Now that Yahoo! has nabbed Tumblr in a $1.1 billion deal, users are wondering what will become of their Tumblogs. As a preemptive strike, many are even leaving the service, looking for a new home for their food photos, cat pics, art portfolios and random online ephemera. It’s a lot to mull over. Tumblr’s responsible for as many as 50.9 billion posts. That’s great news for website...
Some people long for small-town life — to live in a heartwarming place where everyone knows your name and your neighbors have your back. But these days, one could argue that the whole world is like one, well-connected community. At least that's what a New Jersey teen found out recently. The girl had been struggling. She was clearly spiraling down, with signs of depression all over her...
Have you or your blog readers gotten to the point where you're fed up with giving so much personal data to Google? Do you still want to make money from your site to pay server bills, but don't know where to turn? Luckily, Adsense isn't the only game in town. For what seems like forever, if you decided you were going to launch a blog, you almost immediately signed up for a Google...
When I read through Mike Perlman’s latest “Delightful Rant,” in which he… uh… rants against himself, it somehow made me think of a New York Times story from last month titled, “In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column.” The article talks about an Illinois company called Narrative Science that has pushed the boundaries of artificial intelligence, producing code capable of...
You’ve hunted for the job, you’ve applied for it and you’ve learned how to keep it, but this week we’re taking a step backwards. Do you know how to get yourself noticed? I know this seems somewhat out of order, but a reader dropped me a note asking about how to get himself noticed so he could land a job. There are tons of people out there who want to become bloggers, and just because...
You’ve hunted for the job, and you’ve applied for it, now how do you keep it once you’ve gotten it? Just like any job, you have to give blogging your best try, and make sure you live up to our duties. If you don’t, you can quickly find yourself losing the job you worked so hard to get. So, how do you go about all of this? Just like anything else to do with blogging, it isn’t quite...
Welcome to part three of a four part series for those of you interested in becoming a professional blogger. Last week I gave you a guide to where to find blogging jobs, but this week it’s time to discuss how you get through the application process. While every site has its own rules about how to apply, there are some common rules that applying to any blogging job that you should...
So, you’ve decided you want to try your hand at professional blogging, congrats! If part 1 of this series didn’t scare you off, apparently you really are serious about giving this a go. Now, how do you find the work? There are several sources for jobs out there, but the quality of listings varies wildly. The best rule when applying for any professional blogging job is to go look at...
A lot of people have asked me since I started working as a professional blogger in July of 2007 how they could also get into that line of work. There is a certain allure to the idea of sitting in front of your computer in your pajamas, hammering away on the keyboard, making money while you sip coffee with your pet curled up on your feet. I wish it was that easy, but like any other job...
You know, there may be nothing worse in the world than being a hypocrite, but apparently when you’re an internationally recognized news agency not only is it ok, but you can try to make everyone else look like the idiots. Cue Pee Wee Herman saying, “I know you are, but what am I?” When covering the story of Amazon purchasing Woot, the Associated Press (better known as AP) spoke with ...