Blogathon :: 20 January 2005

Well it has been 12 hours since my blogathon of 2005 has ended and I’ve had a nice 7 hours sleep and a lazy morning away from the computer recovering.

The Stats - before I get onto the important stats - of how much we earned - here are some others from the day.

- 113 posts written in 24 hours (one every 12.74 minutes)
- 23056 words written (one every 3.74 seconds). Of course this includes quite a few quotes and the interview posts which I wrote up in the days before the blogathon.
- 5 cups of coffee, 2.5 bags of lollies (chocolate bullets, snakes and jelly babies)
- Comments left - 120

I’ve started counting up the donations and pledges and still have a few loose ends to tie up. One or two people have asked if they can still donate or buy sponsorship links. I’m happy to put your link on the page if you make/made a donation. Just let me know what you want.

Here is the state of play with earnings so far:

- The TLD challenge: I linked to 65 links from different Top Level Domains bringing this donation to $130 (AU) or approximately ($100) USD
- Site Sponsorship/Advertising - $270(USD)
- General Donations/Pledges Confirmed - $560 (USD)

Giving a total of $930 USD so far (around $1190 AU depending on the exchange rate).

As I said - I’m still waiting on a couple of people to confirm their donation levels based upon pledges per post/link etc and on one or two people who have expressed interest in buying a text link on the site (all links purchased will remain on the site for 12 months on every page on the site (130 or so) in the side bar so it should help your page ranking).

Thanks again for your wonderful donations and support - both the donations of money but also those of you who spent considerable time on the site yesterday with me. Your emails, comments, msn messengers, SMS texts and phone calls went a long way to keeping me awake and sane. Again a special thank you to Kel who spent most of the 24 hours on the site despite being unwell. I hope I haven’t contributed to your flu worsening - I owe you a coffee or 10 and am putting your blog up as an official site sponsor because in many ways you gave more than anyone else.

Update: Thanks to Personal Finance Blog for coming to the party and becoming a site sponsor. They have been added to the side bar and their contribution brings the total so far up to $930 USD.

Update II: Thanks to Inside Blogging for their $50 donation for commissioning the Business Blogging post. This brings the total up to $980 USD.

The time has come to say goodnight after 24 hours! This is my 113th post (I beat last year by one!!) and the amount that we’ve raised has well exceeded last year also (I’ll have a final figure tomorrow hopefully but I have $670 USD confirmed already and am expecting another $250 or more from some other pledges and ads).

Of course it is never too late to donate. If you’ve just found the site and missed all the action I’d encourage you to look through the 112 previous posts (it could take a while to read - but don’t complain - it took me a while to write!) and consider making a donation using the button in the right hand menu. I’ll leave the ability to make donations open for another few days while I wait for some cheques to arrive.

I’d really like to thank you all for your support over the last 24 hours. I’m quite amazed how some of you have really spent a whole day with me despite the fact that you’ve never met me and some of you have only just started reading my blogs! I’m also really overwhelmed by some of the generous donations that have been given. I look forward to giving you an update tomorrow on the final figure. After that it will be back to my normal blogging rhythms on my numerous blogs (where I’ve got some catching up to do on a days missed posting).

And now I will say goodnight and head to bed - hopefully for a nice lengthy recovery slumber. Thanks all for a very worthwhile day.

As my second last post for this blogathon I want to come back to the interview that I’ve been doing with Rebecca Monson from Oak Tree Foundation (the recipients of donations that you our wonderful readers will give through this blogathon). You can get the full inerview in the About Oak Tree Foundation category.

DR: What is your dream and vision for Oak Tree Foundation?

RM: Different people in the Oaktree Foundation will have different visions. Personally, I hope to see the Oaktree continue to grow throughout the world and in a manner that ensures its sustainability for many, many years to come. I also hope that it provides inspiration and perhaps even a model for young people who are interested in establishing other organizations working in different areas of social justice, ie. homelessness. Young people might not have university qualifications or even a great deal of life experience – but they have passion, idealism and energy that can be harnessed to achieve the most incredible things. The Oaktree provides a model for the manner in which young people’s skills can be fully utilised, and not stifled by confining young volunteers to mundane tasks of answering telephones and stuffing envelopes.

Jeremy from Inside Blogging messaged me earlier today to say that Inside blogging would donate $5 to the Tsunami appeal for every business blog that I linked to today to a limit of $100. Sounded a fairly easy task at first but in considering it it probably left me with more questions than it did answers and the list that I’ve compiled I am completely unsatisfied with.

I’ve posted the remainder of this post at A list of Business Blogs at my ProBlogger Blog.

When I asked readers over at ProBlogger what they’d like to ask professional bloggers MM asked:

‘I want to know what kind of research they did before they jumpstart a new blog. How do they gauge the “marketability” or earning potential of a new topic?’

I’ll ask the question when I start my interview series - but thought it was worth attempting an answer here also from my own perspective.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The best research that I’ve ever done on a topic for a potential blog is this.

This article has been moved and continues here.

When I asked readers over at ProBlogger what they’d like to ask professional bloggers Hashim asked:

‘Ask them do they choose topics they personally enjoy or just what will make the most money’

Good question - I’ll ask those I interview but will answer for myself here.

Update: I’ve moved this blog post to Do you start blogs for passion or money at Problogger.

This post on the Hopes of Probloggers has been moved to ProBlogger at hopes of a Professional Blogger.

Today we are featuring questions and answers from an interview that I’ve done this week with Rebecca Monson from Oak Tree Foundation (the recipients of donations that you our wonderful readers will give through this blogathon).

DR: What has been the hardest thing Oak Tree has faced in the last year??
RM: As one of the co-leaders of the legal team, the growth of the Oaktree is…scary. New branches, projects and fundraising initiatives all generate more legal work – and often unfamiliar legal issues! One of the challenges for us is to establish good policies and processes without becoming overly bureaucratic. Thankfully our pro bono lawyers, Middletons, are incredibly supportive of us!

One of the things I’ve noticed today by the heap of emails that have hit my inbox is the huge number of people that are now using Gmail as their primary email service. As a result I thought this Gmail Tips Collection might be helpful for many of you. Jim, the author of the tips writes:

‘In an effort to provide easier access to my Gmail Tips, here are all of the Gmail Tips that I posted on my GmailTips.com Web site. Some of these Gmail Tips may be outdated, but they represent the entire collection. Please feel free to visit GmailTips.com and have a look around, and don’t hesitate to contribute any new, relevant content!’

There are 29 tips in the collection so far which should cover most issues you might have with it.

There are two hours to go! Wooohooo.

Its 1am here in Melbourne and I’m attempting to stay awake with a bit of late night TV (a silly move as its enough to put me to sleep) and a bit of last minute surfing to try and find some more TLD domains which can earn me $2 a pop. Email me any that you come up with and I’ll add them.

This is my 105th post for this blogathon and I”m happy to announce that a few more donations have come in in the last couple of hours and we’ve reached a total of around $670 USD. There is more promised with some pledges per post and per TLD link. I’ll not actually know a completely final topic until tomorrow (or that would be later today now) sometime when I get the calculator and hear from a couple of people who have indicated they are contributing but have not given a figure yet.

There is still time to push the total higher - I suspect we’ll put up towards the $1000 mark but might just miss it unless we get a couple more decent donations. No pressure but if you’d like to help out I’d love to add your donation to what we’re able to give to the Oak Tree Foundation’s Tsunami appeal.

A few people have asked questions in comments in the last few minutes that I’ll attempt to respond to but I’m thinking I probably won’t get to some of them as I’ve only got 8 or 9 posts left and I’ve got a few topics I’m trying to write up in that time already. If I don’t get to your question I’ll try to do it tomorrow on the appropriate blog or will email you.

Some people spend their lives doing the strangest things. This recent auction on Ebay is just another example of it - some guy is selling 2163 pictures of mouths. You can enter the bidding for this entire collection now for just 1 cent. They write:

‘2,163 male mouths are here for your viewing pleasure! They are all in JPEG and bitmap format, and are all excellent quality graphics.

Bid today for your chance at receiving this fantastic package! It makes a great addition to any mouth picture collection. You’ll receive these 2,163 pictures on your choice of a pocket CD or full-sized CD-R. Or, if you’d prefer to download a few hundred megabytes, we can waive the shipping fee and you can download the package from our high speed file server.

All these pictures are 100% legal. None are from paysites and there is no pornography in this collection. Just thousands of pictures of guys’ mouths!’

Read more at Over 2,100 Mouth Pictures!!!

Yahoo provides this slideshow of photos from around the region from the Tsunami disaster in the aftermath of Boxing Day. Some of the photos are so beautiful that its hard to believe that they were taken in such tragic circumstances. Please don’t forget that we are doing this blogathon to raise some money for the people you see in many of these shots. Head over to the ‘Make a Donation’ button if you can spare a little to help rebuild the lives of those who have lost so much.