With Blogher right around the corner and Blog World Expo coming up in October,  a lot of bloggers are out there fishing for sponsorship – just like this past spring when they were looking for sponsorship to Blissdom ’09.

As a business owner who sponsored two mom bloggers to attend Blissdom ’09 – I am looking back on the money I spent on those sponsorships and checking out the return on investment – or should I say, lack thereof.

• Mom Masterminds sponsored Carrie Lauth of Natural Mom Talk Radio.  She wore a Mom Masterminds t-shirt and handed out business cards with a coupon code good for a free month of MM Membership. (A $50 value)

• Mom’s Talk Network sponsored Alyssa Avant of Beauty By Design Online.  She handed out cards inviting mom bloggers to check out the Mom’s Talk Affiliates program and claim a free product from our Mom’s Talk Biz website.

Note that our offers are targeted to mom bloggers who want to earn money with their blogs and that they were set up to be easy to take advantage of.  No strings attached.

Hopes: These fun, engaging mom bloggers would pass the cards out and have lots of great conversations about their sponsor.  Dozens of mom bloggers would learn about our company, tuck the card away and take action on it within a month after the event.  By taking action, I mean sign up for the freebie. [Read more...]

This is the last question in the cross blog conversation with Chele from Moms Love Shopping because my internship is coming to an end.  Chele responded to my previous question about marketing with a great [although non-sexy] answer.  I know a lot of people that need to read her answer about marketing.  Thank you, Chele, for your part of the conversation!

Here is her question for me:

When shopping online, what aspects about a blog/website discourage you from making a purchase that you were considering? What do you wish more bloggers/online retailers would take into account for their shopping visitors?

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Some simple things to get in the habit of checking before publishing your post:

Picture – Every blog post should have some kind of picture.  Sometimes it’s hard to find a related picture.  Think about it for a minute and see if you can come up with something clever.

Headline – Will it catch the reader’s eye and make them interested?  Does it have key words that will show up in searches?  Does the post deliver what the title promises?

Voice – Read the post out loud.  Does it sound like you?  Does it flow?

Grammar – Edit! Edit! Edit! Check for misspellings and proper punctuation.  Cut out extra words wherever you can.

Layout – Is it scannable?  Have you made some key words bold?  Can you turn some of it into a list?  Is there white space?  Use the preview tab and make sure it looks good.

Links – Can you link to any of your other posts?  Does someone else have a similar post that might be of interest to your readers?

Your readers will appreciate your checking these six things!

You may think it strange that I picked the meme about marriage for this blog.  Bear with me, I hope it will make sense.

Before I started this internship, before I even filled out the application, I talked it over with my husband.  I knew there would be more time demands on me and more things that would not get done.  I needed him to be okay with that because, to me, bringing in tons of money would mean nothing if my husband/marriage was not happy.  Not that I’m bringing in tons of money, but you get the idea.

I want to encourage you to put your marriage above your business.  Sometimes, it’s tempting for me to just keep online things to myself because it’s harder to explain to him anyways.  It’s a part of my life that’s important to me right now and it needs to be shared with my husband.

Don’t let your online friends push away the friend that you married.

You are more than welcome to join in Wifey Wednesdays.  The link up is at To Love Honor and Vacuum.