RIE Meetup Talk outline:

First things first:
- what is blogging?
- types of blogs
– journals
– news commentary
– magazines
– special interest
– clubs and organizations

The Discipline of Writing
- how often?
- how long?
- scheduling your posts
- guest blogging
- guest bloggers

Single or multiple author?
- benefits of multiple authors

Growing an audience.
- you need a mailing list
- subscriptions
- ping services
- Google sitemaps
- register your blog (technorati.com)
– RSS / email
- viral content
- link bait

Measuring Your Audience
- Google Analytics
quantcast.com
compete.com

Monetizing Options
- affiliate (PPA)
- eBay, Commission Junction, LinkShare, PepperJam Network
- advertising networks
– PPC: AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Microsoft Ad Center (beta)
– PPM: FastClick, Casale
- direct advertisers
– OIOpublisher, AdRoll, OpenX Market

Profitable Blogs
dailycandy.com
engadget.com
johnchow.com

wpscreencasts.com features excellent training videos for WordPress. Several WordPress tutorials that will help you get started on writing posts (news, announcements, or articles) on your WordPress-Powered web site.

Video tutorial on writing a new post in WordPress.

I’ve grown fond of WordPress, my wife probably is even a little jealous at all the attention WordPress gets–especially in the middle of the night as I tweak something or other on the dozen or so WordPress-powered websites I manage for my clients.

Check out the newest features in WordPress 2.6. This is quick release shortly after the 2.5 upgrade. A lot of good security features have been added, including HTTPS support for admin, and the ability to move the main content (wp-content) to a user-specified directory.

Some of my favorites:

• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.

(And my favorite feature is back: “Press It!”– the bookmarklet-powered posting thing-a-ma-jig–is now called Press This! and has been made over with super-human powers.)

Check out the screencast video of the new WordPress 2.6 features:

For a mere $20 and $4 in tolls, I enjoyed a full weekend of WordCamp at the Frisco municipal center. About 130 WordPress bloggers, technologists, and business people were in attendance. Members of the core WordPress team, including Matt Mullenweg, attended and were available for casual interaction and feedback about our favorite publishing platform.
For me, the most valuable part of the conference is in meeting extraordinary people. I had the honor of meeting Lorrelle, who did a wonderful job of making everyone feel welcome.