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Blogging for Bucks

Have you ever seen the website Flippa.com?  It’s awesome.

It’s an auction site similar to eBay but instead of buying and selling Ultra Rare Hello Kitty Cash Registers people buy and sell website and blogs.

Apparently there is an entire industry out there that consists of people buying and flipping blogs and websites.  Who knew?

When I started SuperBlogTime, I thought it would be a fun experiment to see if it was possible to make money through blogging.  My understanding was that people who made money blogging did it through ads or maybe affiliate marketing and more rarely through product sales.  Ok, maybe some people are making money that way but check this out.

On November 9, 2010, a site called unlockuriphonenow.com sold for $99,999!

I’m guessing someone wrote a little e-book about unlocking your iphone, built that site and BAM – $99,999 in the pocket!

Have you bought or sold a site on Flippa.com?  I’ve been tempted but never was able to make the leap. Did it work for you?

How Much Does the Thesis Theme Cost Again?

A little while back I was getting the urge to update the look of SBT.  It was right before WordPress upgraded to 3.0 and there were ads all over the interwebz about an imminent price increase on the Thesis WordPress Theme from DIYthemes.com.

I had heard about the Thesis theme from a few sites and it seemed like a really great product.  The price increase was to be from $169 to $299 and the ads did a really good job of creating a sense of uber urgency.  Upgrade NOW before the price goes up!  Hurry! Last Chance!

I almost took the bait and bought it.  Almost.

But then I got really busy (as you can tell from the lack of posts here at SBT) and just didn’t really get to it.  So today I went back to the website and lo and behold the price is … $169.

Huh. No price increase?  But what about the urgency!  I was told that it was going to happen immediately!

As they say in Jurassic Park – “Clever girl”.

Now, I’m not saying that the price won’t go up eventually but it certainly hasn’t happened yet.  I can’t help but wonder how many new users they were able to get from that ad campaign.  I bet they made a lot of money!

Anyway, I’m still looking for a new theme.  Any advice out there?  Should I suck it up and buy Thesis or is there a less expensive alternative?

$300 Business Licesnse Needed to Blog in Philadelphia

I’ve often wondered if bloggers were required to get a business license if they were making income from their site.  Apparently if you live in Philidelphia that question has been answered.

The city required at least on blogger to pay the business fee even though she only made $50 over the “last few years”.

Check it out.

From Valerie Rubinsky at the Philadelphia CityPaper

Pay Up

Got a blog that makes no money? The city wants $300, thank you very much.

by Valerie Rubinsky

[ death and taxes ]

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says.

It would be one thing if Bess’ website were, well, an actual business, or if the amount of money the city wanted didn’t outpace her earnings six-fold. Sure, the city has its rules; and yes, cash-strapped cities can’t very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.

When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city’s now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, “I was told to hire an accountant.”

She’s not alone. After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

Even if, as with Sean Barry, that profit is $11 over two years.

Barry’s music-oriented blog, Circle of Fits, is hosted on Blogspot; as of this writing, its home page has two ads on it, but because he gets only a fraction of the already low ad revenue — the rest goes to Blogspot — it’s far from lucrative.

“Personally, I don’t think Circle of Fits is a business,” says Barry. “It might be someday if I start selling coffee mugs, key chains or locks of my hair to my fans. I don’t think blogs should be taxed unless they are making an immense profit.”

The city disagrees. Even though small-time bloggers aren’t exactly raking in the dough, the city requires privilege licenses for any business engaged in any “activity for profit,” says tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann. This applies “whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year,” he adds.

So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there’s the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, "Taxed Out," April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — “businesses,” and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

Mannino says the city doesn’t keep track of how many bloggers and small-website owners are affected. But bloggers aren’t the only ones upset with the city’s tax structure. In June, City Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez unveiled a proposal to reform the city’s business privilege tax in an effort to make Philly a more attractive place for small businesses. If their bill passes, bloggers will still have to get a privilege license if their sites are designed to make money, but they would no longer have to pay taxes on their first $100,000 in profit. (If bloggers don’t want to fork over $300 for a lifetime license, Green suggests they take the city’s $50-a-year plan.)

Their bill will be officially introduced in September. “There’s a lot of support and interest in this idea,” Green says.

Perhaps, but it doesn’t change the fact that the city wants some people to pay more in taxes than they earn. “I definitely don’t want to see people paying more in taxes and fees than what [we] earn,” says Bess. “But I do think the city needs to establish a minimal amount of money that they won’t tax, whether you’re a bike messenger, microblogger or a freelance typist.”

Niche – Neesh or Nitch?

How do you pronounce Niche?

I was taught that it was pronounced “Neesh” but it seems like it can be pronounced either way.

Yahoo Answers has some folks talking about it here.

There’s another discussion here at High Rankings Forum.

So far it looks like I’m outnumbered.  Most of the people responding to the links here say “Nitch”.

And you?

Title Grammar and Style

It’s been a few months since I started SBT, and I’ve found that I needed to brush up on my grammar.  I’ve never been a super eloquent writer and producing copy for the public on a blog can be stressful if you’re unsure of your writing skills.

One of the biggest issues I have been struggling with is that I had forgotten how to properly write a title.

Remember when you were little and you learned which words were supposed to be capitalized and which were not?  I remember learning the rule but I couldn’t remember the details.  What about words like “you” and “are” or “could”.  No clue.

So I went searching for an answer and here’s what I found.

The Rule (sort of…)

When writing a title “Capitalize all words in titles of publications and documents, except a, an, the, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, it, or, and nor.”  This comes from the U.S. Government style guide via writers.com.

Now of course, that is not a hard and fast rule but it’s the style guide I’m going to use for SBT.  It’s short and sweet and if challenged, I can say that it’s from the government so it can’t possibly be wrong

Thoughts?  What style do you use for the title of your posts?

Comment poll – How many partial posts have you written?

I do it all the time.  I come up with a great idea for a blog post and I start writing about it at my desk.  After a few sentences something distracts me and I stop writing.

Sometime I make it back and the post gets finished and published.  More often than I would like, however, it gets stuck in my “saved drafts” folder and never sees the light of day.

Am I alone?

How many posts do you have that are partially written and for whatever reason you never make it back to complete them?

Right now I have notes jotted down for at least ten different articles that I want to write.  They are good ideas to be sure but for some reason I just can’t complete them!

Leave a comment and let me know how many you have on the drawing board.  Do you plan on coming back and finishing them or are you going to just ignore them.

Seriously, leave a comment and let me know.  Let’s talk about it!

Upcoming!

I’m working on an article about a new service I found that will help everyone make some cash from their blogs.  Stay tuned!

I even have a beta key to give away!