Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internet and blog

What Should I Do To Make My Blog Grow And Kick More Ass Even Though I Have No Free Time?

miss lynnster — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:41:06 -0800

Tips on how to keep a blog's potential growing when your available time is shrinking... Okay, so a lot of you guys already know about HiddenLA. I created it 4 months ago when I was unemployed. I had time to update it 2-5 times a day and worked really hard on the design. Then, partly with the momentum of the site, my career started turning around. Now I'm the busiest I've been in 2 years... working full time and commuting 2 hours a day. I'm exhausted. I try to update the event calendar constantly, but it's hard to create posts at work without getting busted so I've just kind of let it slow down.

Thing is... I still have big dreams for what HiddenLA could become... and while the traffic is dwindling as the posts become less frequent, I know the potential is there. I originally told myself I'd give myself 3 years to make it work... and then in less than 3 months it made over 820 Facebook fans. People have really shown a lot of enthusiasm so I can't let this thing die like most blogs do... it needs to thrive. There's so much potential and I think a lot of people really want this type of community site (but better -- because down the road I really want to make it better than it currently is).

I was looking at writing a business plan for the site but am still not completely sure of the big picture so I found myself paralyzed. I feel like what I want to create is something that doesn't exist yet. To start monetizing it, I started a relationship with blogads.com, but haven't had time to put any ads up yet and with with the traffic decreasing while I'm focused on my day job the ads are becoming less valuable I'm sure. I need to figure out the big picture first and get a gameplan for making the site really kick ass. It was really starting to build some serious momentum before I got distracted.

So far everything on the site has just been done by me for free. What I'm looking for is tips on how to make this site successful and not a bear to oversee. I know down the road I'll need to delegate but I don't have much money right now. Even if I could send the copy to someone else and have them import it into WordPress might be helpful since there's less of a chance I'd get busted by my boss seeing the WordPress page on my screen.

Thoughts?

(BTW, I already subscribe to Daily Blog Tips.)

How do I restore the formatting in my blog?

FireStyle — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:07:21 -0800

I'm using the Hybrid-News blogger template for my blog. After doing some tweaking to the code, I lost the feature I loved the most - the condensed posts on the front page. Any ideas on how to get it back? (more in explaination). Here is the link to the hybrid-news template

Here is the link to my blog

Notice how in the template the stories are condensed to a few lines. Somehow, I lost that formatting, and my skills in CSS are elementary at best. Any idea how to get it back?

Thanks much, and if you like politics, feel free to comment on the site!

Riddle me this...

miss lynnster — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:58:28 -0800

Creating custom quizzes, polls and surveys for a blog... your experiences? I want to start putting more fun, interactive, and educational features on HiddenLA.com. I just tried putting a poll on there using the WP-polls plugin but I'm not sure I'm digging it so far. Is there a better application or plug-in that you use?

I would also like to do some really interesting quizzes, but so far I haven't found an application that is really great with customizing details. I started a few but was disappointed with the how results looked and never finished them.

I'd love to hear any suggestions you have. Thanks! :)

What to do with a spare blog?

gonzo_ID — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:15:37 -0800

I've got a spare blogger blog ('domainname'.blogspot.com) with the same name as a wordpress blog('samedomainname'.com).... what could i do with it? bonus points for income generation. I bought a domain and slapped wordpress onto it where I shall be posting an inspirational image of a document (say... a book cover) per day.
i got a gmail account to work as a spam filter for the domain email and, obviously, i get a free blogger account to go with it.

what can i do with this blogger account that could be linked / unlinked with this main blog? devblog? best of blog? something else? could I make money from this second blog? should i just not use it?

My brain hurts. So what's new?

miss lynnster — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:28:58 -0800

The title sequences and credits are looking blurry on the videos I'm posting to WordPress. I need to find out the tricks to posting the best quality video possible to my blog, but I'm new to this. Help! To show you what I'm talking about, look at the video that's currently on the front page of my site. See how the titles and credits look like crap? It's KILLING me. (Don't judge the video please. Yes, I've ordered a tripod. Don't have one yet.) I've searched the web for advice on this but haven't found any tips yet.

I'd never done this stuff before so I've been learning everything the hard way. I'm using the Modularity theme from Graph Paper Press, and it has a function to "post HD video." They say to take a MOV and save it as a FLV. I created the movie in imovie and then saved it for web (should I save it as something else? I liked the sound quality better on the "CD" format, but it was a larger file). I downloaded Sorenson Squeeze to try various formats of FLV. The file got SO much larger after it was turned into an FLV that I couldn't upload it to wordpress... I can only upload things that are less than 8MB. So that was frustrating. I tried 1MB, 2mb, 768, 512... this particular video was saved as "medium."

Since I'm a graphic designer at heart, this blurry type is physically paining me. I want to get better at this stuff so down the road it can look really good, clean, crisp, and sound nice too. Thanks in advance for your expertise. :)

Print This Site

ageispolis — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:58:52 -0800

Can I force a "print view" on sites that do not have such a feature? I want to print some blog posts and was wondering if there is a script or something for my browser that would allow me to get a "Print View" of the post, even if that feature is not built into the blog itself. News sites allow you to do this through an actual URL that takes you to a printable version of the article (like this), but most other websites do not provide this feature. It would be much easier to just hit a button on my browser than copy/paste into a word processor. Any suggestions?

What's the right software to maintain and display a calendar of relatively infrequent future events?

gleuschk — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:49:49 -0800

What's the right software to maintain and display a calendar of relatively infrequent future events, as well as blog-like news postings? I maintain a website for specialists in my field of mathematics, and one section consists of announcements for upcoming and recent conferences. Another is for news announcements: a basic blog-style list of entries. Both are currently run by our 7-year-old Movable Type installation, in combination with a good bit of chewing gum and baling twine. I'd like to redesign the whole schmear, including the back end. Is wordpress (plus more gum and twine) the right solution? Is there some other system that makes more sense? Link.

Here's the current setup, which hasn't changed since launch in 2002: Movable Type runs two blogs: "News" and "Conferences". The former is your basic blog, except that we only show one entry on the front page, and generally have only an entry a month or so.

Each entry in "Conferences" is added when we learn about it, and post-dated to the first day of the conference. This system works ok, since most conferences are just a day or two, but there are some that are a week, month, or even a semester long, and this causes problems. When first posted, they're in an "upcoming" category that displays in one place, then changed by hand to a "past" category that shows up in another place when they're past. Drawback: I often forget to change the category, which makes me look stupid. We average about 3 conferences a month, though they tend to cluster in March, June, and October. Lead time is up to a year.

I'd like to redesign and bring it up to web-2.whateverwe'reuptonow snuff, both in front and behind. Wordpress seems to be the default these days. I could do the same acrobatics to get the conferences into wordpress, I guess, but it sure seems like there should be a better way. Do you know of one?

I run this out of my pocket and in my free time, so free and drop-in solutions are best, but if you've got good ideas, lay 'em on me.

Feed my Google Reader!

jeffrygardner — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:13:39 -0800

Help me find a good marriage advice blog. My wife is terrific. We have a great relationship and she is amazingly supportive of me in anything I do. I want to keep our relationship as good as it is now. I am just looking for an entertaining blog that gives good relationship advice, and hopefully a couple of great ideas for small loving gestures that I might not have thought of.

I am not looking for:
- A blog focusing on "fixing" a dysfunctional relationship.
- Anything religious in nature or preachy (for example)

Nothing too serious. Just a blog to help me be the best husband I can be!

Journalist/Political Blogging from, and about, Turkey. Censorship issues?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:41:18 -0800

I'm re-locating to Turkey in the upcoming months (due to unrelated circumstances), and whilst there, I intend on starting, and keeping, a regular blog about current events, human rights issues, the EU bid, and such. Photojournalism, where appropriate - and available - will also be included. So, I suppose I have a few questions. (long post, my apologies!) Due to current restrictions on freedom of the press, freedom of speech, Article 301, and others, any attempts at accurate journalism will either be censored, or may result in a less than friendly introduction to the Turkish legal system. However, human rights violations can't simply be ignored. The more they're spoken about, the more they're seen, the more can be done.

So, on to my questions:

1} What level of anonymity, if any, should I attempt? Should I go by a pseudonym? Or just leave out undue personal details and contact info?

2} Internet security. Would something like Hotspot Shield (on my personal laptop) be good, unnecessary, or not enough? Current laptop is running OSX.

3} To circumvent the frequent blocking of blogger.com and wordpress.com domains, I was thinking of using Wordpress, but on my own domain, hosted in either France, or North America. The content may still be blocked on an individual basis, but would my identity be protected?

4} Would it be better to access the internet from my home connection, via laptop, go to an internet cafe and use their connection, and their computer, OR, use my personal laptop in an area with WIFI access, such as a restaurant or hotel? [sidenote: At "home" I will be sharing internet with acquaintances, and will be unable to "reconfigure" anything, or whathave you.]

5} I'm not looking to make money out of this. I will be in the country primarily for other reasons. But I do hope to use this as a chance to gain more exposure, and promote dialogue, on daily Turkish life, whatever that happens to entail. It would be nice, though not entirely necessary, if I was able to add this to my journalistic resume in some way, professionally. Is there a way to do this, while keeping a relatively low profile, and avoiding arrest?

Should I just be submitting articles to small, foreign media outlets instead?

Any advice on how to be an online journo in Turkey, while keeping ones integrity, and still maintaining a minimal level of safety, would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps I'm being overly fearful. I hope I am. I realize Turkey isn't China. I would just rather seek out advice in advance, than regret my naivety. Thanks!

________________________________________

I'm certain you're going to be wondering if I have a background in this at all; if I have any idea what I'm doing... I know it certainly doesn't seem like it from re-reading this. Well, I have a background in broadcast media, ENG camera work, docu editing, television script writing, and freelance photography. I have also traveled rather extensively. The general field of work is not new to me. Political/journo human rights blogging, however, is a new endeavor.

*Throwaway email: journoblogger at yahoo.FR*

float, padding, margins, wrappers, %0px1.2em!11!! oh my!

iamkimiam — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:03:55 -0800

I'm going crazy trying to adjust my blog template. It seems that when I change the browser window size, the body, sidebar, and header all move independently. If I make the window wider, the right edges of the sidebar and header do not align. If I make the window less wide, the whole sidebar crunches into body text (fine) and eventually gets kicked off the side by the body (not fine). Ideally, I'd like them all to line up, move/scale together side-to-side, and not get kicked around. I know this has to do with adjusting float, padding, margins, wrappers, percentages, and pixels. I've been tweaking with the variables, hitting preview, observing changes, for way too long. If somebody could please help me fix this, or point me towards an easy tutorial that won't take up too much of my time to decipher, I'd be forever grateful. Thanks!

Blog is in my profile, but I would be really appreciative if it were NOT linked to in this thread. Thanks!

CMS for a resource website

divabat — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:59:19 -0800

What would be the best CMS solution for a blog that I'm trying to expand as a resource/community site? I'm expanding one of my blogs (link in profile) into being more of a resource and community site (since most of my visitors show up Googling for information on certain things).

I'm looking for a CMS that would allow for the following:

* A blog with content contributed by the visitors. Anyone can make a post, which is then held in moderation. The moderators look through it, edit for spelling/clarity, delete spam entries, and post. So similar to the Communities on LJ, except moderators can't edit posts on LJ.

* A directory, with the following subsections:
- Programs
- Organizations
- Grants/Funding
- Volunteering
- People
(this list can grow)
Each sub-section would have different form fields - for example, the Grants would have a close date, while the People listings would have a phone number. There should be an ability to add tags that can be searched across the listings (so any searches for "travel", for example, brings up all the organizations and people and grants related to travel).
The directory should also have a rating system, where people can leave comments.

* A reviews section, for books/websites/other media. A lot of my entries right now are reviews, so I would like my review to be the core information in the entry, followed by people's ratings. I realize I could do a blog entry like this, but I would like a way to integrate title/ISBN/author/purchase link/etc easily.

* Forums

* An events listing, which links back to related blog entries (I was thinking that any entry tagged as "event" would allow for me to enter certain dates and then they'll show up on the events listing by date).

* A file uploads/downloads section.

* Great search capabilities across the site.

* Allowances for monetization (ad space, ecommerce, etc)

There are further ideas, but these are the basics for now.

I've looked at a few CMSes and Joomla seems to be the best bet since it's easier to understand (Drupal's terminology is a bit confusing). I do NOT want to use Wordpress as I am frustrated with their "support". I love Textpattern, but I don't think they allow for this level of flexibility. I'm fine with addons, but would rather not have to code anything myself.

Is this doable? Which CMS would allow me to painlessly do this? Would it be better off for me to hire a web developer to do this? I'm just a sole young person so I don't have the $5000 that's usually the price for these things, and I would rather hire a young person anyway (but I don't know where to find good help.)

Also, because my boyfriend is being a pain about this and insisting that me asking for "CMSes" is somehow limiting my options - what other integrated solutions can I look at? :P

Why is my blog heating up?

Camofrog — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:05:17 -0800

Why is my MySpace blog suddenly so hot? I've been blogging there for a couple years now, with a few people reading it from time to time. But in the past month or so, I've been ramping up steadily and now I'm getting 200 hits a day. I only have 116 friends!

It's not particularly scintillating reading, mostly just random observations and complaints or whatever, but I do try to keep it kinda funny and at least a little interesting. WTF is going on? Is there a bot hitting it or something? Does everybody who blogs more than once a year get hits on MySpace?

This is so not a troll for further attention. It's just that if people really like reading it, I'd like to take it somewhere where I can get a tiny cut of the ad revenue. Thanks.

prove: the internet is DELICIOUS

rhoticity — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:08:54 -0800

Good, preferably vegetarian-inclusive or focused, recipe blogs? Alternatively, one really good recipe magazine in the same category. I live in a college dorm for the time being, and don't really cook while school is in session due to lack of kitchen and overabundance of paid-for meal points. However, my dining hall is a fairly cool place in that, if supplied with a reasonable recipe, they'll try making it. Their vegetarian options could definitely use some spunk; and, besides that, I'd like to ideally begin collecting my own little treasury of "gotta-try-that"s.

I already read 101 Cookbooks, and enjoy the content, but it updates so infrequently that I definitely need some filler.

I'd also be willing to possibly subscribe to a single recipe print format magazine if someone really heartily recommends one.

Is there a blog platform that allows more than one entry to be "on top"?

duncantuna — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:43:01 -0800

Is there a blog platform that allows more than one entry to be "on top"? I write for a blog with a couple other people, currently using blogger.com. One of our problems is that we often trip over ourselves by posting serveral entries per day, bumping the most recent to the top, and others down. Often, this is not desirable.

We'd love to find a blog platform (service or software) that would allow a multi-column format. -- Sure, I've seen 2, 3, 4 column layouts, but every time, one column is for the posts, and the remaining columns are for "navagation" or other modules. -- That won't solve our problem.

I realize there may be other CMS platforms that could handle this more .. "newspaper" .. format. Whatever the solution, it would need to be simple to operate, add and manage posts. A blog format is desirable, as it's so simple to operate.

Is there a blog platform out there that allows for 2+ columns of posts?

Tonight I'm gonna blog like it's 1993

Kadin2048 — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:26:02 -0800

What blog/CMS software would you recommend that doesn't rely on MySQL or another database backend? So, I finally broke down and bought a vanity domain for myself, and I want to set up a small site there, just to provide occasional updates to my friends and family, and maybe host some other content that I want to share. It's nothing big, I don't expect much/any traffic, and I'm not looking to make money off of it.

I decided to go with Nearly Free Speech for hosting, because they offer a nice metered plan that only charges me for the bandwidth that I actually use, which is cool. But they (quite reasonably) charge extra for SQL processes. So I'd like to find some sort of simple CMS that doesn't require a database to run. PHP4 and CGI (all major languages incl. Perl, Python, Ruby) are both OK.

The only things that have turned up so far are FlatPress, which is a sort of WordPress clone that uses flat files, and Simple PHP Blog. Are there other packages that I'm missing? Has anyone ever used either one? How bad are they to set up? FlatPress seems a little light on documentation...at least compared to regular WordPress, which has a lot of 'Howto'-style documentation because everyone and their cousin seems to use it.

This question last August was about alternatives to popular blog packages that don't require complex coding, but I'm less concerned with that than I am in just avoiding SQL completely.

I don't care about anything very fancy, like the ability to use plugins or customize the style very much. I just want a way of throwing content up onto the site, without having to maintain, organize, and edit a lot of static HTML files. I don't really even care about comments, although they're a plus.

Maybe what I'm looking for really isn't "blog" software. Really, I just want some sort of management system, that avoids the static-HTML morass that I dread from my early-90s experiments with personal web sites. (I used to manage things by keeping a local mirror of the site, adding my content by hand, and then using an FTP client to sync the server's copy. It worked OK, but I want to be able to update from the road, without being tied to the machine with the local mirror.)

Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions, experiences, or anecdotes that folks would like to give.

A French Metafilter?

beniamino — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:47:09 -0800

Can you recommend any French-language websites? Specifically, what's the nearest thing to a French Metafilter? What about a French slashdot/digg? Failing those, what about technology/culture magazines like Wired or Salon? What French-language websites are influential in France, Canada or elsewhere? [I'm aware of the mainstream media's internet presence, not really interested in that here.]

Notify a Yahoogroup about blog updates?

whitearrow — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:44:07 -0800

Can you automatically notify a Yahoo group that a blog using the blogger.com engine has been updated? I run a web site that has a news page, which is really just a blog using the blogger.com interface/engine. We also have an associated mailing list, which is run using the yahoogroups interface.

I'm wondering if there's anyway to automatically send an email to the Yahoogroup that the news page (blog) has been updated? My guess is no, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask.

Blogger to Wordpress for a Fee?

0bvious — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 21:26:51 -0800

Moving from Blogger to Wordpress: Can I pay someone to have it done? I know pretty much how to go about the move, but my time and inclination are low at the moment. If I could pay a small fee and have it done for me (with the results outlined below) I'd be a very happy man...

-----

I have an extensive blogger blog with a several hundred post history. I want to move it over to wordpress, on the same server, whilst maintaining the same URL structure for its entire history (so all past links still reach their destination - I guess this is a htaccess issue).

Each of my past posts was also tagged using Del.icio.us. As a bonus I'd love this history of tags to be pulled into the new Wordpress blog (i.e. update all the posts with their appropriate delicious tags) so future tagging could be done from within the new blog.

Layout and design can stay pretty much the same as it is now, although a bunch of plugins ready and waiting would be a nice final bonus.

Any services that will do this move? Any enterprising Wordpress know-it-alls fancy doing this for a small fee?

Cheers

Viva la web revolucion!

Smarson — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:23:44 -0800

What is this web revolution I see before me? Over the course of the past year I have had a lot of time to surf the web and have come to the conclusion that a new era of web based communication is unfolding before my very eyes. It started when I stumbled across Lifehacker.com, which showed me a whole new side of the internet that I had never conceived of. From that point I began to discover websites that re-oriented the way I've come view information creation, distribution, and storage (Ask Metafilter being one of those discoveries). Some examples of websites I lump into this category are:

*Del.icio.us
*Metafilter
*Ask Metafilter
*Lifehacker
*Wikipedia
*Firefox
*Google (and it's all it's applications including Gmail and Gcal)
*Flickr
*Blogger/Wordpress/etc.
*Bloglines

The list goes on and on and is constantly growing (thanks largely to Lifehacker discoveries). Obviously Google and Wikipedia were known to me prior to my new found web exploration, but only as straight forward tools. It's only in the last 8 months that I've come to understand the potential of their design (e.g. Google Map Mash-ups and wiki-technology as a whole).

Among the above listed websites and others I identify in my "web revolution," I see common themes. The use of tagging is widely present as well as the concept of the blog (In reality Lifehacker and Metafilter/Ask Metafilter are just widely popular blogs with no single author and Flickr is essentially a collection of thousands of photo blogs). I guess even deeper than that is the theme of individual empowerment through the web. Most of these sites were not generated by large corporations (although they may later have been aquired by them), but rather created by a single individual or small group of individuals in order to address an existing need they percieved.

So my questions. Does anyone else see the watershed that I speak of, or is this normal web progression and my "revolution" is simply a personal one? If this is an actual distinct movement within the internet, does it have a name or other identifying characteristics similar or different to the ones I listed above?

Stopping the blog spammers

bamassippi — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:08:24 -0800

I want to start a Wikipedia page featuring the domains of blog spammers. Does one already exist?

How can I best market my podcast?

YoungAmerican — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:47:52 -0800

How can I best market my podcast? I podcast my public radio show. I've had success doing it (about 5K subscribers right now), but I'm trying to expand upon that success.

So given that I don't have a powerful brand like NPR or HBO or something, how can I best spend my time/money to promote the show? What precious little I've been able to find about podcast marketing has sort of been "get your show listed in the directories" stuff.

Are there books I should check out? Strategies I should pursue? I'm a lot better at creating the content than promoting it.

How does Dad easily show his paintings online?

blueberry — Wed, 24 May 2006 12:41:02 -0800

My father is looking for an easy way to showcase his paintings online. I'm thinking photo blog. My father is looking for an easy way to showcase his paintings for friends online. Right now he been playing around with Google's Googlepages but, while it's dead easy, it may not be quite enough.

Googlepages gives him a free site but only allows up to 100mb of space and 100 files total. We think he's going to run over this quite soon. Plus, I think it would be cool for him to have things like keywords and an "all of my paintings" thumbnail page (perhaps in chronological order). Although he's leaning towards a MacBook as his next laptop, until probably next year he's running Windows XP on Gateway laptop.

Here's what he'd like as far as blog features go:

- a reasonably simple-looking template (right now he uses the default Googlepages theme as it allows the focus to be his work, not the cool template)
- an easy web interface where he can enter a title, perhaps a description, choose the image, click "publish" and have it be online a few seconds later—keywords would also be a plus
- all of the standard links built in (next, previous, home, about, etc)
- more space (I'm thinking that 500mb would be fine)
- the ability (if possible) to find and delete files that are not (or no longer) linked to anything—files just taking up space for no reason.
- the ability to add comments might be nice if there was a way to preemptively weed out comment-spam. Maybe something where posted comments were emailed to him to be OK'ed before being posted?
- clicking on an image shows a larger version, but without any stuff like Flash or Java taking over
- no advertising
- in a nutshell, a simple to use, pretty plain-Jane photo blog site

He registered a domain a few years back but no longer has a host for it. If he signed up with a photo blog service could he have his pages hosted by them, but accessed through this already-registered domain?

One last request: if you recommend a blog-provider could you also mention the suggested plan name and pricing. Thank you very much in advance.

Formatting Combined Feeds as a Daily Link List

0bvious — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:49:31 -0800

I have been using reblog to combine two feeds (for a blog and a forum) which I then publish through Feedburner. What I want to do is have the blog part of my feed update normally (i.e. individual posts) and the forum part of my feed compiled into a daily link list (which itself is published as if it were ONE feed post each day)... What ways exist for me to do this? I have already devised a simple way to do this, but I cannot edit the output.

At the moment I have reblogger publish my forum feed to a delicious account. Then using the feedburner link-splicer, delicious posts are called up at the end of each day and compiled as a daily link list in my feed.

Problem is I can't edit the title, format etc. of the output. (I'd like to change the title of this daily post to read something like 'Forum Activity for 30th March 2006')

Any other methods to do this? (my knowledge of PHP and the like is slim, so be gentle).

Thanks a lot

give me blogs or give me ...

anjamu — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:16:45 -0800

Blogs you love? I'm always seeking to expand my little Netvibes page with things to keep me amused during the day. Subject matter isn't as important as being witty and fresh.

Topics I do particularly like include books (ex. Bookslut), food (Eater), all things New York (Gawker, Gothamist), lifehacks (well, Lifehacker), trashy celebrity goodness (Go Fug Yourself), and just assorted random links (Fark-style).

Hit me up with some more to keep me busy!

We don't want the IRS mad at us.

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:48:07 -0800

We have a couple of blogs and use a combination of Google Ads, AdBrite and Amazon Associates placements on them. We're trying to figure out how best to approach the income from these ads on our tax filings... We never thought we'd be making as much as we are making (which still isn't much...not enough to live on), so we hadn't really thought through the tax implications in advance. We were blogging for fun and then...well, income.

Since our Google Ads income exceeded 4 figures this year, we think that we probably have to cover our bases on our upcoming tax return. (More than $7500, less than $10k). Our other income sources posted more modest returns (Amazon, $500+; AdBrite: $500+). To facilitate our blogging, we purchased domain names, paid for hosting services, attended a conference, bought a digital camera, etc. Are these officially expenses?

Also, we'll probably get paperwork from Google for filing with our tax return, but can't imagine that Amazon or AdBrite are going to send us something for those amounts...are we wrong?

I'm a temp and my spouse works full-time so we really don't have experience with this little "side business" situation. Any suggestions for where to research this? Any other folks out there dealing with a similar situation? We are not incorporated or anything "official" like that. Just two regular folks with a laptop who are passionate about the subject we write about.

We talked about hiring a CPA but we've been told that may cost us close to $200-300. Since we're already going to owe the IRS this year, we'd rather try to do this ourselves with Quicken/Turbo Tax. We just don't know how to categorize this unexpected income. Thoughts?