Hello, my favorite person in the world. (That’s you, by the way.)

First, the RT Cunningham thing turned out amazingly well. Richard received over $3000 in donations over a 24-hour period and has shut down donations because he has all he needs. The coolness of this is overwhelming. Thank you, IttyBiz readers. You rock.

Next up, thanks to everyone who entered to win the Zen To Done ebook which was subsequently made free. (EDITED TO ADD: Leo stopped by to remind me that it’s not actually free. It’s just no longer under copyright. Subtle but VERY important difference. Thanks, Leo! Note to self: Sometimes the joke falls flat. Accept. Move on.) It is my honor to announce the winner of the ebook is Tzaddi Gordon of Zodomatica. She wins based on my very objective ruling of “Best Use Of The Words ‘Drat’ and ‘Potty’ In A Blog Post.” Read More

Over the last week, three people have called the IttyBiz helpline — well, they emailed, but that doesn’t sound nearly as cool — asking how to increase the comments on their blogs. Since I have been blessed with the loudest and most prolific readers on the internet, I thought I’d take a stab at it.

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Before you can get more commentors, you need to understand why people comment. Commentors can be split into three groups. Each of these groups has two subsets. Hence the title. Get it?

The Emoter:

The Emoter comments because you provoked an emotional reaction in him, and he wants to share it. You made him spit his gin out laughing or you made his eyes get misty. You shocked him. You scared him. You surprised him. Maybe he thought, “Holy shit, that’s GENIUS!” Basically you got him out of his drone-like existence for long enough to feel genuine human emotion and he feels the need to say something about it. Read More

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about how pissed I am at James for guest posting on Copyblogger without even telling me and then writing the guest post on THE SAME DAMN TOPIC as I was going to write about today. But that’s tomorrow.

Today, we’re going to talk about RT Cunningham, a blogger who’s in a tough spot. Dude’s wife is in seriously rough shape — I don’t know the details because I was busy trying to get his post up — and he’s basically fucked if people don’t help him out. He needs to fly to another country and bail on blogging and his wife’s scared out of her head and it’s generally a big mess. Whatever, I’m not saying it right. Read More

As you probably already know, I’m a pretty big fan of Zen Habits. I’ve made no bones about my outright and flagrant attempts to score a guest post there. Today, Daniel Scocco, Editor of Daily Blog Tips — which I also read — wrote a guest post for Zen Habits.

Normally I’m all for snarkiness, but I don’t even know what to say right now. Here’s the full text of the post so it does not look like I’m taking things out of context.

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“Today I was having an argument with my girlfriend about her watching Big Brother. Basically I was trying to discourage her from watching it. I gave her many reasons not to. It is a waste of time, it is petty, it promotes vanity. In other words, it is the panis et circenses [link mine for those of you who aren't "pure" enough to know] of our days. I don’t think there is a coincidence in the fact that most people that watch Big Brother don’t know the works of George Orwell in the first place… Read More

[rant] So I’m reading Steven Snell’s archives tonight (because that’s what the cool kids do on Saturday nights) and I come across a post discussing the benefits of guest blogging.

Guest blogging rocks, without question. You get to see your name “in print” in something you didn’t “print” yourself. You get new readers. You get new subscribers. You expand your brand. It’s pretty cool. Some might call it, uh, marketing.

Phil, one of the commentors, left this little ditty.

“The involvement level might be a little more than the average internet blogger might be willing to endure.”

Phil is totally right, and that totally pisses me off. (Not that he’s right. I’m sure he’s a really nice guy. It’s not his fault he’s right.) Read More