Riehl World View

Cat-tastic?

Well, I'm a dog man, myself. View it in full screen - The ScratchingPost Gazette.

Business Meets Blogging

There are a growing number of relationships between businesses and bloggers highlighted in this New York Times item: Approval by a Blogger May Please a Sponsor. The FCC is looking at regulating them. Given some of the relationships, that would seem unavoidable, if not necessary. I was actually surprised at the level of involvement. But then, that approach has never been my interest.

I won't say it's all bad, by any means. But it is possible to see the opportunities for exploitation, too. Take a look. See what you think.

TNT, for instance, is experimenting with a paid relationship with a popular blogger, Melanie Notkin, founder and chief executive of SavvyAuntie.com, a site that has carved out a demographic niche of professional aunts without children.

Ms. Notkin is sending out several messages to her more than 10,000 Twitter followers on Tuesday nights, when a new episode of “Saving Grace” is shown.

Ms. Notkin declined to disclose how much she is paid by TNT, only saying that she is “well compensated.” But she says she is upfront with her readers about the relationship with the network by labeling every commercial tweet with “[sp],” which stands for sponsored post.

“TNT never told me and will never tell me what to say,” Ms. Notkin stressed. “They want to associate with brands that people trust.”

A Blog Round Up

Several of this week's posts from various blogs highlighted - with links.

More Blog Links

Political news items and Best of the Blogs via Real Clear Politics. Plus, it annoys the hell out of liberals when I have an item up there!

And the headlines at Hot Air can be good to check. Allah must be on vacation, I actually had a post up there this week.

The Conservative Grapevine

The Conservative Grapevine is another place to check in for some buzzworthy conservative blog posts of the day.

RCP's is another place to check for what's buzzworthy, though not all items are conservative in nature.

Celebration

TrogloPundit celebrates 50,000 hits. Check it out.

Believe me, I'm not saying this to be a jerk in any way. But I actually meant to note passing 13 million hits and 24 million page views recently but forgot. Still, every bench mark is important to most every blogger. Don't let them fool you. The hit to page view ratio number is the one I always watch the most - 1.3 just now, which is actually pretty high. It gives one a sense of actually being read by those who do come by, via Google, or otherwise.

I still remember the day I first discovered blogs over five years ago and thought, hey, I could do that better then this,or that one! ha! Typical. But there is no "better," in blogging, so much as there is "different."

The early days and even years can be long and lonely. I can recall visiting the sitemeter and figuring that once I subtracted out my own visits, things looked pretty sad! And there are still days, or even stretches, when you feel - man, I ain't got it right now. Or, I really screwed that one up. But you still go on.

For me, that single thing - going on to keep going is what makes someone a blogger. Success can be measured in almost as many ways as there are blogs, few of them having to do with one's visit count. I've done TV appearances, radio shows, been linked by Rush, am mentioned by Mark Levin often enough, been linked by MSM pubs, had more Instalanches than I ever thought I would and appear often in Michelle's buzzworthy sidebar - along with being linked by numerous smaller blogs and on Memeorandum everyday. I've made friends and enemies. And I've inspired several people to start their own blogs. That might be the most satisfying accomplishment of all.

But it always just comes back and down to the blog, just you and a blank page. There's something special about that challenge that has never gone away. If it ever did, I guess I'd go away, too.

Fifty-thousand and counting. And, hopefully, so it goes. In my mind, if you always just keep it honest and make it your own you can't really go wrong.

How Instapundit Blogs

Ever wonder how Glenn Reynolds blogs all day, every day, 365 days a year?

... I quit to disassemble the dishwasher (well, the filtration part), clean out all the limestone scale with vinegar and a toothbrush, and put it back together — and it felt like fun! 

The word is tweaking, a common behavior exhibited by methamphetamine users. Better blogging through chemistry. I think I finally understand his interest in the sciences, now.

As If They Care

Jules has some advice for the Brits on the 4th. They might want to stop financing the Queen for starters.

A Brit pal … I’ll call him “Basil” … spent several years living and working in the United States, but due to some conflict between his family situation and his immigration status, and against my advice that he was climbing the wrong way back up the evolutionary tree, he opted to return to the U.K. I told him it was like wanting to start knuckle-walking again once you’ve mastered bipedalism. He wouldn’t listen.

July 4th Blog Round-up

A blogospheric July Fourth celebration, possibly incuding links to some blogs you haven't read before.

Appel Explains Andrew's Obsession

Writing at The Dish, Patrick Appel attempts to rationalize Andrew Sullivan's obsession over Trig Palin's birth. But there is a problem with this rationale.

I suspect With few writers around to counter Andrew's analysis, he wasn't cut short and forcefully rebuked before things got out of control, and he was therefore free to construct his own narrative.

For that to be true, one would have to assume that reality doesn't exist. Just because Andrew has lost touch with it doesn't make it go away when cobbling together a narrative of observable events. And I'm not convinced Heisenberg really applies in this case.