Archive for February, 2007

Best of Blog Awards :: Newbie Blogs Only

Monday, February 5th, 2007

Nominations are being taken at the Best of Blog Awards for 2006 (which I guess means your blog had to be started last year). To qualify, your blog must receive under 100 unique visitors a day, and you can’t nominate yourselves, either.

This is truly one of the only blog awards out there to help small, lesser-known blogs get the recognition they deserve!
If your blog falls into one of the following categories, and you need a nomination, drop me a line with your pitch. If your blog is indeed a serious contender for a Best of Blog Award, I am happy to nominate your blog on your behalf:

Best Podcast
Best Sex Blog
Best Music Blog
Best Inspirational Blog
Best Health Blog
Best LGBT Blog
Best New Blog
Best Book/Literary Blog
Best Adoption/Fertility Blog
Best Food, Wine, and Cooking Blog
Best Education/Homeschooling Blog
Best Parenting Blog
Best Hobby Blog
Best Sports Blog
Funniest Blog Nominations

The Mom Blogs Directory

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

The Mom BlogsI just got a shout out from the moms over at The Mom Blogs. Seems as though they are building a directory of… get this, Mom Blogs! ;)

You do need to link to them first to get into the directory. Fair enough, I guess, but there are plenty of blog directories out there that don’t require the link. If they send some good traffic as they grow it would be worth it to build the relationship with them.

Plus, it’s always good to associate with other mom bloggers!

Lisa, Handbag Maven, You’ve Been BlogTipped!

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Lastly, on the true girly side of things, I have fallen in love with a new blog: U-Handblog. Lisa is a UK woman who authors this blog specifically on making handbags, purses, and nifty little hand-sewn trinket holders.

  1. Lisa goes to incredible lengths to give her readers (and customers) seriously easy instructions, with photos to illustrate the process the whole way. THIS is how a crafting blog SHOULD be - but I can’t even imagine how long it takes to put up a post!
  2. Included on her site is a section dedicated to inspiration. And as if her blog wasn’t eMom gets Crafty!enough, these scrumptious bags are enough to make any purse-loving woman drool! It’s another savvy website strategy - she gives her customers a reason to buy her products, but also thier own spotlight - many of the bags are made by her clients.

    So even though I didn’t buy my bag making stuff from you, here’s my own bag I made many years ago, and I still get compliments on it when I use it! :)

  3. The blog is a companion to the eCommerce website U-Handbag - an online store stocked to the hilt with purse-making goodies. What a great example of valuable content that ’soft sells’ her products! And check them out, they are indeed yummy!

The Yummy Products of U-Handbag

  • Tip - One of the things I found while blogging was that my SEO results relied heavily on my category names and my post title names. I noticed that your categories and titles are catchy, but don’t contain a lot of the keywords your customers might naturally use to find you. Since your blog is still relatively new, you may want to tweak those now so that you can pave the way for lots of natural search traffic later!

    BlogBloke, You’ve Been BlogTipped!

    Friday, February 2nd, 2007

    The BlogBloke is one of the very first blogs I interacted with when I first started blogging. This semi-anonymous “Bloke” is one friendly and helpful guy, and one I have respected from the get-go.

    1. Bloke’s blog has been a consistent source of commen-sense blogging tips and advice for nearly 2 years. Still today, his information is easily understandable and helpful - a true testament to his commitment to being approachable and a resource for his readers.
    2. I can totally testify to the fact that this blogger is all about interaction - if you link to or comment on his blog, he actually has a process in place to stay on top of these relationships and give back. Even when I was just a blip on the blogosphere. I wish I could say I’m as good about that!!
    3. Something that is unique about this blog is that the Blog Bloke still runs his blog on Blogger, and has done so amazingly well. I really can’t think of any other blogger out there who is as knowledgable of a resource of maximizing the potential of this platform as the Bloke himself.
    • Tip :: I looked at your sidebar about 3 times before I found that your categories were hiding under the ZoomCloud widget. Perhaps I’m just too ADHD, but I wonder if having a regular category list might drive more ‘intuitive’ traffic to your wonderful archives of knowledge?

    Next Up, Lisa at U-Handblog

    Leslie Morgan Steiner, You’ve Been BlogTipped!

    Friday, February 2nd, 2007

    It’s time to go BlogTipping! The concept is simple. On the first of the month:

    Give a shout out to 3 Blogs

    Give them all 3 Compliments

    Offer them 1 Tip

    The tradition was generously started by Easton Ellsworth over at BusinessBlogWire, as a way to get the word out about great blogs.

    First up is Leslie Morgan Steiner’s Washington Post Blog, On Balance.

    1. Leslie is a seriously gifted writer, somehow elegantly walking the line between High-Powered Career Maven and Vulnerable, yet Strong Mom with astonishing honesty and enviable charisma - she is truly a role model for moms seeking balance, IMHO.
    2. On the OnBalance blog, every Tuesday is opened up to reader-submitted posts. A very large group of my own readers can take advantage of this great opportunity, simply because I know that all of you are gifted writers already blogging about work-life balance. So get your original, unpublished content into Leslie’s hands now! What an opportunity!
    3. I admire the fact that Leslie has truly engaged her audience - posts get between 200-600 comments - EACH! I think more than one prominent journalist could take a lesson or two from her.
    • Tip - Although your blog is highly visible to Washington Post readers, I think it hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves in the blogosphere. It’s a shame and I would guess a lot of people are missing out on your great content because of it. I’m sure it’s nothing a good little bit of Word-of-Mouth campaigning couldn’t take care of. :)

    Next Up :: The Blog Bloke

    Viral Marketing Gone Awry - Hysterical!

    Friday, February 2nd, 2007

    Since my kids are still little, we try to avoid Adult Swim around here - so it was only this week that I first heard about the Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

    Although things have gone a little awry, I have a hunch that Turner Broadcasting and their Agency are giggling with glee behind the scenes. In their wildest dreams they couldn’t have come up with a plan to get this much publicity for their little cartoon show (ah, the power of WOM!).

    The two guys who placed these lightboxes held a “press conference” yesterday… and the press was a little disturbed that they weren’t being taken very seriously.

    To quote Philip Barron, …”in a sense, they’re taking it just as seriously as they ought to.”

    You just have to watch for some rather ’serious’ Friday giggles! :)

    Blogging Ethics :: Should We Be Congruent?

    Thursday, February 1st, 2007

    I’ve had a very interesting experience since I wrote my post the other day about “naive mommy bloggers”. I’ve struggled with what to say, or even whether to address this issue again on my blog.

    I believe that Aaron didn’t “mean any harm” (and he, by the way, does indeed write some great content most of the time). Although I must say that Jawad just seems to dig his grave deeper based on the comment stream of the original post.

    But in the big picture, this isn’t a Mommy Blogging issue.

    And this isn’t a Men vs. Women issue.

    This isn’t even an eMom vs. Aaron Wall and Jawad issue.

    It’s an issue of congruency.

    As bloggers, authors, and internet publishers, should we take what we write seriously? Personally, I choose my words very carefully to ensure that what I write accurately conveys what I want people to hear.

    No matter how much these men respect women, the words they chose in their original writings can be *taken* very, very differently.

    Senator Joseph Biden recently made a similar error, describing Obama Barak as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

    What he meant by that, in his apology and clarification statement, “…Was that he’s got new ideas, he’s a new guy on the block… ” - and NOT that it “…seemed to undercut past black presidential candidates” - which is how it could be *taken*.

    So here are MY congruent words:

    Aaron and Jawad,

    I respect both of you for your accomplishments and simply as human beings. I have chosen not to take anything that you said personally. My readers can make their own decisions about your words.

    I would simply like to request that if you truly intended a different meaning in what you wrote, that you change your words to convey the true meaning of your thoughts.

    As prominent men on the internet, it is my personal belief that you have a responsibility to your readers to be congruent with your words.

    You can take or leave that belief.

    But to be congruent with my own self, and to my readers, I would like to stand up and let you know that I think the words you chose will eventually hurt you more than they will help you.

    And I don’t wish that upon you.

    I do wish that your words and actions be congruent with the men that I know you are - talented, smart, and influential men in the online marketing space.

    AdSense Tip :: PIN Google Down

    Thursday, February 1st, 2007

    A little while ago, I reached an advertising milestone - my AdSense earnings went above $100, the first threshold for payment. Wow. (Don’t all gasp at once!!)

    Soon thereafter, AdSense simply stopped working - they refused to serve up any new ads on my site. There was a little note on the admin panel stating

    Your pages are displaying Public Service Advertisements (PSAs) because you have not verified your contact information

    But when I clicked on it, it took me to a completely uninformative page that didn’t give me ANY clue as to what to do to get my ads back up and running.

    For a week or so, I just blew it off - I make so little on AdSense that it wasn’t a priority. But I finally caved and shot Robyn Tippins an email asking her advice. She mentioned that I probably didn’t enter in the PIN that Google snail-mailed me :: and also said that it was likely I never even recieved the PIN in the first place.

    She was right. In fact, even the Big Guy had a hard time getting his PIN.

    So if you are using AdSense, here’s my tip. As soon as you have hit $50 or so in earnings, do the following:

    • Login to your Google AdSense Account
    • Click on the My Account tab
    • Click on Payment History
    • There is a box in the middle of the page for “Required Actions
    • There you will find the info to request your snail mail PIN

    This PIN takes 2-3 weeks to arrive - by the time I procrastinated, figured out the problem, requested “another” PIN, and finally received aforementioned PIN, my ads were down for nearly a month.

    THAT actually took a bite out of my earnings.

    In other words, go get that PIN now. :)