I’m not going to argue that being sexually compatible isn’t an important part of any successful relationship. But I don’t understand why men need to know that immediately.  “Hi. How are you? I’m Ben. Are you good in bed?” First off, if we slept with men on the first date, we’d never hear from them again, regardless of how good it is. So why do we need to let them know immediately if we’re compatible or not?

A few years ago, I’d gone on a few pathetic dates with a guy we called “Urckle” cause he looked like Steve Urckle. There was nothing standout about the guy, but nothing that totally wanted to make me barf. So I went on 3 or 4 dates with him. During the last one, he’d gotten completely wasted at a friends party (who lived upstairs from me), so I’d offered him my couch to sleep on. I was hoping that after he left, I’d never hear from him again.

Of course not. He pinged me on msn messenger later that day, and asked what I was like in bed. He said he didn’t want to waste his time with me if I was a prude. That was the last sentence he ever spoke to me.

Browsing through my very disappointing eHarmony matches this evening, I was reading Joel from Toronto’s “Must Haves and Can’t Stands” (someday I’ll explain how eHarmony works…whenever I get my first crummy date). In there, he put “Sexually Knowledgeable”. I can understand how this would be important to someone…but you only tell that to women you expect to sleep with right off the bat.

Nice try guys, guess you’ll never know.

On my recent trip to Boston, the rental car I was driving had a flat tire. (My first ever, not that exciting). We were just outside of Rochester, NY when it happened. After some confusion about who we were supposed to call to fix it, some guy with a tow-truck put the donut on and we drove to the nearest Sam’s Club to get it fixed.

I know we always complain about how rude Americans are and how they’re selfish and think they are the center of the universe and all that, so I was kinda expecting that when we got there. Quite the opposite. The folks at Sam’s Club were super nice, very friendly, trying to have small conversations with us, telling us about where their sons are going to college, etc. The guy who fixed the tires even gave me the address of the nearest Enterprise car rental place so we could take the car back and yell at them. My co-drivers were getting headaches, so while one waited, I ran across to the Walmart (love you Sam’s Club, but I am not buying a 1000 pack of Advil) to get some headache medicine. When I was done paying, the cashier wished me a good day and told me she hoped my headache would get better. Whoa. That to me was exceptional.

So, I made the trip out to the suburbs today to Sam’s Club, hoping maybe it was some sort of Sam’s Club policy to be polite to people. Nope. Even the samples people weren’t pushing their product on me. No hello’s or anything from the cashiers. I thought that maybe when we were in Henrietta (the town we ended up in NY) it was just small town niceness, and in Toronto, everyone is so mean to others because they are just too many people. (I personally hate just about everyone). But Sam’s Club was DEAD.

So, moral of the boring story, Americans aren’t as bad as they seem. I love you Henrietta Sam’s Club workers.

“Black guys can’t increase the size of their legs.”

I was reading Women’s Health magazine (the June 2008 edition) and it had this page full of odd relationship stats. The thing that always gets me about these surveys, is that they exist in the first place. Who decided that knowing how many women have dumped a guy because he was a bad dancer (2%) was important to know?

Some of the stats in here include:

- Number of men the average woman has slept with (including husband): 6

- The average woman is most likely to dump a guy on a Monday in January than any other day (my last boyfriend dumped on a Sunday in January. Right after Desperate Housewives).

- 11% of Americans think it’s ok to dump someone via text message. Wow.

- 27% of single women are still pining over an ex; 50% of single men are still pining over an ex.

It’s that last stat that grabbed my attention. Twice as many men are still in love with their exes as women are. I’ve always had a theory that men fall way harder for women than women fall for men. We women fall way more often, and way sooner, but when men fall for women, they fall HARD. But we’re so used to the ups and down, so it never phases us long when we get dumped (and 73% of us keep gifts from our ex’s. Duh.).

As a single girl out there in the dating world, I find this stat rather discouraging. With everything else I have to fight against to get a date, I now have to deal with the fact that half of the dateable men are too emotionally unready to move on.

Pansies. Get over it.

In our last ProBlogger Poll I asked readers whether they run RSS ads on their main blog. The results are in - 66% of you don’t run RSS ads on your blog.

What I find interesting is that 18 months ago I ran this same poll. The results were that 75% of readers didn’t run RSS ads on their blog. While there’s still a significant number of bloggers not doing RSS ads there’s been a definite shift.

PS: Don’t forget to vote in our new poll.

Share This

Time for another ProBlogger poll - looking forward to hearing what you’ve got to say on this question:

If your answer is yes - tell us what the source is in comments below.

Share This

I’ve been behind checking my email this week and it could have cost you a great deal….

Apparently the fantastic Thesis WordPress theme (see my first impressions of Thesis here) is running a special this weekend. They’ve just updated the theme with some great new features (see below) but if you buy it before the end of 31 August you get another theme from DIYthemes ‘Cosmo’ (a magazine style theme) for free.

The update of Thesis includes:

• A new ‘design options’ panel which gives you the ability to customize fonts and font sizes. This will help set your blog apart from others using this theme.
• Also in the design options it the ability to change the layout of your blog by selecting different number of columns and column width.

There’s more new stuff too - see it all at Thesis WordPress theme.

PS: sorry I didn’t post this earlier - I hope it doesn’t mean any of you miss out, it’s been one of those weeks in the Rowse house with sick little guys everywhere!

Share This

Mitch from Technipages.com shot me an email this week asking me for advice on getting accepted into CPM banner ad networks like ValueClick, TribalFusion and others. He commented that while he has decent traffic (around 140,000 page views a month) he hadn’t had much luck with being accepted and asked for advice.

This is a question I’ve had numerous times so I thought I’d post my response (I have slightly edited from my original answer).

1. Design Matters - the more professional a site looks the better impression it will make and the increased likelihood of acceptance.
2. Content - some advertising networks will judge your suitability based upon both the topic and also the type of posts (including length, editorial style etc). Some will also check to see if the content is original and or appearing elsewhere online. Topic plays a big part for some ad networks as they will sometimes have specific focuses and be looking for content partners with relevant content to their advertisers. I also know of at least one ad network who looks at the ‘quality’ of content - particularly looking at how well it is written, whether it is up to date, looking at whether there is an active user base interacting with it etc. They do this because they have a premium advertising base who don’t just want to align themselves with any old blog but only those that they perceive as premium. Each network also has its own standards on adult content, use of language (swearing) and other topics that they may or may not cover.
3. Hosting and Personal sites - some ad networks don’t accept sites that they perceives to be ‘personal’ and don’t accept sites that are hosted on free services or on services where you don’t own your domain (for example blogspot blogs).
4. Type of Site - some networks don’t accept sites that are primarily forums as they tend not to perform as well with advertising due to the high amount of page views per visitor and the ad blindness that quickly happens.
5. Other advertising - if a site already has lots of ads on it this can be off putting for some ad networks.
6. Traffic sources - if you have lots of non US traffic some ad networks will mark you down for that as they only have ad networks for that market.
7. Language - many ad networks will not accept non English written sites. Again - this is about their advertisers (largely US based in many cases) not wanting to target ‘international’ audiences.
8. Traffic numbers - this is the killer, many will reject unless you’re doing big traffic - they will check sources like comscore, Alexa to double check whether the numbers you are giving them are accurate.

Most ad networks have fairly good pages for publishers outlining what they do and don’t accept. Here you can see requirements from ValueClick and TribalFushion (although I’ve heard a lot of people say that they feel they fit into TribalFushion and don’t get in).

Some of the above reasons are frustrating. As someone who has built blogs for non US audiences I know some of the pain of not being accepted. However the main advice I gave Mitch was to keep building traffic and making the site look as professional as possible. Traffic numbers speak very loudly so to keep traffic trending up will mean that he finds it is easier and easier to get accepted into these programs. Also - keep hunting around for options, experiment with different ways to make money from your blog and be patient.

Share This

Ego blogging seems to be the big thing. If the egos aren’t blogging, they are telling other bloggers how bad their ego is. Trust me, I represent - both the ego, and the telling egos off.

So I’m offering a new Technosailor tee-shirt for sale that states very simply, “I am famous, therefore I blog”.

The shirt is a high quality American Apparel tee-shirt (if you’ve never had one, they are super comfortable) and that should be enough to pay the premium price. I admit, these shirts cost more than some chinsey Cafépress tee shirt but it won’t fade, shrink or get stretched out like those ones do. Nor will it make you sweat unnaturally with some iron on crap.

No, this is high quality and comfortable and will last. You’ll be supporting me, plus staking your claim to internet fame. Now, people will know you’re famous. Because you have to make sure they know!

I will have a ladies tee available shortly as well and open to suggestions on other preferred colors. Enjoy!

What if I told you that there’s a way to make money as a result of your blog where you don’t need to have a single ad on your blog, where you don’t have to run any affiliate programs and where you don’t have to write any paid reviews?

Would you be interested?

Image by iDream_in_Infrared

Much is written about how bloggers make money through selling advertising space or running affiliate programs on their blogs. However there’s a second, somewhat hidden, group of bloggers who make a great living not directly from their blogs - but indirectly as a result of them.

Instead of using their traffic to sell advertising or promote products to earn commissions from - they leverage the traffic to their blog in another way - usually to sell themselves.

Today I want to highlight 10 ways of making money BECAUSE of your blog - as opposed to making money directly from it via advertising, paid reviews or affiliate programs.

1. Consulting

The blogger consultant model is simple. You give away information generously on your given topic and then sell your services to help people apply your teaching to their personal situation with some personal attention from you.

Bloggers who also act as consultants generally charge for their time by the hour, but I’ve also come across some who have landed ongoing consulting work in their field of expertise and have been signed up on retainer by companies.

Some might think that it’s just bloggers who blog about blogging who pick up consulting work (I’ve done my fair share) but it’s not the case. I’ve met dating bloggers, marketing bloggers, photography bloggers, craft bloggers and more who all offer their services in coaching, mentoring and training their readers one on one.

2. Book Authorship

It is becoming more and more common for bloggers to be approached by book publishers to write books. Chris and I were approached to write ProBlogger the Book by Wiley, Gina from Lifehacker landed a 2 book deal, Frank from Post Secret has done numerous books, Steve Pavlina has one coming out soon…. the list goes on and on. Sometimes book are heavily based upon the blog itself - other times the book is completely new.

3. Speaking

Bloggers spend day in and day out writing content for their blogs and so for many it is not too much of a stretch to translate the principles that they are writing about into verbal sessions at conferences or other public speaking opportunities.

Often these sorts of speaking engagements are not for any kind of payment but once you build your profile in a niche the paid opportunities do come along for many - particularly when you’re asked to speak in-house for companies or organizations.

4. Training

There’s some overlap here with ’speaking’ as in many instances speakers are engaged in a training capacity - but some bloggers also take the ‘training’ that they do in another direction and run their own training courses for readers. They leverage the traffic that they have do direct people to training either online (membership sites) or even offline into real life training events.

One blogger who I’ve seen do this really well is David Hobby from Strobist who has successfully run a variety of real life training events on his niche (photography lighting). He’s also done spin off DVDs of the training which he sells.

5. Freelance Writing

I’ve had many approaches for this myself and see quite a few other bloggers land this type of work. Their profile and expertise on a blog leads other websites, blogs, magazines, newspapers etc to ask them to contribute in a paid capacity.

This might be a newspaper column, a regular staff writer role or even a one off paid contribution.

6. Selling Services

Once you establish a readership on a topic other opportunities can arise to sell a variety of services from your blog. Here at ProBlogger I added a job board (something many blogs have done), Blogger Timothy Sykes makes tens of thousands a month with an ’stock market alerts’ service, Shoemoney is introducing ‘Shoemoney Tools‘ (a great resource for bloggers actually - I’ve been playing with it the last few days).

Another example is Kevin from Real Lawyers have blogs who offers lawyers and law firms a blogging solution.

7. Selling E-Resources

Again - there’s some cross over here with some of the above but it’s something that we’ve seen a lot of bloggers doing (or attempting to do) of late with the creation of ebooks, membership sites, tools and software that relate to their niche.

8. Landing ‘Real’ Jobs

One of the great things about starting a blog that builds your profile and perceived expertise in an industry is that others in that industry begin to see you as an attractive addition to their staff.

I’ve seen a number of bloggers write about this over the years - Steve Rubel is one that comes to mind as someone who became very well known in the PR industry and was head hunted by a PR firm as a result of his blogging.

9. Finding Business Customers and Clients

Another indirect income earner that many bloggers tap into is leveraging their blog’s profile to send find new clients and send new business to their offline companies.

In a sense their blog becomes like an advertisement to their company’s products and services.

There are literally thousands of ‘business blogs’ who do this. The key is not to make the blog purely a sales pitch or marketing device but to make it a destination of value to readers and to let this sell you and your business.

What’s Number 10?

Every week I ‘meet’ (virtually) bloggers who are making money from their blogs in ways that I’d never considered before. There are certainly some creative people out there coming up with some innovative ways to build blogs into income streams.

So I’m leaving #10 in this list up to you. What other ‘indirect’ ways of making money from blogs do you do or see others doing? I’d love to see examples of any of the methods above or any other that I might have missed. Can’t wait to read your number 10s!

Share This