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What Watching Julie and Julia Taught Me About Business (Don’t Laugh)

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:59:42 +0000

I finally got around to seeing Julie and Julia, the movie about blogger Julie Powell and also about Julia Child’s life while she was writing her famous cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My movie tastes usually skew a little more towards movies where things blow up, but I was at home and it was on tv on the movie channel, so I gave it a shot. Plus, half the story was about a blogger, so it was almost like doing research, right? What I didn’t expect that I’d find things in it that I could apply to business.

For example, when Julie Powell was deciding what her blog should be about, she said something along the lines of that she wanted to do the blog as an escape from the day-to-day life that she wasn’t happy with – specifically, the cubicle life at a government job that she didn’t find fulfilling or interesting, but paid the bills – a situation most people have found themselves in, especially in this economy. She loved cooking and admired Julia Childs, so that’s where the Julie/Julia project cam from – where she would cook all 500+ recipes found in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

And it was a blog that succeeded. Of it was born a book (a process you see in the movie) and, of course, the movie itself. It was a blog born out of interest and passion. Now, not every blog born out of passion and interest will necessarily succeed, but a lot more of them will than the ones without interest and passion behind it (that’s pretty much none.) It confirmed something I’ve always said on this blog – if you want to make money online, you’ve got to have an interest and passion (have I said that enough times in one paragraph?) in order for it to be a success.

The other interesting point the movie made (for me, anyway) came from Julia Child’s story. Now, it was interesting to me to find out that Julia Childs, arguably one of the most famous and easily recognized chefs in the world, ever, did not become successful in her chosen field until later in life. Heck, she didn’t even find it until later in life. She didn’t even start learning to cook until after she moved to Paris in her 40s. But one thing she always knew was that she loved food, and even though she ended up trying a bunch of different things before she figured it out, what made her successful was finally following her heart and doing something she loved.

It was heartening to me – it said that, just because you aren’t where you want to be right now, doesn’t mean that you won’t get there. I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there, working to make a living, doing enough to get by and feeling like they’ve failed because they don’t have a career that they love.

So, the message I took form Julie and Julia is that it’s ok is you absolutely don’t love what you’re doing right now, and that it doesn’t make you a failure if you don’t make the top 30 under 30 list anywhere. And you’re also not required to stick with something for the rest of your life just because you’ve put a few years into it, or it’s what you took in school. But what’s not ok if is you settle, and say that it’s good enough. Keep searching for that thing you love to do and figure out a way to make money doing it. As Julia Childs said, “I’ve been looking for a career all my life and now I’ve found it!”

I Was Not Paid by the FTC for This Review – More on the New Guidelines

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:51:47 +0000

In the last post I did on the new FTC regulations, I went over how the new rules would affect endorsements. In this post, I’ll go over the part that will affect bloggers more than anyone else, although it will still have repercussions for other online marketers as well.

The second part of the new FTC regulations that directly affects online marketers is the new requirement of “disclosure of material connections”. This requires you to fess up to any connection you have to the product or service that you are mentioning, be it that you flat out got paid to try it, you did it in return for free product, or if you just got a free trial. The big difference is if you just got the free trial because they were letting a bunch of people try it, or if they let you try it specifically because you would mention it in your blog. Here’s the specific example that they give about blogging in the FTC Guidelines:

- A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made my the same manufacturer. She writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog’s fur noticeably softer and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food is definitely worth the extra money. This posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

- Assume rather than purchase the dog food with her own money, the consumer gets it for free because the store routinely tracks her purchases and its computer has generated a coupon for a free trial of this new brand. Again, her posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

- Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog treats through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides.

So, even though she got the food for free under one of the examples, it wasn’t considered an endorsement, and she didn’t have to disclose a material connection. Now, to me that states that the difference is all in the intent. If you’ve been given a product specifically for marketing purposes, then you need to disclose that. If you got the product for free, but in a way that anyone could get it for free, and not because you have a blog that you can mention it on, then you’re ok (although you might want to share with your blog readers where you got the free stuff!)

If you do receive free product or other compensation, just disclose it. Be upfront about it, “Hey, so and so gave me this to try out, just so you know, but this is still my opinion about it. If you’ve always been upfront about what you’re reviewing and why, you should be ok. It also helps to be picky about what you’re reviewing; stick to things that you really believe in, and even if you are being compensated, your readers are more likely to take what you say at face value. Get into the habit of reviewing things indiscriminately, and you’ll lose the trust of your readers.

Or, you could do what I recently decided to do, actually before these regulations came into affect – I stopped accepting paid reviews You can go back and check out that post “New FTC Regulations“. Plus, I always listed paid reviews as “review me reviews’ so that my readers (you guys) could differentiate between that and other reviews I did.

Another thing I will have to do (which I’ve been doing anyway) is let you know when I’m promoting one of my own products. Most of you know the other sites that I’m involved in, like Portal Feeder, and PPC Kahuna and Traffic Kahuna, and now Web2Mayhem (it’s new! Go check it out at http://web2mayhem.com (it is super powerful… sorry couldn’t resist). But now, when I do a post about any of that, I will have to explicitly state my connection for anybody who wasn’t aware, for the sake of complete transparency.

Next post in Series: 8 Questions You Must Ask Yourself About The New FTC Guidelines

Being a Trusted Expert and Blogs Part 2

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:46:42 +0000

As I mentioned in the last post in the series (yes i am going back 4 weeks here), How to Use the Free Tools Available to Brand Yourself as a Trusted Expert, the next step in using blogs to become a Trusted Expert is to start your own blog.

So, how do you decide what to blog about? Well, you could blog about anything really, but since this series is about how to make your online business more successful, I would recommend that you do it about your business and your products (niche). Duh.

Exactly what about your business may be harder to decide.

Do some research (you should already know from your reading/commenting phase) and see what’s out there in your niche. Is there a gap that you could fill? Is there some information about your category that you think is important to get out there, and that will resonate with your Buyer Personas? Then that’s what your blog should be about.

Now here’s the list of things you’re going to want to know before you start your blog:

Your Domain (URL). Is it going be an extension of your existing main website, or will it have a unique name with branding and just point back to your site? Or is your blog going to be the main site? If so, you also need to decide what persona and feel you want your blog to have, which will influence the domain, tagline, and name you choose. If you are already adding your blog to your existing site, then you are somewhat limited as to choice, as it should relate back to the original site in some way. But if your blog is the whole site, then the sky and your imagination in the limit.
The tagline – remember that both the name and the tagline become searchable, so you need to pick them carefully to make sure that you’re indexing under the right keywords for your business.
The name (seems simple, but you’ll probably spend more time coming up with this than all the rest).

The reason why I’m telling you to take some time to come up with these 3 things is this: while you can change them later, as the search engines will reindex a site and you’ll maintain your rankings, but you will lose something more intangible – the branding and peronsa that you had built with that name or URL.

So, while you can go back and change it afterwards, putting a little thought and effort into it before you start will save you a headache and a bunch of rebranding after.

Here are the other things you’ll need to know when starting up your own blog:

Your design. There are a lot of software choices out there with customizable interfaces. If you’ve already got a look and feel that you like for your website, you can modify it and use it for your blog. Or, if you want something a little more stand-alone, you can just use the same colors (to connect it to your main site) but has a completely different look and feel. You can always go back and tweak it later, so don’t stress out about this one as much. Design is much more of a learning experience, and plus you’ll be testing elements to know exactly what your buyers want (and don’t worry, we’ll get to that part later, too).

Your voice. Blogs, more than any other kind of writing on the net, need to have a personality. The most successful blogs have their own unique voice that is so strong that you can almost imagine the person talking when you’re reading it. And although I’ve done posts on good grammar before, you need to walk a fine line – yes, use good grammar and spelling whenever possible, but you can also take liberties if it suits your voice. I’ve used non-good grammar thingies (see) where it’s appropriate. But if you keep to good grammar in every other way, it will be obvious that you’re doing otherwise for color and humor rather than that you don’t know any better.

Above all, keep in mind that your blog is supposed to be about you and your business. Don’t try to be something that you’re not – a big part about being a Trusted Expert is the fact that you are authentic.

Last point on this topic… just start a blog. I am serious here and I highly recommend everyone have a blog that is on a topic they are passionate about and especially if they want to be viewed as an expert in that niche.

How to Use the Free Tools Available to Brand Yourself as a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:59:40 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, you can’t become a Trusted Expert by buying advertising. It’s been a long time since advertising built trust, especially on the web, and we’ll never see those days again.

Now, if you were using traditional advertising theories and strategies, you would now be stumped as to what you could do to promote your business. But you’re not, you’re dealing with the online world, and you’re going to be applying new theories to this new way of reaching people. You are a Trusted Expert (or at least you will be by the time I’m done with you.)

And a Trusted Expert has tools at their disposal that they can use to establish their position in their category as an authority. And best of all, those tools are free. I’ll be going over those tools in the next few posts, starting with blogs.

Blogs

Your blog is your best resource for positioning yourself as a Trusted Expert. And you don’t even have to have your own to use it this way. Here’s how:

First thing to do – start reading blogs. (Which, if you’re here, you’ve already started doing.) Read ones in your category and niche, read ones outside of it. Bookmark and subscribe to the ones you like, and maybe even to a couple that you don’t like but has fantastic numbers. You’ll start to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t, how to reach out to readers, how to generate traffic, and how to create controversy and create publicity for yourself.

Next step is to start commenting on those blogs you like, don’t like, etc. Make sure you’ve got something reasonably intelligent to say, hopefully something witty, and link to your website. Not only will you get some additional traffic to your website from the blog, it makes Google’s search engine like you more.

Keep your eye out for comments on your category or niche; think of something useful to say (remember, you want to be a Trusted Expert!) Give people advice or help where you can. If it’s applicable, invite the person with the problem to take it to email where you can help them even more. Next time that person is looking for something you sell, chances are they’ll go to you.

If you come across a blog or comments that mentions you, your product, or your website in a negative sense, for goodness’ sake address it. Explain who you are; offer up the chance to address the problem directly. If there truly was a screw-up, admit it and apologize – in this age of “It’s anybody’s fault but mine” you’d be surprised how many people will appreciate a “Yup. I messed up; but I’m fixing it and it won’t happen again.” People will appreciate your honesty and realize that we’re all human and forgive you. And more importantly, associate you with a real human being and not a faceless corporation. (Note – they will do this the first time this happens; keep screwing up and, even if you admit it, you’ll look like an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing – the opposite of a Trusted Expert.)

More to come in the next post about what to do when you start your own blog….

Tools for Becoming a Trusted Expert – Blogs

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:57:45 +0000

As mentioned before (and probably will be mentioned another few hundred times over the course of this series) the key to your communications strategy is to think from the buyers point of view (which you know because you’ve developed personas) and to establish yourself as a Trusted Expert (by providing useful and timely information.)

So, now you need to know how, where and when to speak to your buyers directly. Which of the communication outlets should you utilize, and why? Well, only you can answer that question for your business, but here are the web-based communications that you can use to reach your buyers directly, and become a Trusted Expert.

For the next few posts, we’ll be going over the tools the internet has to offer, and how you can use them to brand yourself as a Trusted Expert. Today we’ll start with blogs, as they’re the natural first step.

Blogs

What can a blog accomplish for your company? While you may, at first, think of only of having your own blog, there are actually several ways to utilize blogs to the best advantage for your company. And, in fact, having your own blog is perhaps the last step in the process.

Before you jump into the fray, you want to understand exactly what the blogging landscape is out there. If you do it right, blogs can be the best tool your company has to promote your business, whether through your own blog, or by utilizing opportunities on other people’s blogs. Whatever your level of experience and utilization, blogs are your best tool for branding yourself as a Trusted Expert.

Here are the blog basics, for those of you who have been living in a cave, or perhaps in an area that still only gets dial-up (shudder): a blog is written using software that puts the most recent post at the tops of the page, in reverse chronological order. Posts are tagged to appear in selected categories and often include identifiers about the content of the post that will enable people to easily find it, both within the blog and also through the search engines.

A blog allows you to get a large amount of ideas out there, and because there isn’t a lot of risk or any cost involved, you can try out a bunch of different ideas and see what resonates with your audience, and what generates publicity for you. Your blog can also be one of your best tools for SEO – every word of every post is indexed by Google and the other search engines, so when people are looking for the topics you’re writing about, they will find you.

A blog has greater value beyond what you can calculate for ROI – publicity, air of authority, and new contacts are all benefits that you can’t assign a strict dollar value to.

Blogs are a free resource out there for you to use. You can get instant and unsolicited information as to what people are currently thinking and saying about you and your company. It’s like having a focus group that you can use – but for free. Every organization should be monitoring blogs to find out what people are saying about them.

In most product categories, early bloggers develop a reputation as being innovative. Once you’re comfortable with reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, it’s time to start doing it yourself. Later in this series we’ll get into how exactly you do that.

Some Very Basic Tips for Starting a Blog

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:17:45 +0000

So, after reading John Cow for a while, you’ve decided to start a blog of your own. I’m flattered. Really, it’s wonderful that I serve as such an inspiration…just kidding. But, to be serious about it, there are things you need to consider before you get up and running with your blog.

Whether you want to use your blog to make money (and I heartily approve of that) or you just want to voices in your head to get their own platform, you need to get some things straight before you ever compose your first post. Which you’ve probably already done in your head, haven’t you?

Anyways, here are the big decisions you need to make before you set up your blog:

Your blog name and tagline. This is perhaps the most important step. Not only will your bog name and tagline be indexed by Google and the other search engines, but it is also the single most important branding tool you have. And you can’t change it easily once you’re established. Sure, I could start a new blog, but I would lose everything I’ve built into the John Cow brand. Even if I attempted to publicize the change and move my audience over, there will still be a loss, both in audience and perceived authority.

Where your blog is going to be. Typepad, WordPress (I like WordPress the best and is what I use), and Blogger (Google) all offer easy-to-use blogging software. All have free versions available, as well as fancier paid options as well. If you’re just starting out, go with a free service until you know you’re going to stick with it. If you do, and you decide later that you need some of the options the paid version offers, then you can upgrade.

Choose your URL. All of the blogging services offer customizable URLs, but if you can, you’ll want to also buy your own domain name to redirect to your blog. In fact, you shouldn’t choose a blog name unless you can buy the domain name as well. It doesn’t cost much to register a domain name, and you’ll be glad you did it if your blog takes off.

How you want your blog to look. There are a lot great, customizable blog schemes out there for low-to-no cost. If you don’t have a talent for graphic design, keep the header text-based. Later, when you’ve made some money, you can pay someone to design a proper logo/header for you. Trust me, a text header looks way better than a poorly designed graphic one.

Above all, when you start your blog, make sure you post. A lot. Even if you think no one is reading it (and your stats counter sadly confirms this) it will create a great archive for readers to peruse when they finally do find you, and the practice will help you refine your style and voice before you hit the big time. I personally have sucked recently with being good at continual postings… and the traffic difference is substantial!

How To Make Sure Your Blog Doesn’t Make You Sound Like An Idiot

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:53:04 +0000

One of the easiest ways to look stupid on your blog, even if you have the most brilliant ideas ever, is to have spelling and grammar mistakes. We’ve all done it occasionally. The sentence that you thought made sense at 3am, or the word that both you and spell check missed. But if you’ve got habitual spelling and grammar mistakes on your site, it can affect the way people perceive you, and may keep them from treating you like an authority within your niche.

Now, I’m not saying that everything has to be perfect, or that you need to adhere to all the rules of grammar. It doesn’t really matter if you prefer to write ‘2’ rather than spell out ‘two’, no matter what the AP Style Guide says. As well, there are certain grammar rules that we all learned in school that you can disregard. I start sentences with ‘and’ and ‘because’ and use sentence fragments and ‘y’all’ and other colloquialisms, because I’m writing in a conversational tone, and I want it to sound like it would if I were talking.

But there are certain things you need to do, like make sure that you’re using the right word. Know the difference between then/than and affect/effect, not to mention their/there/they’re and your/you’re. If you’re not sure, check. In fact, it would be worthwhile to take a primer on the basic grammar laws – there are lots of resources out there, so you have no excuse.

And that’s what it really comes down to for a lot of us. We’re lazy. We either don’t bother proofreading at all, or we do it so quickly that it’s no surprise that mistakes make it through and get published on our sites.

Here are some guidelines to follow when proofreading to make sure you don’t look like an idiot:

Check your post the way your audience will be viewing it.
With web content, that means viewing it inside a browser. With blog posts especially, it means previewing it before publishing it. This can show you if your text is too dense, or the font is too small.

But don’t forget good old-fashioned paper, either.
There really is no substitute for printing out a hard copy and going over it with a pen. You can find a lot of mistakes this way that you probably missed when viewing it on your screen.

Read it out loud.
You might want to wait until you’re alone, but this is a really useful tool for finding those pesky typing mistakes where you thought you typed ‘through’ and you really typed ‘thought’. It won’t make sense when you read it out loud.

Read it backwards.
This is an old copy-editor trick. By going through something backwards, you’re forced to concentrate on the individual words, instead of the phrases and the meanings behind them. A lot of mistakes make it through because, when we read, we recognize the word that’s supposed to be there instead of the one that actually is.

Now, you can all post comments about all of the mistakes that I missed in this post… oh and while you are at it… why don’t you click here and retweet this message for me

What Do You Mean I’m Accountable for What I Do Online?

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:10:45 +0000

Recently, there has been quite a kerfuffle over at the Brazen Careerist http://blog.penelopetrunk.com. In response to a Tweet she had written disparagingly about having a frustrating day at home with her kids, someone (that she didn’t know) responded by attacking Penelope Trunk as a mother, and saying that they would take the kids and appreciate them.

Incensed by this personal attack from a stranger, Penelope decided to find out who this person was, and then contacted them. She found out his personal information (quite easily, in fact), and proceeded to call him, both at home and at work. She then blogged about it, and included his full name and hometown in the header (which as we all know, made sure that it made it’s way into the Google index, forever connecting him to that post.)

There have been over 400 comments on this one post, some applauding her, some saying that she took the comment a little too personally, and overreacted in her blog, which delved deep into the issues and psychology of caring for kids, but there were a whole lot more condemning her for daring to breach this man’s privacy by contacting him offline.

Which begs the question – it is unfair to expect there to be offline consequences for the actions we take online? I think that a lot of us expect there to be anonymity on the web – which, why? While you can certainly use an alias online (shocker – John Cow is not my real name!) for the most part, people are fairly upfront about using their real names (and even mine is easily found on this site), especially when using Facebook or Twitter.

So, was it really the shocking and reprehensible act that Penelope wanted to contact this person in real life for an explanation of the comments he made online? Would he have said the same thing if he was in the same room, or on the phone with her? Why is it that we think we can say things online that we wouldn’t say in real life?

And, really, if you’re using your real name on your Twitter account, and you start making disparaging comments about someone you don’t even know, then what do you expect? Even the most calm and turn-the-other-cheek type of person will come out guns blazing when their abilities as a parent, or even worse, the love they have for their children, is questioned.

So, we’re a bit off topic today, but the question bears asking – Do you think that your online persona should have repercussions on your offline life? Or are the two completely separate? Or, if you think they should be separate, what kind of responsibility should people take for what they say online?

BloggersBase.com – Get Discovered and Make Money Online

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:00:20 +0000

Looking to Start a Blog? Looking to Actually Have People Read It?

BloggersBase.com is a competition-based discovery platform where anyone – writers, journalists, bloggers – can submit content and get immediate exposure. And the better you are, the more exposure you get. And the higher your ranking, the more cash and prizes you get…and I loves me some cash and prizes.

But seriously, when I heard about BloggersBase, I was intrigued. Formatted as an online magazine made up of multi-authored blogs, covering a variety of topics, BloggersBase is also moderated by algorithm-enhanced reader input, which determines the rankings of the blogs.

The competition runs like this: each category has a limited amount of official bloggers at any given time. Everybody else is in the Goldmine, competing to become one of the official bloggers. There are Timeslots with specific time limits; at the end of each Timeslot, the lowest ranked bloggers are relegated back down to the Goldmine, while the Goldmine posters with the best-rated Nuggets (the name for the Goldmine blogposts) gets elevated to official blogger. And so it goes, with people continually having to maintain the quality of their blogs to stay on top.

And where do the cash and prizes come in? (Cause you know I’m all about making money online. Have I mentioned that before?) You can earn them two ways: either by participating in the Timeslot contests, or by inviting your friends via affiliate links; in that case, if your friends win the competition, you’ll be rewarded as well. Blogs are ranked on everything from professionalism and presentation to value and imagination. As with the bloggers, the readers gain rankings with how accurately they rate, although they’re not regulated by the Timeslot contests.

The system seems fairly intuitive and easy to use. And in going through some of the comments, any suggestions about improving the functionality of the site or ideas for new categories, etc., were responded to quickly. BloggersBase seems interested in what their bloggers have to say and takes their opinions seriously.

And for those of you that already have established blogs that you want to promote, BloggersBase does not require exclusivity, and encourages you to publish all your posts for them on your own sites as well. You can also put links in your profile and your posts to your sites. You’ll reach a new targeted reader base instantly and get critiques and rating to improve your writing. So you can promote your sites as well as win cash and prizes; sounds like a win-win to me.

Go check out BloggersBase for yourself!

Blogging with Clarity – I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:42:17 +0000

Whether you use your blog to sell something, interact with others in your niche or just get out a message, writing with clarity is essential. Clear writing is convincing, more likely to connect with your reader and get a response. Most of all, clear writing is more likely to produce the results you want, such as a sale.

If your reader doesn’t understand what you’re saying, he isn’t going to spend the time to figure it out. Like most web surfers, blog readers have short attention spans. When they hit a roadblock like unclear writing, the look for the nearest link and they escape as quickly as possible.

So, how do you improve the clarity of your writing in your blog? I can think of a few steps you can take:

Organize your writing: Outline your post before you write it, and make sure your post has a logical flow to it.
Edit your writing: Don’t put up your post immediately. Sit on it for a day, and look at it again. When you do, ask the question “Does this convey the message I’m trying to convey?”
Learn to write with precision: Get rid of unnecessary words and phrases. Watch out for redundancy. Never use eight words to say something when it could be said in three words.
Open your writing up to constructive criticism: Ask someone to proofread your posts before they go live. Once they’ve read it, ask them: “What is the message this post conveys?” If it doesn’t match up with what you intended, go back to the drawing board.
Keep your writing simple: While you don’t have to stick to small words, the more simply you write your blog posts, the more readers that will be able to understand.
Finally, you need to review your posts after they’ve been up: Look at the comments. Are there questions in there about your meanings? If so, figure out where your weakness was and fix it for next time.

With a little dedication and attention, you can turn your muddied blog posts into laser-sharp attention-getting posts.

Codrut Turcanu Interviews Me

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:46:42 +0000

Did a quick interview with Codrut Turcanu of Remarkableblogging.com and he put it together nice and neatly in a PDF format for me to be able to give all of you

Since he put this into a nice PDF… be great if you visted Remarkableblogging.com and left a nice comment there

unH4cked

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:27:35 +0000

Nooooooo, we weren’t hacked! Just a little joke to get the message across about how important it is to get your blog backed up. Seems we’re now once again the scum of the earth etc. Bad cows! So anyway, we hope we didn’t cause any permanent trauma to any of our sensitive readers. We’re still here to brighten up your long and boring days at the office, school or perhaps you’re just bored at home –even though it might be a bit sad to get your kicks from a blogging cow

Turns out we actually have at least 13 die-hard fans that really love us. For the rest of you that were waiting for some cow well done –there won’t be a BBQ today! Here’s the list of cool people that donated a dollar to save the day! (we didn’t get links from all of you guys, but if you drop us a quick email, we’ll add them)

Indra Diky
Drive Computers
John McElwee
Roberta Ferguson
Courtney Tuttle
JulieAnne Bonner
William Huber
Joseph Colburn
Eric Socia
Nathan Hutchinson
Michael Dunlop
NetDosh.com
Hyder

We really didn’t do it for the $100 or thought it to be linkbait. We just think that it doesn’t have to be the 1st of April to play pranks. And our adorable advertisers needn’t worry, you will all receive your full 31 days obviously.

So what’s new today? Well we’re in pain. Even though the gym workout was great yesterday, our backs are disagreeing today But we have to push on to get in shape again. Only two months left before we can be spotted on the scorching sands of Western Australia’s beaches. Going to the gym 3 times a week again after a year of couch potato-ing can is proving a tough job. Guess we don’t have much choice if we don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb eh?

We’d like to thank a couple of our sponsors though. They made it possible that we had some cash to spend on a ‘gadget’ that every self respecting dot com moogul should have — a back massaging shiatsu chair! Probably the best investment we’ve made this year. Blogging seems to have become a breeze, having the chair do it’s work while we type. All the stress that being a famoos A-list blogger brings with it disappears like snow before the sun. We love it — most definitely 100% John Cow Approved!

Anyway, we’re gonna double the $13 we’ve gotten through donations and give it away to a random someone. Just leave a comment and we might pick you tomorrow. And once again we apologize to all of those who didn’t get their daily dose of dairy!

(PS if you’re really upset, we thought that cownapper@johncow.com as paypal address would say it all…)