I teach people how to blog. It’s a fairly big part of my professional career, and it has occurred to me that I really ought to put my money where my mouth is. Although I do blog here, and a few other places, I have never actually made money blogging.

Well that ends today. I’ve taken up a freelance writing gig with the Seattle condo blog, urbnlivn! Brian and I have been informally condo hunting for a while now, and I figured it wouldn’t be much more of a burden to put the notes and pictures we take anyway up online.

So if you’re interested in the Seattle condo market, head over and check it out. My first post is already up on new green townhouses in Squire Park. It involves pickle vats. Really.

Some of the resources mentioned on the panel:

Ways to post to multiple sites at once: Ping.fm and Hellotxt.com
Short explanatory videos about technology and social media: Common Craft
Demographic information about social networks: danah boyd
Alternative copyright licensing options: Creative Commons

And the slides:

And here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the talk:

Creative Commons
Creative Commons “Wanna Work Together?” video
Twitter in Plain English video
Human Rights Campaign Facebook Cause
RSS in Plain English video
Cory Doctorow on how to be an uber blogger video
Flip video camera
Books: Getting Things Done and Four Hour Work Week
LinkedIn
Ignite Seattle
Ignite Portland
BarCamp Seattle
BarCamp Portland
Audience suggestion: Pecha Kucha Seattle and Pecha Kucha Portland
Saturday House

I could talk about this stuff all day long. I’ll be at the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference, so feel free to connect with me there or ping me on Twitter.

Ben Huh – I Can Has Cheezburger?
Christian Lander – Stuff White People Like
Kerry Miller – passiveaggressivenotes.com
Heather Armstrong (Dooce) – Blurbodoocery Inc
Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette) – Air America

Takeaways from the internet famous bloggers panel:

1. Get yourself a good therapist.

2. Start a blog because you have something interesting and funny to say, not because you want to become famous, people can see the sparkle of authenticity dust.

3. Don’t write a book. It’s like running a marathon. Blogging is like sprinting. It’s over faster and you can go back to your normal life. And blogging makes more money.

4. When you do fold and write a book, stick to your guns and don’t let them change your writing and what you think is important.

5. The biggest drawback to professional blogging is that you can never take a break. Your fans demand content constantly.

6. If you keep sacred blogging boundaries about things you won’t blog about, then keep them invisible to your readers. They should be under the impression that you are putting all of yourself out there.

7. Never keep track of the most active commenters in the sidebar. You will invite trolls. Instead, select the most insightful or funny comments and feature them in your sidebar. It’s very rewarding for the commenters, and gives new people an idea of what good comments look like. If you need to, start an “off-topic forum” to act as a padded room for the really crazy commenters.

8. You will get death threats and possibly suspicious packages, but just ignore it. None of them have died.

9. Although the blogging business model sometimes is discouraging, it’s way more stable than publishing or the recording industry. Have faith and keep a savings account for times when the advertising runs a little dry.