Here is a good resource for you to find or be a professional blogger. Wish I had known about it last year.

You can go to Problogger for help finding a:

• blogger who wants a blogging job
• company who wants to hire a blogger

Again, Google loves blogs! Search engines love blogs! You can get listed in a search engine almost immediately, compared to a regular web site that can take months to get listed on. You can build customer trust (which translates into sales). You can make new friends. You can get smarter by drawing smart people to you. That’s just some of the benefits of blogging.

Some companies use blogs mainly for search engine listings thinking that more content is better. I disagree. Write content for people, not Google. If you churn out boring information day after day, people might be able to find you, but they probably won’t stay around to read more. You will lose a chance to build a relationship with them. Relationship building is the main point of blogging.

So if you want a blog but can’t write it, this is a good place to start. The pricing for a professional blogger is all over the map from what I’ve seen. I say it’s between $15-$40 per post. That’s a pretty wide range.

If you are a professional blogger, what do you charge? Or, what have you seen in the market?

Want to be inspired? Here’s a girl with attitude! Jessica Mah, is a 16-year old college student and entrepreneur. She already built and sold web hosting company.

I wanted to interview some affiliate marketing babies…young kids who make more than their parents.

Here’s what Jessica says:

“When I was 13, I worked on a hosting and dedicated server company. I was running C’s in school, but I didn’t think much of it because I was making more than my teachers were. I’d get support and sales calls in the middle of biology and have absolutely no problem walking out. And I did – many many times.”

Money, no problem!

“And once we need money, we’ll call up our angel investor friends. Raising money is currently on the bottom of our worry list.”

She’s just a tad ambitious…and very brazen. She says she’ll make $1 billion before she’s 25. Her next company? eBay for services. If it improves the quality and process of hiring freelancers, I’m signing up.

This is so right on. I used to buy beanie babies, and I sold a few on eBay. The site hasn’t changed much in years! It’s very amateur. You’d think they came from a cottage industry and not a major brand. It baffles me. No Beanie Babies blog (that could be fun), no innovation.

In Brandchannel‘s own words: “It is hard to imagine that a brand that thrives on creativity shows such a dismal performance online.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Your input: What brands have you noticed online that have either been innovative or brands that lag behind year after year?

I just read an article about building and selling web sites that is excellent. It’s not uncommon in selling a small business online or offline that people think their site is worth more than it really is. As this article points out, many do not count the salary to the owner (not just living expenses). No one wants to work for free, but if you really want to, go ahead. You just won’t be able to sell your site for much, if anything.

While this is written for an affiliate site, it can apply to any web site. I’ll summarize later some of the key points (it’s pretty long). The main point is that for most it’s going to take YEARS of REALLY HARD WORK and sacrifice. It doesn’t always end there either. Some work really hard to maintain success they’ve built even after they’re successful.

Some online businesses are profitable but they won’t sell because they rely so heavily on the expertise of the owner. For example, the owner is brilliant at PPC. If the site depends on PPC to drive most of the traffic, it will limit who will buy the site and for how much.

More on this later…

Thank you Google for being my backup brain. You’re always there, always remembering. I go to Google for answers to just about everything, including to finding out about me. I often live in the “here and now” and I tend to forget what I’ve accomplished. I’m really focused on the next thing. I need a search engine in my brain.

Over the many years I’ve been online I’ve built up a decent list of Google traffic. As I looked through some today I caught people and things that I didn’t even know about me. Or I’d just forgotten. I can’t possibly keep up with myself. Searching Google reminds me of how far I’ve come. Instant confidence boost.

When I first started as an internet marketer, I hated to admit I didn’t know something. One year I attended Adtech and heard a VP at Whirlpool say he couldn’t possibly keep up. That was a huge relief to hear. So it was a gradual realization that the game really isn’t about keeping up, it’s enjoying the ride. And that part is easy.

We’re still working to get Seth Godin to speak in Utah in May. It’s only $50 – a steal! Plus you get 5 copies of his book (4 to give away).

Here’s a video of Seth Godin speaking at Gel (which I hope to go to some day). If you pledge it’s saying you want him to come, you don’t actually pay a cent now. We have 151 people on the pledge at last count.

I just learned about this blog monitoring service from Cyberalert. They have a free 14-day trial.

If your company wants to keep track of what bloggers are saying about your business, test this tool. I haven’t tried it yet (I just found it. I have to blog about it before I forget about it). There’s no risk in trying it out. They don’t even ask for a credit card.

You can even use it to monitor your own keywords. They monitor 25 million+ blogs.

Possible Uses of a Blog Monitoring Service:
See what issues, problems, or market opportunities exist in your market
E-mail delivery of blog clips and central place to store them online
To see what your competitors are doing
get new ideas for your niche

Please leave comments about your experience with this blog monitoring service. They have other services to monitor buzz, forums, and other online communication.

I like to read Skip McGrath blog about making money on eBay. He specializes in informational products. He recently wrote a post devoted to affiliate marketing.

In it he praised Jeremy Palmer’s book (Jeremy probably got the Google alert), among others. ”

I’m not familiar with the other products Skip reviews briefly. I have more to read and study right now than I can keep up with (even for someone as addicted as I am!). Anyone who wants to sell online should try listing their product on eBay first (because it gets so much traffic and is pretty inexpensive to use as a test market) or run paid advertising with a landing page. Design your web site around what works and which keywords convert.

Here’s a fun article from a news aggregator of local news and bloggers who write about neighborhoods. They track 3246 neighborhoods in 62 cities. They published a list of the top cities for blogging – based on how many posts. If you blog about a place, be sure to register your blog on the site. Salt Lake City homepage has a PageRank of 4. Not bad for getting a good backlink.

I can’t seem to find a clear explanation of Outside.in on their site…no “about us” sort of page. I guess that’s too web 1.0!

If you want to move somewhere, consider these cities. Here’s a list of the top blogging cities.

Here’s a quick rundown of the top 10 (go to the link above for more info)
1. Brooklyn, New York
2. Shaw, DC
3. Los Angeles, California
4. Newton, Massachusetts
5. Rogers Park, Chicago
6. Portland, Oregon
7. Watertown, Massachusetts
8. Harlem, New York
9. San Francisco, California
10. Coconut Grove, Florida

I read this off Shoemoney‘s blog. I started thinking about the magazines I read regularly.

1. Business 2.0
2. Fast Company
3. Cooking Light
4. Connect
5. Internet Retailer
6. Revenue
7. Wired
8. Web Site Magazine

What magazines do you read regularly?