The Blog – Pepperjam Network creates mutually beneficial relationships between affiliates and advertisers. Their Pepperjam Network Blog is loaded with helpful tools for the affiliates – free internet marketing advice, money making tips, and the latest news about Pepperjam Network.

The Blogger – Kris Jones, a search-engine and affiliate marketing expert, is President and CEO of Pepperjam.

A Post We Luv – BlogsWeLuv contributor Garry Conn was interviewed as part of Pepperjam Network’s “Meet the Affiliates” series.

1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
I’ve been blogging on and off for several years now on a range of subjects from mountain biking to network marketing, but I’ve never been fully focused and persistent. I’m engaged to be married next year and have a 3 month mountain bike tour planned as our honeymoon, so I needed to consolidate my businesses. I decided to start this blog as a way to focus my energies and ideas, and to share what I have learned about online business over the past 6 years. I discuss and teach marketing, business, and web design and although my blog is quite young, the feedback I’m getting is awesome!

2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
Using WordPress to Build Websites as a CMS
I’m trying to give as much pure content as I can with this blog. I’ve been designing websites commercially since 1999, so I’m hoping to give back a lot of the knowledge I’ve picked up from the online community.

3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
There are plenty of bloggers in the Internet marketing niche, and there are plenty of very techie developers blogging out there, but I hope that I manage to bridge that gap. Although there are certainly technical elements to some of my posts, I try not to assume too much technical background and always try to appeal to newbies while still giving content with real depth to it.

4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
I honestly can’t remember when I first discovered blogging. I guess my first blog was of a 900 mile solo cycle trip I did in 2002, but I didn’t use a blogging platform – just updated the HTML each day! Can’t imagine doing that now. Life without Wordpress wouldn’t be the same at all!

5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
It’s amazing to me how many people still spam out there, same with forums. You can be sure that every single day you get single one line comments or forum posts from people you never hear from again, just looking for that quick link rather than engage in the conversation.

6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
Soooo many to choose from. I certainly wouldn’t want to be without Askimet, Simple tags is great (and simple just like it says!) but my number one would have to be WP_CodeShield which is such a help on a blog like mine which includes sample code from time to time.

7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
I guess it would have to be Larry Page – so much of what I read on blogs is speculation about Google and their algorithms. It would be great to hear it ’straight from the horses mouth’!

8. How has blogging made you a better person?
Blogging has definitely given me a new focus and commitment. I try to be consistent with my posts, and plan ahead – something I need to do more of with the rest of my business and life!

9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Engage in a conversation – encourage and reply to comments, get inside your reader’s heads and find out what they want. If you can deliver content that is exactly what your visitors want, you’ll be a massive success!

10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
Internet Business Mastery
OK so I know it’s a podcast primarily but these guys put out such great content and are the only ones in my niche who really focus on mindset and goals… plus they are genuinley funny – that’s important too!

The Blog – 0at.org is a blog which encompasses topics related to marketing and design (and a smidge of humor and personal topics) written by a professional designer. Chances are you may have seen his work – Drivl, SEOmoz, Web 2.0 Awards, and FilmCritic.com, just to name a few.

The Blogger – Matthew Inman is a 25 year old web designer, developer, marketer and co-founder of SEOmoz.

A Post We Luv – A Bear With a Mullet. Matthew asked his readers to choose something for him to draw. This was the winner.

10 Questions with Jacob of JobMob

1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
JobMob is about bringing together job seekers and job finders to find jobs in Israel and all over the world. The blog is filled with straight-talking advice based on real world experience and lots of humor thrown in.

2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
Here are two, one at JobMob and one not:

5 People Who Inspired the Creation of JobMob

Interview with me: JobMob – Helping You Find the Right Job in Israel

3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
I have to admit that I don’t really like this question; it plays too much to the notion that all bloggers are egotists. Which is usually true, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Not that JobMob is a one-of-a-kind blog, but I try not to be so egotistical in my writing. It’s not about me or the blog, it’s about helping people find jobs and get over the unemployment hump (if they need to). The blog is just a medium for the message, not the message itself.

4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
I have a technical background – B.Sc in Computer Science – so I wasn’t particularly impressed by blogging at first. I mean, it’s just a specific type of website so what’s the big deal? Although I would regularly read blog posts in Google search results, I only really started subscribing to blogs in the summer of 2006. John Chow helped me see the forest around the trees.

5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
Blogging – scrapers. This bugs me even more than blog spammers which Spam Karma2 has largely made a non-issue for me.

Internet – spammers. Not so much in my email (Gmail does a great job taking care of that) but just the sheer amount clogging the Internet and slowing down everything for the rest of us + plus all the crime involved.

6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
I use WPMU and I really, really like it and the whole community around it. As for a plugin, it’s a tie between Spam Karma2 and wp-cache. I’m not even sure I’d continue blogging without them.

7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Tough question because of JobMob’s theme. It’s not like you can hold up many great people in history and say “wow, they knew how to find work quick”. Perhaps Mark Twain, so many terrific quotes.

8. How has blogging made you a better person?
I had a feeling this would happen, but I suppose I’ve become more compassionate. There are lots of people who are unhappy in their work situation or lack thereof. Finding someone stable income can literally save lives.

9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
My tip for becoming a better anything is to never stop learning. Learn at your own pace, but keep doing it.

10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
Depending on what currently interests me, my taste changes. I no longer read John Chow as much. Some blogs that I find hard to miss right now are Scott Adams’ Dilbert Blog and Dosh Dosh. The former will always make me react, and the latter is terrific, flagship content almost every time. Amazing.

1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
If you look at opinion polls on the jobs/professionals that average consumers trust the most, the “usedcarsalesman” ranks dead last (even behind politicans and lawyers). I thought I’d call my blog “usedcarsalesman.com” (since I had the domain) and have a little fun spinning the public’s perception of the name. With Usedcarsalesman, I attempt to provide frank and occasionally novel opinions on a variety of matters ranging from business, politics, the entertainment industry and military affairs.

2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
You Still Have to Buy a Political Party’s “Whole Album” To Get That One “Favorite Song”

3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
Conservative adherence to an editorial/essayist style of post that really isn’t much different than what you might find on the Op-Ed page of a major City Newspaper. Its not as exciting for people as reading a new post every 15 minutes, but it allowed me to keep a consistent publishing pace since November 2004.

4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
Blogging started to get a little main-stream press in 2004. It seemed a natural progression for me to stop with the hand-written journals and write in this new, more reader-accessible format.

5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
I had some exposure to the internet in the mid-1980s through BBS like Compuserve. I like how the Web/Internet has matured a bit in the ’00s, as the 1990s information-superhighway thing made me nauseous.

6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
If we are talking service, then I’d say TypePad.

7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Warren Buffett. Only because he just purchased a large stake in the CarMax, used-car business and his input on that venture would be an attention-worthy topic of discussion given the name of the usedcarsalesman.com blog.

8. How has blogging made you a better person?
Most people have ideas in the course of day-to-day affairs. In years past, these may have simply dissipated or perhaps found themselves entered in to a journal. But they did no public good either way. I suppose blogging has made me a better person by providing me with an avenue to express whatever beneficial thoughts I have to the world. I guess it is an additional raison d’etre for me.

9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Write down your ideas as individual drafts as soon as it is convenient for you. If you are posting on a weekly basis, then you will always have a diversity of ideas that you can select from to develop as needed.

10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
I am a fan of BlogMaverick.com (though I think Usedcarsalesman.com is actually a more diverse and interesting read). Its unusual for the public to be able to have such direct access to the thoughts of a wealthy tech entrepreneur/trader and NBA franchise operator.

1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
IttyBiz is for people who are working from home, or thinking about it. We have a marketing background, so in addition to work-from-home support and encouragement, we feature a big, juicy bunch of marketing tips for small businesses with small budgets. Or small businesses with no budgets, for that matter.

2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
How To Make Sure Your Ads Are Ignored And Your Money Is Wasted

3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
We’re not trying to be John Chow. We have no interest in blogging bandwagons. You will never see a Widget Bucks review on IttyBiz. We don’t take internet business so ludicrously seriously.

Also, we’re kind of funny and we’re not afraid to say the occasional dirty word.

4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
I was reading some crap or other on the internet and there was a big ol’ list of sites on the sidebar. (I would later discover this to be called a blogroll.) There was a link to Dooce, with something like, “If you’re not already reading this, you’re a total f*&%ing idiot” written above it. Nothing like a vulgar insult or two to make me want to click.

5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
I’m going to pick two things. One, the fact that otherwise intelligent people turn into lemmings the minute they get a Blogger account. (“Ooh. He has a shiny new widget. I should get one too!”) Trust in your own intelligence, people! Two, lousy advertising. There’s no excuse for it. Most people get excited if their blog makes them ten bucks in a month. There’s nothing wrong with that ten bucks, but people sell their souls for it. They put their name up on a really ugly blog and completely lose their integrity just so Adsense can pay their hosting fees.

Oh, and I used to hate MyBlogLog until I was on some really tiny, obscure site one time and saw that Yaro was the last one to be there before me. Now I don’t think it’s so bad.

6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
I don’t do widgets or plugins. I don’t understand them and they make me feel dumb so I avoid them. (This may actually turn out to be false since I hired someone to design my site. For all I know I have more widgets than your average widget factory. If this is true, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.)

7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Can it be a fictional character? I’m going to assume yes. I would pick House, the doctor, from the TV show of the same name. He’s brilliant and intriguing and shockingly offensive, all at the same time. When I say it that way, he’s kind of my role model.

8. How has blogging made you a better person?
It’s made me more compassionate. I always used to hate it when people asked me to work for free. Now that I’m blogging, I’m doing more free stuff than I ever would have imagined. It’s made me realize that the marketing profession is not all about arrogance and prestige and greed. It’s made me understand that this thing that I love can actually help people achieve their dreams.

9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Be yourself, but with better grammar. Don’t jump on every trend you see. You’ll just look stupid later. Think about what your readers want, not what you want. Remember that every single thing that happens to you can be spun into a topical blog post. When you click “Publish”, mean it. Make it count. Say something important, even if it’s just an important way to make people laugh.

10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
I like Amalah. She is funny and heartbreaking and an amazing parent. She makes me, and all of her readers, feel like they’re not alone in trying to raise fun, responsible, well-adjusted children who will grow up to vote Democrat and give money to the poor.

The man behind DayJobNuker is a man with a plan. He plans to break free from the chains of his day job. As of this writing he has exactly two years, nine months, four days, and seven hours in which to achieve that. As I visualize that day I also can hear his theme song, “Take this job and shove it!”. :)

But in addition to that goal he also wants to help others be their own boss. So he provides all his collection of tips, articles and resources to do just that. He recently completed a 3-part series (here, here and here) where he explains how you can take advantage of incentivized freebie websites.

More than just a blog about making money (tempting though it may be, there are still other important things to discuss), I also like the way he takes a stand for America. It’s a brief yet nice post showing his pride in America.

Back to money making, he’s shown ways outside of blogging where you can earn a little extra moolah. Finding niche markets on ebay is one such idea. And one that I found rather refreshing was his post about making money without a website.

I like authors who speak intelligently, clearly, and avoid using a 10 cent word when a five cent one will do just fine. Even if you like your day job, pay DayJobNuker a visit as you might find a reason to change your mind or at the very least earn a supplemental income.