Blogging to help pay for college?

This week I signed a contract to blog for www.computers.net. While I have only written two articles ("Choosing Your Next USB Flash Drive" and "How to Fight Phishing & Spoof Email Scams"), I am encouraged by the fact that a big jump in hits yesterday. This may just be a fluke or a spike, but I would love to think my articles had something to do with the jump in traffic. While few people really understand the exact details of Google's magic formula for page ranking, it is clear to me that popularity can grow quickly and exponentially. I would love to be able to pay for part of college through blogging. We'll have to see if the increased traffic (and revenue) can be sustained over time. For now I will sleep with visions of sugarplums and Google Ads dancing in my head.

Commercial Blogs Project is up

I started my Commercial Blogs project here. Let me know if you think the theme is two hard on the eyes, or any other thoughts on this blog. This blog will be about making money with blogs. I'll be adding more content soon.

7870 commercial blog project

At Cafe Sabor Dr. Wiley said that the 7870 class wiki could serve as an example of a suitable class project. I am just wondering about copyright issues. I have narrowed my project topic to focus on commercial blogs (I may expand it if I find the topic is too narrow). I was planning on putting these together in a series of posts on a blog, organized categorically. Since 90% of my learning objects need to come from sources other than myself, how do I do this with out violating copyright? I know I can link to other sites like Wiley did in his 7870 wiki, but is that enough? I don't want to be a copycat, but the only idea that seems to fit is some sort of narrative peppered with relevant outside links.

One more thing that has been on my mind is that I want people to be able to find what they need quickly and efficiently. I need to look into this more, but has anyone found a way to organize blogs (other that just broad categories or chronologically)? Perhaps carefully selected categories are enough. Any thoughts?

Caswell Family History Blog Project

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my 7150 project, but I have created a Caswell Family Stories blog here http://www.tomcaswell.com/blog/ I grew up in a family of eight, and we had some fun times. This blog is a place to share fun family stories from when we were younger and lived overseas. We had some unique experience growing up in the Foreign Service, and I don’t want to forget them.

This blog also gave me a reason to try out WordPress, and I am sold! I've been getting excited about how WordPress makes blogging more organizeable. This will be important for my learning objects project when I need to categorize different types of basic computer FAQs. David, if you are reading this, do you know of a WordPress plugin that can generate crossreference links automatically within different articles?

Marathon Blog

Maybe I am just new to blogs, but I am used to the kind where someone vents their extreme feelings about some political issue and maybe in a few days they get a comment or two. And then there's my brother, Bob, who creates a post that generates enough traffic to slow the Internet down to the point that people notice. Sheesh! His one thread is bigger than my whole blog!

*regains composure*

OK, I'm back. I think that was my first time ever experiencing "blog-envy." All I can say is, "Way to go, bro. Google Ads was built just for you."