blogger millionaire

“To blog successfully you have to be passionate
about something and stay true to it.”

Are you puzzled by projects such as making new plants from cuttings? Or do you need to know what to do to get rid of the stench of a defrosted freezer or smelly sink drain? Do you know whether you should use coffee grounds as fertilizer, and with which plants? Can you really paint your car for www.diylife.com $300? Answers to these and related questions—as well as lots more completely unrelated questions—are free for the reading at DIY Life, a blog that delivers a steady stream of tips, ideas, do-it-yourself projects, how-tos, and pragmatic info such as product reviews and safety recalls. The blog’s categories include Home & Family, Home Improvement, Hobbies & Crafts, and Tech—with coverage of everything from crafting and power tools to home interior and mechanics. DIY Life’s editor, Victor Agreda, has an interesting mix of education and experience that is probably ideal for blogging on a mix of subjects. He has a degree in English, and went to journalism school and film school. He has worked for a cable television company and in a music library, where he was first exposed to things like Mosaic, HTML, Archie, and Gopher. Today Agreda teaches college-level English, as well as hands-on multimedia subjects. Working primarily in an administrative capacity, Agreda doesn’t get to blog nearly as much as he’d like, but he finds working with over a dozen bloggers mostly agreeable.

Victor Agreda’s experience across multiple blogging subjects proves that you don’t have to stick with one subject as a blogger. If something new attracts you and you are a fast learner, it’s possible to change your role in blogging. No matter what your subject, the following basic axioms and attitudes apply:

As described by Eric T, the semi-anonymous Canadian engineer who runs it, Internet Duct Tape is a blog about making technology work for you instead of making you work for technology. Eric also enjoys making things work that were never intended to work. Internet Duct Tape (sometimes referred to as IDT) is part philisophy, part how-to, and all about sharing knowledge and helping other people. It has www.internetducttape.com made the Technorati Top 100 Most Favorited list more than once, and has been linked to every major blog and technical website—including Download Squad, Digg, Slashdot, Fark, del.icio.us, and so on. At its peak in February 2007, Internet Duct Tape was getting more than 120,000 page views per month. Things have slacked off since Eric T. demoted blogging from his primary activity to the status of a secondary hobby. But it’s still visited by thousands daily.

If People Are Interested, Search Engines Will Follow In addition to blogging, Eric T. connects with other Internet users through a variety of free software tools for bloggers, presented under the aegis of IDT Labs. His applications (many of them designed for Firefox) include tools to use with Flickr, del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Google Reader, Technorati, and WordPress (his blog’s platform). All are available for download.

Much of Internet Duct Tape’s success seems rooted in simplicity. In Eric T.’s approach to blogging, there are no complex rules to follow, no mantras to chant, and no search engines to optimize. Instead, he emphasizes helping people, learning, and staying focused. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Like so many bloggers, Richard MacManus started blogging as a hobby, a means of sharing his thoughts on technology—Web 2.0 in particular. He was a corporate web manager until August 2005, when he quit the day job and went to work for himself—his first venture into business. Since its launch in 2003, Read/WriteWeb has evolved into a lineup of offerings that includes web technology news, reviews, and analysis, with some www.readwriteweb.com emphasis on startups and beta products. It is the first blog in MacManus’s Read/WriteWeb Network, a group of web technology blogs. His other sites are last100 (www.last100.com/), which is a blog about the digital lifestyle, and AltSearchEngines (www.altsearchengines.com/), which is a source of news and commentary on search engines and content aggregators. Additional blogs for the network are planned.

Like many bloggers interviewed in this book, Richard MacManus is an example of what can happen when you dig in and work at something for which you have passion. The rest of the recipe follows that of most successful bloggers:

Gary Lee takes a decidedly different approach to blogging. He created Mr. Gary Lee (www.mrgarylee.com) as a forum for his observations on things he finds on the Web, and to provide Internet marketing tips. Still learning, Lee shares the learning process as he goes, creating an ever-evolving tyro’s guide to search engine optimization (SEO) and networking.

Lee’s most notable accomplishment in building traffic was with what is called a “link train,” aimed specifically at getting into the Technorati list of theTop 100 Most Favorited blogs—which ranks a blog by the number of Technorati members who have added it to their Favorites list. Unlike Technorati’s Top 100 Most Linked To blogs, the Most Favorited list is fairly easy to break into. It relies largely on social networking, and involves a system of trading links. If you know enough people who are interested in placing you on their Favorites list, you can probably make the list. And making the list can result in a tremendous increase in a blog’s traffic.

Lee made the Technorati list about six months after starting Mr. Gary Lee, which is an unusually short period of time, especially considering the thousands of competitors trying to make that list. Lee will eventually get knocked off the list, but as far as he is concerned, making the list was a successful experiment. Lee lives in Southern California, and has a degree in economics. He currently works for himself as an Internet marketing and business development consultant. After several years of working at established companies, Lee now helps businesses bring traffic to their site and teaches them how to monetize that traffic. A dyed-in-the-wool Apple fan, Lee celebrated that fact by giving away an Apple iPhone through his blog. The giveaway was of course designed to in crease traffic, but the selection of an iPhone as a prize was something of a tribute to Apple.

Luxist is one of an elite group of blogs that cover luxury items for those who can afford the best (or just really expensive) stuff, and for those who like to window-shop. A Weblogs, Inc. property, it covers everything in luxury, from apparel, art, and auctions to holidays, pets, wings, and writing instruments.

No category is left unexplored. There’s even a weekly high-end real www.luxist.com estate feature, focusing on the estates of the wealthy and famous, like singer Stevie Nicks. As the blog’s editor, Deidre Woollard works with several other writers to produce a constant stream of information about merchandise, events, experiences, and other things that you just won’t see anywhere else.

Woollard’s worked with Luxist since its opening in December, 2004. Con currently, she was the lead of Luxist’s sister blog, Slashfood (www.slashfood.com). The blog has consistently served up an amazing array of luxury ever since. Woollard started blogging late in 2003, while living in a tiny town in a remote area of Northern California. In the beginning, she blogged to keep herself entertained and involved with the outside world. The town, with a population of 300, offered few opportunities for either. She was not new to the Web. She had set up her own websites before, but blogging had a special attraction for her. She saw it as a way to share her interests with the world at large, as well as communicate her enthusiasms to friends without having to send repeated e-mails. Blogging also gave her a chance to relax. “I was writing a novel at that point, and it was a good break to jolt myself back into the short form.” It also served as a break from working on her MFA.

Rebecca Lieb is editor-in-chief of the ClickZ Network. Self-tagged as “the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off-,” ClickZ is arguably the most search-engine-obsessed site on the Web. Before working for ClickZ Network, Lieb held executive marketing and communications positions at several e-consultancies, and for global entertainment and media companies in the United States and Europe. As a journalist, Lieb has covered media for several publications, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. She spent five years in Berlin as Variety’s German/Eastern European bureau chief. A member of the graduate faculty at New York University’s Center for Publishing, Lieb also serves on the university’s Electronic Publishing Advisory Group. In addition to fulfilling her editing and administrative duties at ClickZ, Lieb writes for both of ClickZ’s blogs: SearchEngineWatch (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/) and the ClickZ news blog (http://blog.clickz.com/).

Rebecca Lieb is member of a distinct minority: professional bloggers who come from a journalistic background. She brings a different perspective to blogging. But even though her roots are not those of the traditional blogger, her practices underscore the importance of many of the same points other successful professional bloggers emphasize:

• The fact that blogs aren’t heavily edited and fact-checked allows news to get out faster, but it requires bloggers to be more responsible with facts.
• Blogging allows the writer to inject opinions.
• You should not write just to fill space or meet a deadline. Readers expect you to post something on a regular basis, but they will not accept fabricated or meaningless material.
• A critical advantage of blogs over magazines is being able to expand a news story as new facts become available.
• Before starting a blog, be sure you have more than one thing to say; create a list of a half-dozen or more ideas.

Steve Rubel is a marketing strategist and senior vice president at Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations (PR) firm. He has spent most of his professional career—15 years—in PR. Rubel’s first new computer was an Atari 800, which he bought when he was 12. He learned to program on the Atari and soon upgraded to an Atari 800 XL. It was around this time that he discovered the online world and its communications potential.

In www.micropersuasion.com addition to setting up a bulletin board system (BBS) on his home computer, Rubel spent time on several of the pre-Web online services—CompuServe, GEnie, and even the PLATO network for Atari owners. He was, of course, an early adopter of the Web. Rubel became interested in blogs in 2003 and soon had several on his RSS feed. (He cites bloggers Robert Scoble and David Winer as his favorites.) He realized that blogging was going to have a strong effect on the business world, so he began thinking about how to get on top of the blogging phenomenon. At the time, Rubel was working at a small PR agency, and there he found an opportunity to get two of his clients to start blogs early in 2004. The move was highly successful, increasing the companies’ media coverage. “From there,” Rubel says, “I was hooked.”

Steve Rubel was one of the early adopters of blogging as a PR tool, and he has proven that blogs can be a channel for mainstream media attention. He harnesses the power of online conversation by following these basic guidelines:

• If you want people to come to your blog, you must offer them something of value.
• Bloggers just starting out must post in high volume to build an audience.
• Sometimes it’s easier to go where people are than to get them to come to you.
• With competition among news bloggers being so strong, and bloggers filling every available subject, the best option for new bloggers is to find a niche.

Brad Hill is Director of Weblogs, Inc., the largest network of blogs in the world. Some might expect one of the founders to be in that position, but the founders—Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey—have moved on to other things. Hill, who’s also written several computer books, started out at the bottom in blogging. As he recalls, “It was early in 2004 when I heard about Weblogs, www.weblogsinc.com Inc. as a startup. I began e-mailing Jason Calacanis right away, saying, ‘First of all, you should have a digital music blog, and, secondly, I should be writing it.’ And that’s how it all got started.”

Weblogs, Inc. has never stopped growing. It has dozens of blogs. The net-work’s blogs cover hobbies, health, personal interests, gaming, stocks, and more, and at present, there appears to be no limit to growth for Weblogs or blogging in general. Fueled by advertising, the network employs scores of writers and knowledge workers as bloggers. It’s an occupation that didn’t exist just a few years ago, but which now supports thousands of people as they indulge their passions.

Brad Hill’s experience encompasses the entire blogging experience—from concept through startup and execution and on to writing, editing, and management. Among the most important lessons woven into Hill’s experiences is the fact that autonomy—letting bloggers pursue their agendas—is one of the underpinnings of success. Here are some other lessons to keep in mind:

Philipp Lenssen created Google Blogoscoped for what is probably the best reason anyone can create a blog: because it didn’t exist. This is the reason many authors write books—because the authors feel the books ought to exist. There was certainly a need for Lenssen’s Google blog. Google and search engines in general are such a huge topic that few are willing to take on the http://blogoscoped.com subject—and few among those are able to maintain consistency and quality in their blogs.

Lenssen has experimented with a variety of blogs since 2003, including a contemporary telling of Goethe’s 1774 volume, The Sorrows of Young Werther. In much the same manner that American author Jane Smiley created her bestseller A Thousand Acres out of King Lear, Lenssen took the Goethe tale and set it in a contemporary city, with contemporary characters and language. That, of course, had limited readership, as did Lenssen’s ChoiceBlogger (http;//choiceblogger.com), in which he allowed readers to tell him what to blog about for one-month periods. A blog about bad customer service in shops and restaurants did somewhat better.

For Philipp Lenssen, blogging is a means of communicating ideas and sharing information. Focusing on increasing readership, he feels, distracts from the blogger’s primary mission of communicating and sometimes even collaborating with the reader. Hence, much of what can be extracted from his interview involves concentrating on your readers. Here are the highlights:

• If you can’t find a blog that covers a given subject, or the subject is not covered enough by existing blogs, create your own blog on that subject.
• Make your website and blog accessible by using only standard HTML.
• Clear, sensible titles make it easier for readers to scan your content— and more likely to return to scan (and read) again.
• Illustrations in posts increase the appeal of a blog’s page, while conveying lots of information in an instant.
• Experimenting with blogs on various subjects can provide a positive learning experience.
• Blogging with a narrow focus is accompanied by challenges in finding new perspectives and new things to write about. The challenges can be overcome by bringing in other bloggers to help.
• Rather than focusing on increasing traffic, let content guide your blog. Think about what’s interesting to you and others, what topics deserve coverage, and areas you want to see progress.
• The best way to improve your blog is to listen to your readers, and think about them before and as you write.

The typical blogger has been a computer enthusiast for at least a decade or two. Some were hobbyists before they could legally drive, and more than a few trace their roots back to the days of the first TRS-80, IBM, and computers—when they were called personal computers and their owners “home computerists.” From that perspective, Scott McNulty is a somewhat atypical blogger. For that matter, he is an atypical computer owner. He didn’t buy his first computer until six months after he graduated from college in 1999. And, despite not having owned any sort of personal computer, he ended up working as a systems administrator forWindows computers.

Blogging at TUAW The computer McNulty selected as his first happened to be an iMac, and it was the first step on his journey to becoming a professional blogger and editor at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW, pronounced too-ow, with an emphasis on the first syllable).

Scott McNulty’s approach to blogging is a carefully balanced blend of enthusiasm and honesty. There are several ways he achieves that balance. Here are
a few pointers to help you do the same:

• If you do something for the love of a subject, success usually follows.
• Success doesn’t happen overnight.
• Don’t assume all readers will understand everything you post. Write so that subject-specific terminology can be understood in context, or post a primer about your subject.
• Create a tone for your blog, and be consistent in using it.
• Consistency is important in growing an audience.
• You must be passionate about your blog’s subject.
• Cross-linking and reciprocal promotion with competing blogs can be positive.
• Produce a large amount of quality content, and readers will come.
• Don’t write anything in a blog that you wouldn’t say to someone face-to-face.

Some years later, thoroughly enthralled with video games on consoles like the NES and Genesis, he returned to Zork via Activision’s CD-ROM Return to Zork game. “Following that experience,” he says, “I went back to the original Zork—equipped with slightly better reading comprehension, of course.” He found it every bit as engaging and baffling as he did when he was a child. Grant’s interest in games did nothing but grow as new generations of video game consoles came and went throughout the 1990s. After college and a move to Philadelphia, he began writing a gaming column for Philadelphia Weekly in 2005 while holding down a day job as a carpenter. Meanwhile, January 2004 saw the debut of Engadget. Game-console fanatics crowded into the blog, right along with wireless, CD, DVD, communications, and other kinds of gadget enthusiasts. Concurrently, a generation of gaming consoles was coming to an end, and there was increasing talk about the new equipment on Engadget. It quickly reached the point where the site just had too much gaming news, and a lot of Engadget-loyal readers got frustrated.

From carpenter to blogger, Chris Grant’s route to blogging underscores the fact that successful bloggers can come from any sort of background. Grant’s experience in writing a magazine column was helpful to him as a blogger, but it was largely his enthusiasm for and knowledge of gaming that guided him on the road to blogging success. And he shares certain attitudes and techniques with other successful bloggers profiled in this book. Here are some highlights:

• Being able to rapidly educate yourself on a subject is an asset for a blogger, as is a memory that allows you to retain even the most trivial of details.
• Take information that you find on the Internet with a grain of salt, and check everything against multiple sources.
• You must post consistently, no matter how inconvenient it is to your schedule. Readers expect to see the same volume of posts every day.
• Consider blogging in a niche. If you blog about things that no one else blogs about, you’ll always be high on search lists. Working in several niches at once can have a similar effect.
• Delivering timely information will keep readers coming back.

It’s 1989, and an American kid roams the streets of Hong Kong in search of gadgets. In shop after shop, he finds an amazing array of high-quality electronics, things that will never make it to the Western world. It’s an endless treasure hunt in an alternate universe, where vast stockpiles of advanced technological gems are constantly replenished….Sound like a tech geek’s dream? This was Brian Lam’s childhood during the late 1980s and early 1990s. From the age of 11 or 12 on, his summers were spent with his grandparents in Hong Kong—an epicenter for technology shop - pers. He hit the streets almost daily in search of the latest high-tech wizardry from Japan and other sources of the gadgets of the future. And he was rewarded with unbelievably low prices and high quality. “Everything was a lot smaller, cheaper, and better,” Lam notes. “It became really hard to justify buying anything during the school year [in the United States].”

It was a perfect situation for someone with as much interest in gadgets and electronics as Lam—an interest he came by naturally. His father, a Hewlett- Packard engineer, was obsessed with gadgets, and this heavily influenced the younger Lam.

All of this turned out to be the ideal foundation for Lam’s future as a technology journalist. After studying journalism at Boston University, Lam “bumped into” an internship with Wired magazine. He then made a series of career jumps and rose to assistant editor at Wired.

Brian Lam’s evolution into blogging is one of the more unusual stories in this book, but you’ll find that his advice for successful blogging is not very different from the advice that other top bloggers offer. Here’s a summary of his tips:

• Providing up-to-the-minute news can contribute greatly to a blog’s success.
• You cannot stay ahead of the news all the time.
• Competition among blogs can be a positive motivator.
• High-quality writing and editing will attract and keep readers, as will surprising them.
• Blog statistics can tell you what works and what doesn’t.
• Check your facts before you publish.

Joel Comm first went online at the beginning of the 1980s, when he discovered modems and computer-gaming bulletin boards. Over the next decade and a half, he would become involved with the online world in several roles, both personal and business. When the Web came along, Comm was well-prepared to take advantage of the new opportunities it offered. In 1995 he launched WorldVillage.com, a family- friendly portal to the Web that still receives thousands of visitors each day.

Life in the Fast Lane





There are people who start out to blog for one reason, but once they are involved, they find completely different motivations. It was like that for Deborah Petersen. When she got into blogging, Petersen was already a Web veteran, having set up a professional site for Fast Lane Transport, a family-owned business. Fast Lane is a large freight company that serves Canada’s four western provinces, as well as providing in-city industrial courier service in the Edmonton, Alberta area. Her husband, Layne Petersen, founded the company in 2000, and Deborah serves as business manager and dispatcher.

Petersen is a search engine optimization (SEO) enthusiast. In fact, it was SEO that got her into blogging. According to Petersen, the Fast Lane website was doing fairly well with search engines in 2006. But the idea that a blog could help get even better results was attractive. She decided to add a blog in support of the business.

In less than a year, Deborah Petersen has moved from running a medium-sized
business website to running one of Technorati’s 100 Most Favorited blogs. She
credits her success to specific elements of her approach to blogging. Here’s a
summary of those elements:

• Blog from your heart.
• Learn more than the basics of SEO.
• It is important to post on a regular basis, to keep readers coming back.
• Avoid duplicate content. It can cause your site to be pushed down in search rankings.
• When it’s appropriate, link to other sites to attract links back to your blog.
• Social search engines and social sites such as MyBlogLog and spicypage provide opportunities to meet other bloggers as well as opportunities for networking to promote links.

• Only a fraction of a blog’s visitors leave comments.
• If you don’t have RSS available, you will lose readers.
• Research the formats and platforms used by other bloggers before you start blogging. This will help you avoid mistakes.

Ars Technica (Latin for the art of technology) is both a blog and an online community. In its decade of existence, Ars Technica has developed a huge following by focusing not just on technical topics, but on the full range of human arts and sciences.

One of the most linked-to blogs on the Web, Ars Technica was founded in 1998 by Ken Fisher. Today the blog is essentially a full-time job for Fisher and several other bloggers. Fisher is a doctoral student who studies Coptic texts. Interestingly, one of the other founders, Jon Stokes, who writes for the site, is also in a doctoral program, studying the New Testament. Plus, Fisher notes, “My managing editor has a graduate-level degree in theology. And I have an assistant editor who does not have any theological schooling but did graduate work in English and was a contributor to Christianity Today. It sounds like we’re ‘the priests of high technology.’ But it’s mostly coincidence.” In addition to its blog, Ars Technica offers journals, product guides, articles, and the Ars Technica OpenForum, a community database of technical tips and reference information.

As a blogging pioneer, Ken Fisher is as sensitive to what damages blogs as he is to what makes them succeed. The following tips address some of the more important of these issues:

• It is necessary to be original.
• Keeping advertising content low lets you balance content with ads, leading to happier readers.
• Content producers should not be involved with advertising, to avoid even the appearance of advertiser-influenced content.

• Try to confirm the truth of a rumor before publishing it.
• If you go into blogging with the idea that you are going to make a fortune, you’ll most likely end up frustrated.

• The Internet landscape changes quickly, without notice, so don’t count on continuing success.
• Write what you feel rather than trying to appeal to a certain group.
• Use a relaxed and personable style rather than trying to copy a
news style.

“It’s not as easy as it looks.”

As cofounder and editorial director of Engadget, Peter Rojas is responsible for keeping millions of blog readers up-to-date on the latest in consumer electronics, personal technology, and gadgets in general. Rojas, who is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Sussex (U.K.), has an extensive background in print journalism. Among other publications, he has written for Popular Science, Fortune, Food & Wine, Slate, The Village Voice, Money, Wired, Business 2.0, and many other magazines. He has also served as technology editor for Red Herring.

In addition to being editor-in-chief of Engadget, Rojas is the chief strategy officer for Weblogs, Inc. As a result of AOL buying Engadget and the rest of Weblogs, Inc. in 2006, he’s also a programming director with AOL. Rojas is a frequent commenter on technology for several television and radio programs.

“Google is the reason blogging continues to have power.”

Robert Scoble is the spark behind one of the Web’s most influential technology blogs, Scobleizer (http://scobleizer.com), which offers a personal and sometimes controversial mix of discussions on technology and business, with occasional forays into other subjects. Scoble characterizes himself (and his blog) as being “in the business of having something to say about things before anyone else has something to say.”

Scoble began blogging in 2000. At the time, he was uncertain whether blogs had any value, but two friends talked him into giving it a try. He started his blog a few weeks later, and was surprised to learn that so many people followed blogs. There was obviously some value to be found in blogging.

Although Robert Scoble uses Google to draw readers, he is not preoccupied with SEO or gaming the system in the same way so many other bloggers are. Instead, an emphasis on social networking—interacting with other bloggers— has been a major factor in his success as a blogger. At the same time, he has focused less on building an audience than on creating quality content which, he notes, “beats SEO.” Scoble recommends bloggers keep in mind the following:

Focus heavily on building an audience can be detrimental to a blog’s content.

Blogging is heading toward more niche themes.

In the long term, most blog readers are referred by Google or other search engines.

Links from other blogs are more valuable than SEO, because those links give you the effect of SEO.

If you’re a better networker, you’ll get more links.

Google will bring a trickle of traffic to you forever.

Google gives blogging its power, because blogging is the best way to get on Google.

Don’t risk damaging your credibility.

Good content beats SEO.

Techdirt




Mike Masnick started blogging almost before it was called blogging. His Techdirt blog officially launched in 1998, which makes it one of the oldest business blogs online. Its mission then was to provide technology-industry news analysis, and it continues to focus on that mission today.

Techdirt has an unusual ancestry. It started as a newsletter, and then it became a website, which in turn inspired a blog. And from that blog grew a company, Techdirt Corporate Intelligence. And today the blog remains an integral part of the company’s strategy. This is all highly appropriate for an organization that blends expert analysis with advanced technology to provide custom corporate-intelligence services for Fortune 500 companies. As the company’s own website notes, “Our clients re -ceive private, customized, tactical analysis of news and information in a context specifically relevant to their needs, delivered daily in an easy to read blog format.”

For Mike Masnick, advertising is not a major source of income. Nor is it the reason his blog exists, which is the case for many of the 80 million blogs in existence. Masnick moves in a somewhat different world than most bloggers. Instead of using blog content as a lure to expose readers to advertising, he sells that content. And in the best tradition of someone with a good product, he gives away free samples daily. Those free samples draw an enormous readership (paying customers are a minority), which suggests that he knows what he’s doing, and that he’s someone to pay attention to if you want to learn about blogging success. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind:

Not all blogs start out as blogs.

In some circumstances, blogging can be used to showcase a product or service, without pushing to sell it.

Blogging can make you pay closer attention to a subject, think about it, and remember more.

Try to blend advertising in with content, rather than allowing it to intrude on content.

A certain kind of advertiser can add prestige to a blog. Big-name companies advertising on a blog tend to make it appear more “legitimate” to readers.

Want to get more readers? Write about something for which you have passion.

Avoid begging for links—it’s counterproductive.

Don’t spam other blogs with invitations to your blog—stick to legitimate comments that
add to or begin new discussions.

Nearly everyone has heard the story of Frank Warren’s community art project, PostSecret. How, in late 2004, he started handing out stamped postcards with his address on them. The cards were blank, and as he gave them to random strangers at Metro stops and elsewhere around Washington, D.C., he invited them to anonymously send him a secret—any secret. He further explained that the cards would be part of a community art project, and secret submitters were encouraged to decorate the cards however they wished.

The project culminated in a display at an art gallery in Washington, D.C. The display was gone after four weeks, but the postcards kept coming. Hundreds every week.

“Try to reward readers for the time spent visiting your blog.”

Mary Jo Foley must be setting some kind of record for Microsoft- watching. A technical journalist since graduating from Simmons College in 1983, she first interviewed Bill Gates for a cover story in Electronic Business magazine a year later. It was her first Microsoft story and, at the time, she confesses she didn’t know much about software or operating systems. But she quickly got herself up to speed. She joined PCWeek (now eweek) in 1991, and the magazine moved her to San Francisco. Foley was asked to take over as the magazine’s Microsoft reporter when the previous reporter quit. She agreed and moved to Seattle in 1993, where she has been a full-time Microsoft watcher ever since.

Mary Jo Foley’s training and experience as a print journalist helped make her one of the premier technical journalists, and continue to serve her as a professional blogger. There is much one can learn from her experiences. Here are some of the highlights that will interest bloggers of all types:

Blogging is unique in that it offers a platform where one is free to admit biases, rather than trying to hide them as most conventional journalists do. In this sense, it promotes complete honesty.

As a blogger, you have more of a vested interest in making your posts interesting and fun than a journalist writing a news story.

Coming up with something to write about every day can be difficult. Store up posts that aren’t news-driven, for the times when you don’t have anything new to say.

It is important to take time away from blogging; otherwise, you’ll limit your perspective.

Look for opportunities to promote yourself and your blog, and don’t ignore cross-media promotion. When possible, create promotional opportunities.

Unless you have a good reason, don’t hide your identity in blogs. You’re more likely to receive a better reception as yourself.

Instead of imitating other bloggers, be yourself. If you’re tempted to steal someone’s post, link to it instead.

If you make a mistake, admit it, accept it, and move on.

Be polite. Avoid ageism and sexism in posts. You’ll get more people to consider your product or
viewpoint with compliments than insults.

Credentials aren’t necessarily an indicator of quality in blogging.

“The best blogs are ones where bloggers use their own voice, their own style.”

Gina Trapani is the founding editor of Lifehacker.com (www.lifehacker.com), a blog devoted to clever shortcuts and faster methods of completing software and personal productivity chores. Lifehacker finds and shares downloads, tips, and techniques that actually make you more efficient without costing you time. Whether it involves computing (Mac or PC), the Internet, or life and technology in general, there’s always something at Lifehacker.com to make your day easier. And you don’t have to be a computer whiz to benefit.

Dubbed the “most organized of all the bloggers” by fellow Gawker Media blogger Brian Lam, Gina Trapani’s obsession with organization and quality is a major factor in the success of the Lifehacker book and blog. If you want to emulate her success, keep these points in mind:

Blogging is an ongoing learning process. If you’re looking to come across well and attract an audience, it’s up to you to improve your writing style.

When you get stuck writing a post, step away from it for a while and work on something else.

If a feature doesn’t come along easily, it’s probably not the right topic for you to cover.

When possible, use blogging tools and widgets to streamline posting.

Reader feedback does matter.

The key to getting more visitors to your blog is to post useful, original, well-written content.

“Blogging is a way to make myself smarter.”