Monetizing The Mommyblog, Brands And Bloggers: An ABDPBT Personal Finance Series

This is the second installment in the latest incarnation of the Monetizing the Mommyblog series on ABDPBT Personal Finance. This Bloggers and Brands Series focuses on content-column pairings — the compensation involved, how the deals are made, and the pros and cons of each deal between a blogger and a brand for a placement within the content column of a blog. Since I don’t want to jeopardize any of these deals, I am striving to maintain strict confidentiality about the identity of both the brands and the bloggers involved in all of these examples, while still making the process and compensation transparent for people who are interested in arranging similar deals for themselves.

Case Two: Kid-Friendly Resort With Established Parenting Blogger

This successful parenting blogger was approached to do a consulting job for a resort company that was looking to make its facilities more kid-friendly in order to target the growing market of parents vacationing with young children. The blogger was already well established in the parenting community and earning money for both her blogging and for work done in a consulting capacity. The resort’s original pitch to this blogger included:

1. a four day stay at the resort;
2. air travel, cab fare to and from airports;
3. food and drink while at resort (resort is all-inclusive); and
4. one spa treatment while at resort.

The package, based on current market value, is worth between $1500-$2000, and was offered to the parenting blogger in exchange for:

1. Listening to a 3-hour timeshare presentation and offering critiques on how to make it more appealing for a kid-friendly/parenting audience;
2. Doing a few on-camera interviews about her experience at the resort (total time spent on this, she told me, was no more than “ten minutes”);
3. Taking a few sightseeing tours, on which they were filmed for promotional videos; and
4. Posting a widget for the resort on her blog when she returned from the trip.

Regarding the widget, the blogger agreed to post it within the text of a post on her blog that would be archived, but if they wanted it to appear as a sidebar ad, they would need to purchase it through her advertising network. She also told the resort she was interested in their deal, but that she was used to being paid for her consulting work. Given the fact that this package included other, non-cash income, they negotiated a reduced rate of $1200 for the consulting work, which brought the grand total value for the deal to $2700-$3000 in cash, goods and services when all was said and done, in exchange for four hours of work, one post and posting a widget.

Not bad — just remember to report it and put aside $750 of that $1200 for Uncle Sam.

"Brands and Bloggers: Kid-Friendly Resort And Established Parenting Blogger" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on September 02, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Monetizing The Mommyblog, Brands And Bloggers: An ABDPBT Personal Finance Series

Welcome to the latest incarnation of the Monetizing the Mommyblog series on ABDPBT Personal Finance. This Bloggers and Brands Series focuses on content-column pairings — the compensation involved, how the deals are made, and the pros and cons of each deal between a blogger and a brand for a placement within the content column of a blog. Since I don’t want to jeopardize any of these deals, I am striving to maintain strict confidentiality about the identity of both the brands and the bloggers involved in all of these examples, while still making the process and compensation transparent for people who are interested in arranging similar deals for themselves.

Case One: Baby Care Products With Established Niche Blogger

Below are the main points involved in the first blogger/brand pairing in the series, which involved pairing a niche blogger with a good deal of trust capital with a brand of baby care products. The deal involved participating in a Twitter party, as well as several sponsored posts and giveaways hosted on the blogger’s main blog. The deal was brokered by a PR company, and the initial research was facilitated by a social media consultant who is well known within the mommyblogging community. The specific relationship between the PR company and the social media consultant and the compensation from the brand to those two entities is unknown.

1. Blogger Was Selected Because She Was Discussing Something On Twitter That Suggested She Was a Brand Match.

Blogger/brand pairings can be created through a variety of channels: the brand can be pitched directly by the blogger, or a PR company can come to them with a list of bloggers who are a good fit for their brand, or they can approach specific, well-known bloggers with whom they would specifically like to work. If you are not an extremely well known blogger, it’s less likely you will be pitched directly by a brand only because there are few brands out there that have the kind of personnel necessary to do that kind of research into brand and blogger matching. Few brands have the kind of budgets to warrant a social media representative, and so the only kinds of bloggers who regularly get pitched directly by brands are usually the ones with high traffic levels (though there are exceptions).

Bloggers of all traffic levels may be approached by PR companies representing a brand or several brands, and in some cases, they will be offering paid gigs. More often than not, what they will be offering is nothing. But you never know. In the case of this blogger, she had been writing a blog for many years without doing any kind of PR work (though she did run ads on her blog) before she was approached for this deal. She was approached after participating in an organic discussion on Twitter that suggested she was a clear brand match candidate for this campaign, but she was also well known in the community and had a significant amount of trust capital built up that made her a good “catch” for the PR company — she had never worked with a brand before and was therefore thought to be particularly credible.

2. Blogger Has Significant Trust Capital With Readership And This Brand Is An Unusually Good Match For Her

The choice of this blogger for this brand is an example of really good research done by the PR company working for the brand. The blogger involved has a particular affinity for this brand and because the PR company did their homework — both on the brand and on the blogger — they were able to match up somebody who was unusually well suited to this job. They found somebody who was already poised to be a brand evangelist, and then was able to pay her for her already established enthusiasm for a brand. This made their job easy, and it made the blogger’s job easy as well, because her readership already knew of her affinity for the brand, so reading sponsored posts was no big deal for them.

3. Twitter Party ($75/Hour) Was Rolled Into Bigger Deal

The first step of this deal was to facilitate/participate in a two-hour Twitter party with several other Twitter users (some of whom were compensated, and some of whom were not) while using the branded hashtag, under the blogger’s regular Twitter username. The compensation for two hours of work was $150. There were several people paid to participate in the Twitter party, but not all of them were offered the larger deal with sponsored posts and giveaways. Though the larger deal was never officially stated to be tied to the Twitter party, the paperwork for the larger deal did not go through until after the Twitter party took place; the blogger was left with the initial impression that the Twitter party was serving as some kind of weeding technique for the larger deal and/or that the paperwork might have been delayed in order to ensure that everybody participated in the Twitter party, because it was the least attractive part of the whole deal. Later, though, she said this was probably not the case, and that some alternative social media was always rolled into the deal.

4. Larger Deal Involves Two Posts, One Giveaway To Be Posted On Blogger’s Blog

The larger deal was to participate in the Twitter party (its specific pay was the $150 rolled into this deal) and to discuss one product line on the blogger’s blog in two posts. For those of you keeping track, that is about $675 per post, which is way better than you are going to get from most places willing to pay you for your writing these days. Of course, they are not just buying your writing, but we will get to that later. When I asked about how much oversight the brand/PR company had over each post, the blogger said it was very little. The PR company *did* look at posts before they went up, and they *did* make suggestions, but she said that they never forced her to change anything or asked her to talk about anything in a specific way. She also said that they wanted things in her voice, that this was why they hired her, and that maintaining that was essential to the whole campaign.

5. 2 Subsequent Deals Were Similar In Structure, Involved Other Social Media Outlet Engagment Rolled In

The brand was happy enough with the blogger’s work on this campaign to ask her to participate in two more campaigns for them. Both of those deals were structured in similar ways with similar compensation: 2-3 posts and/or a giveaway on her blog, and some kind of other social media engagement, either on Twitter or Facebook rolled into the deal. The total for the whole deal was therefore $4500 for about 7 or 8 posts.

6. Deals Like This Are Only Open To People With A Ton Of Trust Capital Built Up

It is important to note here that a big part of what is being purchased is trust capital — this is a blogger who has a huge amount of credibility that has been built up over the course of time. She has never done any kind of product placement or PR work on her blog before, and her audience has been established over the course of years of regular posting. Though her audience isn’t large when compared to the likes of Dooce or Pioneer Woman, it is an audience that views her as a trusted friend, and that makes her extremely influential when it comes to buying things like products to use for caring for one’s child. That kind of influence is what the brand is buying, as much or more than the actual space on the blog, and that kind of thing is expensive. That kind of thing is also finite — you cannot make deals like this every other week and expect to have a supply that never runs out. Trust capital is tricky — in this case, it was a good choice because it was a brand about which the blogger felt very strongly, and it was a good opportunity with good compensation. Make sure any kind of deal that you are considering meets the same kind of criteria.

"Blogger and Brand Pairings: Baby Care Products With Established Niche Blogger" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 30, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

If you watch Gabrielle Blair’s every move as intently as I do, then you’ll have noticed that she recently launched a new project, CliqueShop that launched earlier this week. Cliqueshop is a kind of group buying, coupon clearinghouse that is the kind of thing you might get if you merged a sample sale membership discount site like Gilt Group or Daily Candy’s Swirl and confined it to coupon-specific deals from vendors that appeal to the Design Mom audience.

Does it sound complicated?

Here’s how it works for the consumers: a deal is posted each week — this past week it was a deal where you could pay $10 to get a $25 gift certificate toward some organic cleaning products. Now, assuming the deal goes through, you are guaranteed a $15 profit on this purchase. But, the deal only goes through if there are 75 buyers. So the buyer has to go get some friends to join them in the purchase if they really want to get the deal. If it’s something you really want, it makes sense why you’d want to do it — you’re guaranteed a return.

For the vendors, it’s appealing because there’s a guaranteed number of people who are going to have an investment in seeing the deal going through. And if the deal doesn’t go through to a certain number of people, they don’t have to give any discounts. So there’s a good chance that they’ll get a bunch of click-throughs to their e-commerce site without actually having to extend any kind of discount to anybody. They are also likely to be on the end of a social media grassroots word-of-mouth effort if a product is particularly popular. Their return is pretty easy to see, in terms of advertising, though it does depend on how much they are paying to get this kind of placement (I tried to get Gabrielle to tell me this, to no avail — I’m guessing that, in addition to the cut she’s taking of each sale (e.g. on the coupon example above, she’s getting $10 and the coupon is costing the vendor $25), I think there’s probably a decent amount being paid to her just to get featured, but I didn’t get a chance to confirm with her so I cannot say for sure.)

For Gabrielle, the benefits are clear: she gets the price of each coupon, assuming the sale goes through. If the sale doesn’t go through because there aren’t enough buyers, then all the money is refunded to the buyers and she is out merchant fees, etc., but otherwise she gets those commissions, plus whatever she is getting from the advertiser for the placement. Smart cookie! No wonder Time just named Design Mom one of the Top 50 websites of 2010!

Update: It looks like Cliqueshop is actually some kind of affiliate program version of Groupon (though it’s unclear if it’s affiliated with Groupon or not at this point). If I were actually thorough in my reporting, I would have realized this, but luckily, my readership is smarter than I am, and they figured it out for me. So, anyway, carry on.

"Cliqueshop: Design Mom’s New Project" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 25, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Well, friends, after all this time, it’s finally here! The much-anticipated, completely free, much-hyped ABDPBT guide to selling advertising on your blog, How To Fire Your Ad Network & Start Making Money From Your Blog is done! Finally! I know! I know! It took me forever to finish it. That’s because I didn’t want it to be a piece of schlock. Read below for everything you need to know about the ebook and how to get it (don’t worry, it’s not very much).

1. The ebook is framed around how I was, um, let go by my former ad network, and how this ended up being the best thing that happened to my blog, financially speaking. It shows you how you can have a similar experience with your own blog. If your results are anything like mine, you could be making as much as three times more by selling private ads on your own as you do through network ads, or through a combination of network ads and private ads.
2. The book is designed to help bloggers who are currently using an advertising network, or thinking about using one, or people who have ever thought about starting a blog, and maybe one day using an advertising network to monetize their website. It also might help advertising networks who do not want to act like douchebags, or bloggers who are into different ideas or experimental concepts for monetizing their blogs.
3. Things that you will learn include: step-by-step instructions to selling private ads, including how to find potential advertisers, how to pitch them, how to close the deal, and how to invoice them; what techniques are best to use to sell advertising space on blogs with smaller traffic numbers; when it’s a good time to start selling space on a blog; what the small blog’s best weapon is in closing a deal with an advertiser; and how to avoid getting ripped off.
4. The ebook is totally free to download, and you don’t need to give me your email address or anything like that to get it. Just download it.

(Free PDF — you will need to update to the most recent version of Adobe Reader)

Please let me know I’m on the right track by leaving a comment below or writing me an email (anna at abdpbt dot com).

Help spread the word about the ebook. It’s free, so please pass it on to anyone and everyone whom you think might find it useful. Or, please use the buttons below to share on your social media outlet of choice.

Thank you! I cannot wait to hear that you, too, have fired your ad network!

"How To Fire Your Ad Network And Start Making Money From Your Blog" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 23, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

If you’re not familiar with Dooce’s new(ish) assistant, Tyrant, and his Verizon-sponsored Flickr feed, Uploads from TyrantCam, it’s time to subscribe. Here’s why: after all of these years, TyrantCam is the closest we have ever gotten, and probably the closest we will ever get, to an unvarnished, third-party look inside the Blurbodoocery.

Dooce and Jon put together a slick video about the remodeling of their office that Verizon is sponsoring for them. It’s professionally done, and there are some interesting things about it; for example, they didn’t embed it with a third party video hosting site — it is hosted directly from a site for which they are paying. I assume this has to do with the commercial aspects of the video and its relationship with Verizon, though I think they do a good job of making it not feel like one, in part by making the relationship so explicit (via graphics, etc.) that you cannot take issue with it without feeling like a douchebag. Also, there are impressive technical things about it, e.g. they use graphics, text, and a dooce logo on the bottom right corner of the screen, and that makes me think that they had to buy new software to make the video.

But way more interesting for me than the actual video made for Verizon is the TyrantCam behind the scenes look at it (video posted below) because:

1. What the FUCK camera is Jon using? Did they BUY that thing? Is Verizon paying them THAT much for this? Holy HELL are they making a lot of money, in that case, because that is a full on TV rig that dude is using;
2. Even if they didn’t buy that thing, how much do you think it costs to rent that thing? Plus all the sound equipment? Wow! Man! This must be a big gig! Did Verizon demand this? My mind is racing! All the questions! Because maybe Verizon did not request it but Heather and Jon thought they should make this a really professional looking product because they wanted to get more gigs in the future;
3. Yeah, that might be it, more gigs in the future, more TV gigs in the future! They want more TV gigs in the future! But wait, my secret tip that I got was that the reason she’s not doing Momversation videos anymore was because even though she told me, twice now, that she was going to have a TV show with HGTV at some point, she’s not actually going to have a show with them, but was only hired to drive web traffic, but still has an exclusive deal, and cannot appear on other TV stuff. So wait, if that’s true, who is she trying to convince that she should be on TV? Maybe she’s trying to convince HGTV? IS THAT IT? OMG!

Do you see?

Now don’t get me wrong: there’s no such thing as unmediated discourse that comes out of the Blurbodoocery. But the more meta-content that is produced looking at Il Duce from the outside, the more difficult it is going to be to run it through the Gaussian Blur, and the more we can find out about what is really going on. Now, maybe that’s not what they want, but that IS what their fans want, so I think that TyrantCam might end up with more exposure than their interested in, but it will also end up in more loyalty from their fanbase.

What say you?

"Why TyrantCam Is The Best Thing To Come Out Of The Blurbodoocery In . . . A While" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 20, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

In the post-BlogHer 2010 mania, including the many posts about bloggers crying in bathrooms and being snubbed by people with social skills that are at the preschool level, we were hypothesizing (in the comment section to a post here recently) as to why anyone would bother with going to these kinds of conferences only to undergo this kind of torture. Yet I keep maintaining that you must — you simply must, if you want to build your blogging business, and I’m going to try to explain why with this post. The short answer for why is that, quite simply, your traffic will increase. My traffic increased about 20% overall (sustained) after BlogHer 2009, and another similar jump after Mom 2.0. It’s too soon to say the effect of BlogHer 2010, but I maintain that there has always been a significant traffic jump for me in the wake of a conference. As to why, well, that’s a tougher question, but I’ve worked out some hypothetical explanations below.

The Conference Is a Constellation Out Of Which A Potentially Viral Number of “Sales” Or “Leads” Are Made

When you go to a big conference in your niche — I’m talking about something like BlogHer for the mommies here — there is a viral effect to your attendance that cannot happen any other way to the same degree. You meet a few people, make a few connections, have a few connections: it doesn’t seem like a big deal or any different from anything else, but it is, and here is why. A conference like BlogHer ends up with a ton of tweets, posts, Flickr uploads, and incoming links, both before and after the conference. If you meet one person there, at one party, and make a good impression, you might end up on their blog, with an incoming link, on their Flickr page tagged into a picture, @replied on Twitter, follow friday’ed on Twitter because of it, discussed later in some hotel room with that person’s roommate because of it, discussed later with someone else’s roommate because that person saw you talking to that person at so and so’s party, or because you showed up talking to so and so in the background of a picture that showed up on Flickr.

These are just some of the possible combinations of social media that can lead to your “brand” being viral as a result of a few connections made at a big conference like BlogHer. I haven’t even discussed all of the possibilities presented by the Flickr Frenzy, but suffice to say that there is a good reason that people freak out about losing weight every year before BlogHer. If you look good in photos, you will show up in more of them, and people will put you on more pages, in more blog posts, and that is a form of acceptance. People will wonder who you are, and that is a kind of advertisement. This is all about getting people to look at your blog, and that is the name of the game.

You Cannot Understand The Real Of The Community Without Going To A Conference

Particularly in the mommyblogosphere — though I would guess this applies to all different online communities — there is a gap between what happens out in the public online space and what happens behind the closed doors of DMs and private emails. You cannot get a feel for what is really going on in a community, therefore, unless you go to a conference and observe things in real life every once in a while. You need to see people in person to figure out who is somebody you want to partner with and who is somebody you want to stay away from. You need to see who is really friends with whom and who is just in a strategic alliance. You need to see who drinks too much to be a reliable business partner and who is a social climber. This is all stuff you’d be able to figure out in an office job by working with people face to face but because we are online, we can sometimes hide this stuff — sometimes, but not always — behind our screens. The offline stuff is key just to cover our asses.

Now. Maybe you’re not going to be able to do this to the same degree with every conference. Not every conference will have every person you need to meet in attendance. But find the ones that do and go to those. Don’t bother with ones that don’t have people you don’t need to meet — I don’t. And by the way, who I need to meet (or observe, or whatever) might not be the same as who you need to meet. We all have different criteria for these things. Figure out what kinds of connections you need to make and figure out where those people are going to be, and go there.

It Works If You Work It & Other Cliches

Inevitably somebody will tell me they have been going to conferences and have never had these kinds of traffic jumps, I’m sure. I’m guessing, though, that they are not doing what I am doing, and repeatedly going out of the comfort zone to make new connections (or difficulties, as the case may be, with me) on a regular basis. For instance, I went to lunch by myself at BlogHer on both days so that I met new people, I went to several parties at which I’m not sure I was particularly welcome that led to interesting connections, I wandered around the conference alone and met some new people with interesting stories to tell and new perspectives to bring to the table. I did not rely on my friends 100% of the time and it forces me to grow, and my traffic tends to grow as a result (I suspect, anyway). Please share any other strategies or theories you have for this kind of stuff in the comments.

"Why Going To Conferences Is Worth All That Money" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 17, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

• buzzwords
• authenticity
• transparency
• USDLF
• photobomb
• Flickr Frenzy

"Recently Added Glossary Terms" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 13, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Actually, my “biggest piece of advice” for bloggers just getting started was that they not write about any of these companies unless they were getting paid to do so. So this is me, sort of not following that advice.

"My Interview With An Unnamed Soda Company" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 09, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

If you’ve been watching Twitter lately, you might have been noticing some tweets going back and forth carrying the hashtag #GapMagic or #GapBlackMagic. These refer to a PR campaign for Gap implemented by Brand About Town (a social media brand consulting company) and Gap in conjunction with the BlogHer conference this week (though there is no official affiliation with BlogHer or the BlogHer Conference and the Gap promotions). Under the terms of the promotion, approximately 100 bloggers from the parenting and general “BlogHer Community” were chosen to receive varying amounts of free clothing from Gap before the upcoming BlogHer conference. Though there have been conflicting accounts about how much the different bloggers have received — some have said that it was a pair of jeans and a “denim outfit,” and I have heard elsewhere that it is roughly equivalent to as much as $400 worth of free clothing per blogger — it is a significant amount of free clothing for which I hope all of the bloggers are keeping records and allowing for proper tax documentation. [Cough.]

As part of the promotion, bloggers visited Gap stores throughout the country and received style consultations in order to help them select their free clothing. This naturally led many tweets with the hashtag #GapMagic on Twitter, and buzz, and then questions from people about what #GapMagic meant, and then more buzz. Then, when people found out that free clothing was being given away, started to wonder how the bloggers were chosen for #GapMagic, which is not unusual because with these kinds of things, particularly when it surrounds BlogHer and the annual BlogHer conference and its notorious swag, people always want to know why one person gets it and another person does not. It turns out that the people from Brand About Town extended the GapMagic benefits to their Gap Brand Ambassadors (this part makes sense), and to the people who were scheduled to speak at the BlogHer Conference because that was an easy way of picking a big group of people (makes less sense).

After I tweeted a few jokes about this, including thanking Barneys New York for the clothes they had sent me to wear to the BlogHer Conference (and I cannot believe anybody took me seriously on this, but sadly some people did), a representative from Brand About Town “reached out to me” in an effort, I think, to repair any damage that might have been done from me not being chosen as a GapMagic blogger. I told her that I had been watching the tweets and the backlash more from a social media branding perspective, and was not really interested in getting free clothes from Gap myself. I was interested in hypothesizing how they might have handled this a little better, though, given that it’s impossible for them to give free clothes to a conference of 2,500 bloggers.

Here is what I suggested to the representative:

BlogHer is an organization that has been accused repeatedly and over the course of years from numerous sources — rightly or wrongly — for playing favorites with how it gives awards, chooses speakers, and allots other perks. It does not matter, in terms of public perception, whether or not these claims are substantiated — it only matters that they exist. The problem with giving the speakers at BlogHer a perk like this is not a problem with Gap not being generous enough, it is a problem because it is associated with BlogHer — the same people who have already been seen as being singled out again for preferential treatment (in many cases, chosen as speakers, year after year after year) are now being clothed for free by the Gap. That is, in my opinion, why you might see backlash here, not because the Gap has done anything wrong.

Many people will argue with this point, or say something to the effect of, “If we didn’t react like this, more brands would be willing to work with us.” That might be true. But the fact remains that a brand should go into a social media deal with accurate consultant work — the brand needs to be handed real market research and a real strategy instead of just a list of the same 100 names recycled over and over again. And if you add a few names here and there and take a few off here and there, it’s still the same thing.

Having said that, I don’t think this #GapMagic nonsense it is going to matter much in the long run for Gap. I think the good will outweigh the bad. There will be some converts to the brand as a result of this campaign and there has already been a ton of buzz on Twitter about Gap, which has been more or less a dead brand for ten years. One thing I like about this campaign is that it was an experiment with social media, and it wasn’t the typical methodology. Gap has demonstrated that they are more willing than some other companies to experiment with this kind of stuff and I like that about them. That wins them a lot of points with me.

What GapMagic underscores, more than anything, is the need for an overhaul in the business of social media brand consultancy. If companies are going to be paying a premium to social media consultants to hook them up with bloggers to get this kind of buzz, they need people who are hooked into the community enough to not send them to the same 100 bloggers time and time again. And this doesn’t mean you have to be best buddies with every new blogger who shows up on the block — just do your homework. Even throwing a dart into the blogosphere could have found you 100 new bloggers to give perks to on this campaign, and eventually brands are going to figure it out and look for somebody who can actually give them what they are paying for — somebody who actually knows their market.

"The Problem With #GapMagic" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 05, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

I’ve been meaning to do this meme thing from Problogger for a while now and am only now finally getting around to it. The idea is this: organize a “sneeze page” listing seven posts from your archives (and topical posts by other people) highlighting some of your more interesting work as a kind of retrospective for your regular readers, and as an introduction for newer readers. You can read the description of the exercise on Problogger here. As some of you know, ABDPBT Personal Finance started out as a regular personal finance blog, meaning that my earliest posts discussed how I got out of debt and advice on money management and growing small businesses. As I continued to write, I became more interested in focusing on the topic of my own small business, which is turning a mommyblog into a profitable business. As such, this blog is now wholly consumed by that topic — this explains the kind of confusing name and the schizophrenic posting structure you might notice below. If you would like to participate in this meme, I believe the comments are still open over at Problogger; you can create your own version of the #7link post and then link up in the comments to have people visit your blog (though it’s an old post, so I’m not sure how many hits you will get from it).

1. My First Post

Now You Can Pay Off More Than $10,000 of Debt On Less Than $30K A Year, Too!

2. The Post I Enjoyed Writing The Most

The 5 Stages In The Life Of A Daddy Blogger

3. A Post That Had A Great Discussion

Considerations For The Online Border Personality

4. A Post On Someone Else’s Blog That I Wish I Had Written

Privacy Is The New Celebrity by Penelope Trunk

5. My Most Helpful Post

MommyBlog Traffic Building Strategies That Don’t Require Major Life Trauma

6. A Post With A Title That I’m Proud Of

Dear Apple: Names Are Important

7. A Post That I Wish More People Had Read

Establishing Rules For Trips, Barters, & Other Blogger Grey Areas

"The Very Belated #7Link Challenge Post Via ProBlogger" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on August 02, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.