Blog Carnivals, Pay-Per-Post, and a Free Course

Ah, the blog carnival. By a hundred other names, they still make me cringe! I cannot imagine filling this page with a list of links to blogs with which I am unfamiliar in an attempt to get my technorati authority up. It just feels too much like cheating. I’d rather get links by posting content that people have actually read and liked well enough to volunteer them.

That said, I did find quite a few good things on this particular list. It’s worth a perusal and even tempted me to add myself. I stood strong, though, for you. Okay, for my own integrity. The thought of an instant, reliable blog roll is great. Unfortunately, you cannot guarantee the quality of the blogs listed without checking them all yourself. Who has that kind of time?

Now that I’ve bashed one method of promoting your blog, I’ll turn to defending one way of making money from your blog. In the interests of disclosure, since I haven’t mentioned it for a while, I do sponsored posts. Well, I’ve done two. While neither of these were exactly on-topic, nor were they subjects that I felt were out of place on this blog. They were also honest assessments of the services reviewed. I am not above getting paid to look at sites, but I won’t stoop to saying nice things about them if I don’t believe what I write. Happily, Blogsvertise doesn’t require that I say nice things to get paid. That’s why I chose them! That isn't a referral link, by the way, as they don't offer a referral system - you sign up, you accept a job and write it, you get paid, you keep your money.

As a bonus for reading all of the way to the end of this ramble, here’s a 16-session free writing course developed by Melissa Fry at Gateway Community and Technical College in Kentucky.