thinking about it.

The end result; and using Eric Berlin’s post at Louis Gray’s blog, is that bloggers don’t do enough – or any – source checking. In this case he seems to suggest if anyone had checked with him they would have found out that this was a non-starter – there was no story. Fred goes on to add

Think long and hard before starting that second or third blog

Category: Technology
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9 comments
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Posted 1539 days ago

ideas So, you just got a great idea – you think – for a blog and it really doesn’t fit in with what your main blog is about which means it’s time to figure out a domain name, make sure it’s available, get some hosting for it possibly, upload a fresh copy of WordPress and all the plug-ins you think you will need. You’re off to the races with a bunch of starting posts and then it happens – the new blog falls by the wayside, again.

It’s no fault of ours really. We are by nature a creative creature and want to be able to share that creativity with the world. After all that is what blogs are all about – right?

The power of comments

Category: Technology
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17 comments
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Posted 1543 days ago

lpa There is no denying the fact that services like Twitter and FriendFeed – if used properly – can do a lot to drive traffic to a blog. The question of stickiness is one that is still being debated among bloggers but I think there is one tried and true method bloggers can use to bring potentially long term readers to their blogs. As good as FriendFeed and Twitter might be for those bursts of traffic after their initial announcements they don’t come close to the power that commenting can have beyond the original post.

The thing about Twitter and FriendFeed is they have less of a traffic life that you need to bring readers back on a regular basis, and encourage new readers to come by in the first place. Comments can live on long past the posting date because they have the benefit of the original post’s Google Juice.

Of course before Twitter and FriendFeed there was of course Digg, StumbleUpon and Slashdot. There probably isn’t a blogger around who hasn’t secretly wished for a regular hit from any of those sites – the more the better especially if you run advertising. However like Twitter and FriendFeed there is the whole problem of stickiness as getting hits from the Power 3 is more like flash mobs as they hit and run.

Writer’s overload

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1545 days ago

my pending ideas Everyone who writes for a living, regardless of whether it be books, or print, or blogging, will at some point complain about suffering from writer’s block. This term of horror; because that is how we all look upon its happening as, means that no matter how hard we try we just can’t seem to get anything down on paper. We try but in the end all we see is the blank expanse of whitespace and nothing to fill it with.

Equally unnerving though is the internal pressure that can build when there is just too much going on in one’s head that you can’t get it all straight enough to form a single sentence that even comes close to making sense. You know that you’ve got at least one, if not more, really good idea for a story but it is all a jumbled mess that has no beginning and no ending and screw even trying to find the middle.

I don’t even think you can blame it on something like information overload because that is really something that is relatively easy to deal with. No, this is beyond information overload I think as it is more of knowing that you could do something really interesting in sharing what your thoughts are about the information; or even just blurting it out in snappy paragraphs with a cutesy picture or something – and yet you look at all the individual pieces that go together and nothing makes sense other than that welling up feeling of frustration.

Sure you can try walking away from that stream of words but even as you try to escape by watching some television or blowing something up in a game there is a part of your mind that is still trying to string words together. Words that might give you that starting point you desperately want but in the end you only find yourself staring at the darken ceiling listening as the clock ticks by the minutes.

So you get back up and start the coffeemaker back up hoping to face down those demons by once more going through the jigsaw puzzle pieces of posts that you have flagged because they all hold a germ of an idea. As your Twitter stream flows by and the caffeine sweeps into your bloodstream you start to get a grasp on the words you want. Success is only a paragraph away – the demons of of your internal verbal nightmare are slowly returning to their lair.

And you want to be a writer eh .. have at it my friend … it isn’t all fun and games.

Blogger rights – in the US at least

Category: Technology
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2 comments
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Posted 1551 days ago

A big thanks to Cory Doctorow from over at Boing Boing for posting some updated information regarding the legal protections afforded to bloggers. This is the updated information as supplied originally by the Electronic Frontier Foundation

The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you’re doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn’t help – in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven’t yet decided how it applies to bloggers.

But here’s the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn’t use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That’s why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.

Now it should be noted that this information only applies to bloggers living in the United States and that each country will have different; or no legal protections available to bloggers. Hell some countries will throw you in jail for blogging the wrong thing.