Her Sex Secrets Revealed: How what you want in bed compares to what she thinks about sex

You no longer have to guess what women like in bed. With the help of Cosmopolitan magazine, we asked 6,000 men and women to tell us everything -- what they like, what they hate, what they've done, what they're dying to try. The results were as surprising -- men and women want sex equally often -- as they were enticing: Most women want to experiment and are just waiting for you to ask.

Here are the complete results of the survey, but you can also read What She Wants You to Do to Her to get even more sex tips.

Question	He said	She said
1. How often do you want sex?
Two or three times a week	34.8%	35.1%
Once a day	30	26.3
Several times a day	25.3	25.7
Once a week	3.81	6.3
Two or three times a month	3	3.7
Less than once a month	2.3	1.7
Once a month	.8	1.2
2. Do you wish your partner would
Inititate sex more often	66.3%	35.2%
Initiate sex less often	1.25	6.2
Respond to your advances more	14.7	16.3
None of the above	17.7	42.3
3. Which of the following is most likely to cause you to turn down sex with your partner?
I never turn down sex	53.7%	29.1%
I'm just not in the mood	19.2	25.7
I'm too stressed out	12.6	12.1
Partner is not very good	4	2.8
Need more time to warm up	3.52	15.6
Partner takes too long to orgasm	2.6	3
I need an emotional connection	1.8	7.8
Partner wants too much foreplay	1.4	.7
Partner wants too much sex	1.3	3.3
4. What time of the day are you most likely to be in the mood for sex?
Before I go to bed	33.9%	36.9%
In the morning, after I wake up	28.1	14.9
In the evening, after I get home	14.3	13.2
After dinner	8.6	10.3
In the middle of the night	5.7	10.8
In the afternoon, during work	3.5	6.1
In the morning, after breakfast	3	2.3
In the afternoon, at lunch	2.9	5.6
5. What sort of date is most likely to put you in the mood for sex?
A romantic dinner out	27.7%	23.4%
A quiet night at home	26.1	28.7
Dancing	14.6	25.4
An adventure date outdoors	10.1	5.2
Visiting a pub; Darts, pool	9.8	7.3
A formal event	7.4	4.1
A concert or comedy show	2.2	1.8
Going to a sporting event	1.6	2.8
Shopping	.6	1.4
6. When do you generally have sex with a new partner?
After the third date	7.9%	11.6%
After a month of dating	14	16.1
After the fourth or fifth date	13.6	11.4
After the second date	12.4	7.1
Only after marriage	9.1	4.4
After the first date	8.6	5.2
The same night we meet	7.8	3.4
After several months of dating	6.6	19.4
Once we've discussed exclusivity	6.3	17.2
Never, I practice abstinence	3.3	2.5
Only after he pops the question	.3	1.8

Go on to the next page to find out what's most likley to bring her to orgasm...

Question	He said	She said
7. a. Men: If I'm really interested, I want to have sex:
As soon as I get the okay	48.2%
When I'm ready, even if she is first	24
Wait until we are exclusive	21.3
Wait until a certain number of dates	6.5
7.b. Women: If I'm really interested, I want to have sex:
Wait until we're committed		40.4%
Few dates, so he won't think I'm a slut		37.6
Whenever I want, even on first date		21.9
8. a. Men: Which of the following is most likely to bring you to orgasm?
Vaginal sex	75.6%
Oral sex	17
Manual simulation--by me	4.1
Manual stimulation--by her	3.3
8.b. Women: Which of the following is most likely to bring you to orgasm?
Clitoral stimulation--by him		28.1%
Vaginal sex--with him		26.8
Oral sex		20.7
Clitoral simulation--by me		14.8
Clitoral stimulation--by a sex toy		8.1
9. Which of the following is most likely to prevent you from having an orgasm?
I never have any problem	47%	11.4%
I'm distracted	25.3	22.8
My partner doesn't know what to do	8.2	15.6
There's no emotional connection	8	6.8
My partner doesn't last long enough	6	19.4
Partner needs to ask what to do	3.4	6.9
It's difficult for me to orgasm	2.2	16.8
10. How much longer do you wish intercourse could last?
I'm satisfied with how long sex lasts	30.3%	38%
10 minutes	23.3	21
20 minutes	15.3	13.8
5 minutes	14.5	14.5
30 minutes	7.5	5.2
1 hour or more	5.9	4
45 minutes	2.4	1.8
1 minute	.9	1.7
11.Which body part of the opposite sex turns you on the most?
Butt	34.5%	7.8%
Chest	23.2	14.3
Face	14.1	19.8
Legs	9.9	1
Genitals	7.6	9.5
Abs	6.1	9.4
Arms		12.5
Shoulders		8.2
12. Which of your body parts do you think turns the opposite sex on the most?
Chest	15.6%	42%
Butt	13.5	27.7
Face	26.9	10.5
Shoulders	9.5	.7
Arms	9.3	.2
Legs	2.9	6.9
Abs	8.4	3.2
Genitals	7	5
13.a. Men: How would you describe your penis size?
About average	59.9%
About right	24.3
Small	8.1
Massive	7
Way too small	.8
13.b. Women: How would you describe the penis size of your most recent sexual partner?
About average		44.3%
About right		32.3
Massive		17.6
Small		5
Way too small		.9
14. In your opinion, the ideal length for an erect penis is:.
7 inches	38.3%	34.8%
6 inches	33.8	32.8
8 inches	17.9	14.9
5 inches	4.8	10.5
9 inches	3.3	2.6
10 inches or more	1.3	1.7
4 inches	.4	2.5
1-3 inches	.2	.2
15. In your opinion, the ideal girth for an erect penis is:
The diameter of a D battery	74%	64.3%
The diameter of a racquetball	16.5	27.8
The diameter of a quarter	8.1	5
The diameter of a soda can	.7	2
The diameter of a Sharpie marker	.6	1
16. Which of the following is most important for pleasing a woman?
Thrusting technique	37.7%	55.5%
Oral sex technique	30.4	19.7
Duration of intercourse	16.8	9.2
Penis girth	12.2	11.9
Penis length	2.9	3.6

Go on to the next page to find out which type of grooming women and men prefer down there...

Question	He said	She said
17. What sort of lingerie do your prefer?
Racy: The less fabric, the better	48.7%	46.3%
Elegant: Hints of raw flesh	47.3	51
Trashy: Zippers and pleather	4	2.7
18. What sort of pubic grooming have you done?
I'll do a little trimming,	33.5%	19.4%
The buzz cut--I prefer it short	32.8	21.8
Completely bald	15.5	35.6
None. I wouldn't touch a thing.	11.7	2.3
I'll shave or wax it into shapes	6.6	20.9
19. What sort of pubic grooming would you be willing to do, if asked by a partner?
Anything that turns her on	49.4%	38.3%
I'll do a little trimming	15	10.2
The buzz cut-I prefer it short	14.5	12.4
Completely bald	10.8	18.6
I'll shave or wax it into shapes	6.9	18
None. I wouldn't touch a thing.	3.4	2.7
20. What sort of pubic grooming do you prefer on your partner?
Completely bald	36.5%	11.9%
Shaved or wax it into shapes	32.3	2.1
A little trimming, but that's it.	13.8	47.4
The buzz cut--I prefer it short	13.5	25.7
None. I wouldn't touch a thing.	3.9	13
21. How many times a week do you masturbate?
2-3 times a week	37.2%	23.6%
Once a day	19.1	7.3
About once a week	16.6	16.6
2-3 times a month	11	17.6
Less than once a month	11	31.2
More than once a day	5.2	3.6
22. How many times a week do you think your partner masturbates?
Less than once a month	46.9%	10.4%
2-3 times a month	18	11.8
About once a week	17.9	18
2-3 times a week	13.3	32.7
Once a day	2.7	21.2
More than once a day	1.1	5.9
23. How many previous sexual partners is it okay for your partner to have had?
2-3	26.4%	26%
4-5	22.1	19.3
8-10	13.9	13
None	11.3	9
6-7	10.2	8.8
1	5.3	6.4
11-15	4.7	6.4
16-20	2.2	4.5
51 and above	1.7	2.8
24. How many sexual partners have you had?
2-3	18.9%	25.1%
4-5	14.7	14.6
1	12.8	24.1
8-10	10.7	7.8
6-7	9.1	6.6
11-15	8.8	5.3
16-20	5.8	2.6
None	5.3	8.2
21-25	4.2	1.9
51 and above	3.6	1.2
25. Do you think it's okay to ask how many sexual partners your partner has had?
Yes	69.5%	83.5%
No	30.5	16.4
26. Have you asked how many sexual partners your current partner has had?
Yes	58.2%	68.1%
No	41.8	31.9
27. Have you ever lied about how many partners you've had?
No	62.5%	68.4%
Yes -- Increased by 1 or 2	9.6	6.4
Yes -- Decreased by 1 or 2	7.24	13.1
Yes -- Decreased by 3-5	6.3	6.2
Yes -- Decreased by more than 10	6.1	2.7
Yes -- Increased by more than 10	.33	.10
28. Do you count oral sex partners, who you haven't had intercourse with, in your total number of sex partners?
No	62.7%	67.3%
Yes	37.3	32.7
29. When it comes to oral sex, I:
Give more. I want to even it out	35.9%	28.8%
Give more, and I like it that way	21.1	24.1
Receive more. I want to even it out	19.5	19.7
Receive more. I like it that way	14.1	21.1
Give more. I'd like the opposite	6.9	5.6
Receive more. I'd like the opposite	2.5	.7
30. Has your partner ever faked an orgasm?
No	59.7%	92.9%
Yes	40.3	7.1
31. Have you ever faked an orgasm?
No	71.8%	34.9%
Yes	28.3	65.1

Go on to the next page to find out what other guys think women do wrong in bed...

Question	He said	She said
32. What's the worst mistake your partner makes in bed?
Not communicating enough	43.9%	19.9%
Just laying there	34.8
Faking orgasm	9
Poor technique	8	12.5
Trying too hard to please me	3.2	9.9
Acting like we're in a porn movie	1.2	7
Rushing to intercourse		13.6
Not enough foreplay		34.2
Not trying hard enough		5
33. Men: What's the worst mistake women make during oral sex?
Her teeth get in the way	19.2%
She's not persistent enough	18.7
She should use her tongue more	12.6
She doesn't use her hand enough	11.4
She has bad rhythm	11.4
She's too rough	9.7
She ignores my testicles	8.6
She's too gentle	8.5
34. Women: What's the worst mistake men make during oral sex?
He's too rough		22.4%
He's not persistent enough		18.9
He doesn't know my anatomy		18.8
He's too gentle		14.9
He has bad rhythm		13.2
His beard irritates my skin		11.9
35. Do you fantasize?
Yes, but only during masturbation	43.3%	41%
Yes, during sex and masturbation	41.7	22.5
No	9.1	27.4
Yes, but only during sex	5.9	9.1
36. Who do you fantasize about?
A previous partner	25%	27.5%
A friend	22.7	19.2
A stranger	20.5	26.7
A celebrity	13.7	15.7
A porn star	10.7	6.8
A co-worker	7.5	4.1
37. Why do you fantasize?
Images just pop into my head	46.3%	35.1%
It helps me get turned on	43.7	58.4
I'm bored	6.5	4.5
Focus on something besides partner	3.6	2
38. Have you videotaped sex?
No	76.9%	81%
Yes	23.1	19
39. Used light bondage?
No	55.5%	58.7%
Yes	44.6	41.3
40. Used Role Playing?
No	68.7%	71.9%
Yes	31.3	28.1
41. Used toys?
Yes	51.3%	39%
No	48.5	61
42. Had a threesome?
No	90.6%	91%
Yes	9.5	8.8
43. Sex while watching porn?
Yes	57.3%	47.6%
No	42.7	52.4
44. Had anal sex?
No	57.8%	64.8%
Yes	42.2	35.3
45. Had sex in public?
No	53.5%	57.2%
Yes	46.6	42.8
46. Swinging/Swapping
No	95.7%	95.1%
Yes	4.3	4.9
47. Grooming and shaving each other?
No	52.5%	53.2%
Yes	47.5	46.8
48. Is your partner as sexually adventurous as you would like?
No	60.7%	30.7%
Yes	39.3	69.4
49. What can a partner do to convince you to experiment sexually?
Just ask--I'm game	78.6%	47.9%
Offer to let me do something kinky	10.9	9.4
Show how much she respects me	7.3	32.6
Swear that no one will know	2	8.1
Constant begging and pleading	1.2	2
50. I'm more likely to be sexually adventurous...
Always sexually adventurous	44.2%	19.3%
Later: After I've built trust with her	37.9	66
Early: Before things get serious	8.7	7
If it's a random stranger:	8.3	4.8
I'm not comfortable with that	1.4	3
51. Have you ever had a threesome?
No	81.6%	86%
Yes	18.4	14
52. Who else participated?
Two girls	50.3%	21.3%
One guy, One girl	25.5	49
I've been in both situations	24.3
Two guys		29.7
53. Were you in a relationship with any of the other participants?
No, and I never was	57.7%	48.6%
Yes. The relationship stayed strong	17.7	21
Yes. It failed, but not because of it	16.4	19.9
Yes. It failed because of it	4.3	4.6
No, but it evolved into a relationship	3.8	5.9
54. How'd it go?
I loved it, and would do it again	59.1%	36.7%
It was a good, one-time thing.	29.6	40.1
It was awful, but I'd try again	8.1	11.9
It was awful, I'd never try it again	3.3	11.2
55. If you have never been in a threesome, what would it take?
Random people	36.2%	18.8%
I'd never have a threesome	29.4	57.6
Secure relationship. 3rd party a friend	18.7	11.2
Secure relationship. 3rd party a stranger	15.7	12.4

Brazilian jet missing over Amazon jungle

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - A Brazilian jetliner with 155 people aboard was reported missing Friday over the Amazon jungle, aviation authorities said.

Initially, officials said they believed Gol airlines flight 1907 had collided with a smaller plane after leaving the jungle city of Manaus in the remote southwestern region of Para state. News reports said the plane struck a Brazilian-made Legacy, a smaller executive jet.

But authorities later said they were no longer certain the disappearance was caused by a collision with a private jet as they earlier maintained.

"During the afternoon, there was another incident with a Legacy airplane, made by Embraer," federal aviation authorities said in a statement issued early Saturday morning. "It is impossible to confirm that there is a relation between the incident which caused the (Legacy) crew to perform an emergency landing in Cachimbo and the disappearance of the Gol airplane."

Initially, authorities reported the collision was near the Serra do Cachimbo region in Para state but the Legacy managed to land at the Cachimbo base despite suffering damage. The aviation agency said the plane disappeared about 130 miles south of the city of Cachimbo, some 1,250 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

The jetliner had been scheduled to make a stop in Brasilia before heading to Rio's Antonio Tom Jobim International Airport. Manaus is a major river city in the heart of the Amazon rainforest some 1,700 miles northwest of Rio.

Brazilian airport authority President Jose Carlos Pereira said five air force planes were searching for the missing Boeing 737 in a densely forested region and would continue to search through the night.

On Friday evening, Gol issued a brief statement confirming the plane's disappearance.

"GOL informs that flight 1907, that today left the Manaus airport at 15:35 (Brasilia time) this Friday, and was scheduled to arrive at the Brasilia airport at 18:12, has not had its landing confirmed until this moment. We are awaiting information from officials of the aviation authorities about the flight," the statement said.

Gol said there were 155 people aboard, 149 passengers and six crew members.

Pereira said in an interview with CBN radio that a local farmer reported seeing a large plane flying low.

According to the Globo news agency, some 70 family members and friends of the victims had been moved to a warehouse owned by Gol at the Brasilia airport to await news.

Seven passengers were scheduled to disembark in Rio, where airport officials had put those waiting to greet them in a separate room.

Sergio Misaci, 47, said his brother Lazaro, 58, was aboard the flight from Manaus and traveling to Brasilia to celebrate their mother's 80th birthday.

"I have all the hope in the world. We have to root for them and have faith in God," Misaci said, adding that he had lived in Manaus for six years and was sure they would not find the plane for at least 24 hours.

"The trees there are 50 and 60 meters (yards) high and you can't see anything," he said before returning home to rest for the evening.

The flight between Manaus and Rio is popular with foreign tourists but there was no immediate word on the nationalities of those aboard.

The Embraer Legacy 600 is a Brazilian-made executive jet that carries up to 16 passengers.

The Estado news agency quoted Col. Ramon Bueno, head of regional flight protection in Sao Paulo, as saying the Legacy was piloted by an U.S. citizen who had left from the airport in Sao Jose dos Campos, near Sao Paulo. The Legacy suffered damaged to its wing and tail.

He told the news agency a mid-air collision was "inexplicable."

"The two planes are very modern and have anti-collision systems, which sound an alarm to alert the plane to any obstacle," Bueno told Estado.

Bueno told Estado that if there were no survivors, it could be the worst air accident ever in Brazil. The worst to date occurred in 1982 when a Vasp 747 crashed in the northeastern city of Fortaleza, killing 137 people.

The accident occurred in the same region where a Varig 737-200 crashed in 1989 with 54 people aboard with 46 survivors.

It was the first major incident for Gol Linhas Aereas Intelligentes SA, an upstart Brazilian airline that took to the skies in 2001 with just six Boeing 737s in 2001, serving seven Brazilian cities.

____

Foley resigns from Congress over e-mails

WASHINGTON - Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., abruptly resigned from Congress on Friday in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.

"I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," Foley, 52, said in a statement issued by his office.

Six hours after his resignation letter was read to the House by a clerk, the chairman of a panel that oversees the page program issued a one-page written statement that deflected any blame from House leaders.

The statement from Rep. John Shimkus (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., said the House Page Board he chairs investigated the allegations late last year, but he said Foley "was not honest" in denying improper conduct with the teenager. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.

The House voted to have its ethics committee consider whether to investigate further. The Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) of California, said the committee should determine who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct.

His departure sent Republicans scrambling for a replacement candidate less than six weeks before midterm elections in which Democrats are making a strong bid to gain control of the House. He had been a shoo-in for a new term.

Foley's two-sentence statement gave no reason for his decision to abandon a flourishing career in Congress. But several officials said the resignation had been prompted by the e-mails, and he took his action as details emerged about electronic messages he had sent.

The resignation further complicates the political landscape for Republicans, who are fighting to retain control of Congress. Democrats need to win a net of 15 Republican seats to regain the power they lost in 1994.

Florida Republicans planned to meet as soon as Monday to name a replacement in Foley's district, an area around Palm Beach County that

President Bush

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President Bush won with 55 percent in 2004 and is now in play for November. Though Florida ballots have already been printed with Foley's name and cannot be changed, any votes for Foley will count toward the party's choice.

Campaign aides had previously acknowledged that the Republican congressman e-mailed the former Capitol page five times but had said there was nothing inappropriate about the exchange. The page was 16 at the time.

Rep. Rodney Alexander (news, bio, voting record), R-La., who sponsored the page from his district, told reporters that he learned of the e-mails from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Republican campaign organization.

Alexander said he did not pursue the matter further because "his parents said they didn't want me to do anything."

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the GOP campaign organization, said Reynolds learned from Alexander that the parents did not want to pursue the matter. Forti said, however, that the matter did go before the House Page Board — the three lawmakers and two House officials who oversee the pages.

Shimkus, who avoided reporters for hours, worked out his statement with Speaker

Dennis Hastert

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Dennis Hastert's office. He said he promptly investigated what he thought were non-explicit message exchanges.

"It has become clear to me today, based on information I only now have learned, that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct," Shimkus said.

Shimkus said that in late 2005 he learned — through information passed along by Alexander's office — about an e-mail exchange that August in which Foley asked about the youngster's well-being after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday and requested a photograph.

"Congressman Foley told the (House) clerk and me that he was simply acting as a mentor ... and that nothing inappropriate had occurred," Shimkus said.

Foley was ordered to cease all contact with the former page and assured Shimkus he would do so, the statement said. He also was advised to watch his conduct with current and former House pages, and he gave assurance he would do so, Shimkus said. He added that here were no further complaints.

Hastert said Friday he had asked Shimkus to investigate the page system. "We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.

Hastert said Foley submitted the letter of resignation to Florida Gov.

Jeb Bush

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Jeb Bush and submitted a copy to him. A House clerk read Foley's resignation on the House floor.

"He's done the right thing," Hastert said. Asked if the chain of events was disturbing, he said, "None of us are very happy about it."

ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former male pages. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page: "Do I make you a little horny?"

In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? ... Well, strip down and get relaxed."

Foley, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect.

"We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley has said.

And he once accused the Supreme Court of "siding with pedophiles over children."

Foley was a member of the Republican leadership, serving as a deputy whip. He also was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Foley's aides initially blamed Democratic rival Tim Mahoney and Democrats with attempting to smear the congressman before the election.

The e-mails were posted Friday on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's Web site after ABC News reported their existence. The group asked the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to investigate.

Naomi Seligman, a spokeswoman for CREW, said the group also sent a letter to the

FBI

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FBI after the group received the e-mails. CREW did not post their copies of the e-mail until ABC News reported them, instead waiting for the investigation.

"The House of Representatives has an obligation to protect the teenagers who come to Congress to learn about the legislative process," the group wrote, adding that the committee "must investigate any allegation that a page has been subjected to sexual advances by members of the House."

In 2003, Foley faced questions about his sexual orientation as he prepared to run for Sen. Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record)'s seat. At a news conference in May of that year, he said he would not comment on rumors he was gay. He later decided not to seek the Senate seat to care for his parents.

According to the CREW posting, the boy e-mailed a colleague in Alexander's office about Foley's e-mails, saying, "This freaked me out." On the request for a photo, the boy repeated the word "sick" 13 times.

He said Foley asked for his e-mail when the boy gave him a thank you card. The boy also said Foley wrote that he e-mailed another page.

"he's such a nice guy," Foley wrote about the other boy. "acts much older than his age...and hes in really great shape...i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey now heading to the gym...whats school like for you this year?"

In other e-mails, Foley wrote, "I am back in Florida now...its nice here...been raining today...it sounds like you will have some fun over the next few weeks...how old are you now?" and "how are you weathering the hurricane...are you safe...send me an email pic of you as well."

What the boy wrote to Foley, who is single, wasn't available. The e-mails were sent from Foley's personal account, which Foley spokesman Jason Kello says he uses to communicate with many people, including the governor.

Efforts to reach the boy were unsuccessful, but he told the St. Petersburg Times last November, "I thought it was very inappropriate. After the one about the picture, I decided to stop e-mailing him back." The Times didn't publish the comments until Friday.

Alexander said the boy notified a staffer in his office about the e-mails. The congressman said he learned of it from a reporter 10 or 11 months ago and promptly called the boy's parents.

"We weren't trying to protect anybody except the parents," Alexander said Friday. "They told me they were comfortable with it and didn't want to pursue anything, didn't want to talk about it anymore."

Mahoney, a Republican who became a Democrat last year, is chairman and chief operating officer of a $1 billion-a-year financial services company. In his House bid, he has focused on Washington corruption and oversized deficits.

In 1983, the House censured two lawmakers — Daniel Crane of Illinois and Gerry Studds of Massachusetts — for having improper relationships with pages.

10 ways to become a better blogger

by Deb Shinder | More from Deb Shinder | Published: 9/29/06 Keywords: Web logs | Professional development

Takeaway:
If nobody bothers to read your blog posts, you might as well just scribble your thoughts on a cocktail napkin. But if you truly want to share your ideas and opinions, check out these pointers for crafting an engaging blog and building a loyal following.

Blogging is the new national pastime--not just for Americans, but for Internet-connected people all over the world. It's an activity that spans all age groups and occupations. There are personal blogs, social blogs, and professional blogs. Whatever the topic, someone has probably blogged it. Some of us get paid to blog and others pay for the privilege of blogging (on a particular site or with particular software).

The Internet made it possible for anyone to publish content to a worldwide audience. The Web log, or blog format, has made it easier and more convenient. But all blogs are not created equal. Some draw an eager following and others languish in obscurity. Regardless of your reason for blogging, you can make your blog better, more readable and--if it's what you want--more popular.

#1: Define your purpose

The first step in creating a better blog is to ask yourself why you're blogging. What's the purpose of your blog? Is it to be a public version of the personal diary, recounting your experiences, thoughts, and emotions? Is it more of a journal, where you preserve ideas and outline projects? Is it a social site, for interacting with friends, sharing links, getting to know people? Is it an editorial page, for commentary on politics, social trends, and current events? Is it a professional or hobbyist site, for sharing conceptual and how-to information about some field of study or work (e.g., aviation, computer programming, or photography)?

Sure, you can have "just a blog" that combines elements of all of these, but you may find that readers prefer you to specialize. If you want to write about your field of expertise sometimes and your favorite political party at other times, it might be beneficial to maintain two separate blogs to avoid alienating or boring your readers half the time.

Speaking of readers, an important element in defining your purpose is to know your audience. That will help you determine the voice and writing style that's appropriate for those you're addressing. You probably wouldn't use the same style when writing to stock car race fans that you'd use if your audience were made up primarily of stock market brokers.

In keeping with your blog's purpose, you should have a defined theme. For example, if the purpose of your blog is to express political opinions, the theme might be to promote a low-tax, nonintrusive government.

#2: Create visual appeal

Content isn't the only thing that matters. Your blog site should also be visually appealing, or at least visually neutral. You don't want to scare away prospective readers or have them leave in frustration because the page is distracting or unreadable.

The best visual design for the page is dependent in part on your audience and theme. You can use color, font styles, and graphics to set the mood and tone--just make sure the tone matches the content. Whatever your theme, it's best to avoid dark letters on a dark background, tiny or overly fancy typefaces, and other elements that make your blog hard to read.

If your blog is hosted on a public blog site, you may be limited in how much you can change the design, but there will usually be a number of preconfigured visual themes you can choose from. Keep audience appeal and readability in mind when selecting one.

#3: Use the proper tools

You can create a blog using any WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as FrontPage (soon to be replaced by Microsoft Expression Web Designer), Macromedia Dreamweaver, or the Amaya open source editor endorsed by W3C. You can even use a text editor like Notepad to compose the HTML code.

However, blogging is made much easier, faster, and more convenient if you use a dedicated blogging program or the features of a blogging Web site that lets you compose posts in the Web browser or via e-mail.

If your blog is hosted on a free public blog site, such as Blogger or Windows Live Spaces, you can write your posts in your e-mail client and send them to a special address you're given when you create your account. For many, this is the easiest way to post, although it doesn't show you the formatting.

Another alternative is to use a blog program such as WordPress, Movable Type, Post2Blog, or Windows Live Writer, which offer various useful features. For example, Windows Live Writer (free download at http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/) lets you put a button on the toolbar in IE so that if you want your blog to reference a Web site you're visiting, you can highlight the text you want to quote and click Blog It. This opens Live Writer and inserts the link and the quoted text in your blog. You can publish to your blog on Live Spaces or other popular blogs with a single click.

#4: Make it easy to navigate

If you're designing your blog site from scratch, it's important to make it easy for readers to get around and do what they want to do. For instance, if you're using comments and RSS feeds, make sure it's clear to readers how to post a comment or subscribe to the feed.

You should also make it easy for readers to find past posts. Make sure archives are organized logically--not just in chronological order but in categories to make it easier to find particular posts.

If your blog is hosted on a public blog site, you can usually change the arrangement of page elements, add or eliminate elements (often called modules), and otherwise influence the navigability of the page. Keep clutter to a minimum but be sure to include the elements that readers need.

Make your site searchable, if possible, so users can find posts using keywords. You can put a free Google search box on your site (for more information, see http://www.google.com/searchcode.html#both).

#5: Stay in one place

Many bloggers experiment with different blog hosting sites and/or with hosting their own sites, especially early on in their blogging experience. It may take you awhile to find the best setup, but try to do so as soon as possible and then stay in one place so your readers can find you. Moving around to different URLs too often is sure to lose you some readers.

If you have an established blog and it's necessary to move it to a different address, try to publish a last post on the old blog that points readers to the new blog and leave it up as long as possible.

#6: Engage your readers

Perhaps the most important factor in attracting and keep readers is establishing a relationship with them. Even interesting content is rendered less interesting if we don't know who's talking (writing) to us. Tell your readers who you are and something about yourself.

You need not go into a lot of personal details if your blog is political or professional, and in some cases you may not even want to reveal your real name (especially, for example, if you're posting derogatory information about your employer or the police chief in your small town). But don't just remain nameless; give readers a pseudonym by which to identify you and tell them generalities about yourself that will lend you credibility without blowing your cover. For instance, you might say that you're a middle-age male who lives in Texas and has worked in the telecommunications industry.

If you don't have a reason to keep your identity confidential, you may be able to benefit (attract the attention of headhunters in your field, become recognized as an expert in a particular area, etc.) by using your real name and providing contact information.

Regardless of whether you reveal your true identity, you can engage readers by interacting with them through the comments feature or by providing an e-mail address and responding to their input. You can, of course, use a free Webmail address or other alternative to your primary address if you want to protect your identity and/or avoid spam.

Engaging readers involves winning their trust and thinking of the reader first. If you make claims, back them up with cites and links. If possible, don't link to sites that require a subscription or even free registration (or if you must, warn readers).

#7: Establish a blogging schedule

Blog readers are a fickle bunch. Once you've drawn an audience, they expect to find new content when they visit your blog. That doesn't mean you have to post every day, but you should establish a minimum blogging schedule and stick to it. Let readers know, preferably in a static text box at the top of your blog page, that you will update the blog daily, weekly, on Mondays and Fridays, or whatever. Then do it--even if some of your posts aren't particular profound or long. Readers will abandon your blog if they think you've abandoned them.

If you need to deviate from your schedule (for example, you're going on vacation for two weeks or you'll be in the hospital or you have a family or job emergency), let readers know that you won't be posting at the regular time and give them an idea of when you'll be back.

#8: Keep it concise

Speaking of posts that aren't particularly profound or long, don't think you have to wait until you have something brilliant to say before you post or put off posting because you don't have time to write War and Peace today. In truth, most readers have short attention spans and/or crowded schedules themselves and would prefer to read a short, pithy post rather than a long, complex one.

If you do post lengthy pieces, break them up into short paragraphs to make them more readable. There's nothing more daunting to a reader than a huge mass of unbroken text, no matter how skillful your turn of phrase.

You'll also attract more readers with common words than with obscure ones, so unless you're writing for a particularly scholarly audience, follow the old KISS advice: Keep it simple, sweetheart.

#9: Proofread before publishing

Even if you're an English professor, it's easy to end up with typographical errors, misspellings, and grammatical flaws in your posts if you don't proofread before you hit the Publish button. Especially if you're writing in the heat of passion or inspiration, your typing fingers can get ahead of your thoughts and cause words to be omitted or transposed, commas to appear in the wrong places, or sentences to become garbled.

Maybe you pride yourself on not adhering strictly to the rules, but presumably, you still want your readers to understand what you're saying. That complex sentence that seemed so brilliant in composition may read a little awkwardly once you see it on the screen.

It's difficult to catch mistakes in your own writing, because you tend to fill in what you thought you typed, rather than see what's really there. This is particularly true immediately after writing. If possible, have someone else proofread your post before you publish it. Otherwise, let it "cool off" for an hour or a day so you can approach it with a more objective proofreader's eye.

And although it's best to catch mistakes before they're published, one huge advantage of Web content is that, unlike print copy, it's easy to change if you discover a problem after publication.

#10: Go syndicate yourself

You don't have to wait for readers to come to your blog every day or every week. Instead, you can take your blog to them. Use RSS to feed your new blog posts to readers who sign up. This makes it easier for your readers, who don't have to remember to visit your blog Web site to check for new posts--and whatever makes it easier for readers is good for authors. You can syndicate just your post titles, short summaries, or entire posts.

Most public blog hosting sites give you the option to syndicate your blog, and it's usually as easy as clicking a button or two in the configuration interface. If you want to syndicate your self-hosted Web site, see http://www.xul.fr/en-xml-rss.html for more information

The Assumption of the Virgin - El Greco

Assumption of the Virgin (1577)

Blonde in a Car

A blonde walked into a gas station and said to the manager, ''I locked my keys in my car. Do you have a coat hanger or something I can stick through the window to unlock the door?''

''Why sure,'' said the manager, ''we have something that works especially well for that.''

A couple minutes later, the manager walked outside to see how the blonde was doing and he heard another voice. ''No, no! A little to the left,'' said the other blonde inside the car.

Blair, Musharraf meet amid anti-terror fallout

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Pakistani counterpart are set to meet in London amid fallout from a leaked intelligence report that says the war on terror is acting like "a recruiting sergeant for extremists."

Thursday's talks between Blair and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf are expected to be "frosty," given the report's other main contention that the Pakistani Intelligent Service has direct links to the Taliban.

The report, published by the BBC, is expected to add to a growing rift between Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The two leaders have recently been publicly critical of each other's handling of the war against terror.

On Wednesday, they met with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington in an effort to resolve their differences. There were no reports of any progress made during the talks. (Full story)

On Thursday, the British Ministry of Defense -- referring to the leaked report as "academic research notes" -- said it did not represent the views of the MoD or the government. "To represent it as such is deeply irresponsible," the MoD said in a statement.

The BBC quoted the report as saying: "The wars in Afghanistan and particularly Iraq have not gone well and are progressing slowly towards an, as yet, unspecified and uncertain result.

"The war in Iraq has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists from across the Muslim world."

The BBC also quoted the report as saying the "al Qaeda ideology has taken root within the Muslim world and Muslim populations within Western countries.

"Iraq has served to radicalize an already disillusioned youth and al Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act."

According to the BBC, the report blames Pakistan for a failure to win the war on terror and suggests that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, indirectly backs the Taliban.

The author of the report is thought to be linked to the British secret intelligence service, have a military background and be involved in anti-terrorism strategy, the BBC said.

"We can expect a pretty frosty start to this meeting," CNN's European Politcal Editor Robin Oakley.

"This report is embarrassing for Blair too," said Oakley, given Blair's strong support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq and ongoing military operation in Afghanistan.

In its statement, the MoD said "the author is furious that his notes have been willfully misrepresented" in a manner that makes them appear to represent the views of the MoD or the government.

"Indeed, he suspects that they have been released to the BBC precisely in the hope that they would cause damage to our relations with Pakistan," the statement said.

According to the BBC, the report blames Pakistan for a failure to win the war on terror and suggests that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, indirectly backs the Taliban.

The MoD statement comes to the defense of Islamabad.

"Pakistan is a key ally in our efforts to combat international terrorism and her security forces have made considerable sacrifices in tackling Al Qaeda and the Taliban. We are working closely with Pakistan to tackle the root causes of terrorism and extremism."

Governments exchange blame

Meanwhile, the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan have been accusing each other of not doing enough to fight terrorism or capture Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who is thought to be hiding somewhere along the porous, mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border. (Watch President Karzai emphasize the need to fight terrorism -- 2:20 )

"He is not oblivious. He knows everything but he is openly denying -- turning a blind eye like an ostrich. He doesn't want to tell the world what is the fact for his own personal reasons. This is what I think," Musharraf said Tuesday of Karzai. (Watch Musharraf defend Pakistan's efforts to find bin Laden -- 10:15)

Karzai responded in a CNN interview Wednesday that Musharraf should do something about the religious schools or purported religious schools that "are training extremists full of hatred for the rest of the world."

Musharraf is "not doing enough at all and I want all of us to take more action," Karzai said. "There are things that we have to do in Afghanistan. He is right. I am very much aware of what is going on in Afghanistan. We are a state that was weakened by years of destruction and war and indifference.

"The Afghan people are concerned about improving schools, education and health care, and therefore cannot be accused of aiming to destroy themselves.

"Somebody else must be doing it and that someone else is the sanctuary in Pakistan to terrorists," Karzai said.

The two leaders also disagree over the whereabouts of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the exiled Taliban leader. Karzai says the terror leader is in Quetta, Pakistan, but Musharraf says Karzai is trying to "throw the blame on Pakistan."

Afghanistan merely wants Pakistani help in finding Omar and other terrorists who are the subjects of CIA manhunts, Karzai said.

"Over the years, they were trained in Pakistan at those madrasas," Karzai said, referring to religious schools. "They were given resources in Pakistan. They were brought up through some help from the establishment of Pakistan in the past 30 years, as we were fighting the Soviets and consequent to that."

Pakistan has benefited from the international presence in Afghanistan, as their exports to the country during the era of the Taliban -- "their friends, their buddies, their clients" -- was only $25 million, and is now about $1.3 billion, Karzai said.

"Therefore, we are trying to tell them that what they may perceive as in their interest -- that is, the use of extremism within their country and outside of their country as an instrument of policy -- is not good for them," Karzai said.

Asked if Musharraf was behaving like an ostrich, Karzai flatly said no and relayed Musharraf's words to him when he was visiting Kabul, "Don't doubt my intentions -- doubt my capabilities." (Watch Karzai calmly fend off accusations that he's behaving like an 'ostrich' -- 13:22 )

A war against intelligence

YOU WOULD think that a consensus report from all 16 U.S. intelligence services concluding that he has blown the "war on terror" would be a really big deal to the president. But that assumes that George W. Bush values intelligence.

Clearly, he does not. So the news that a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate concludes the threat of terror against the United States has increased since 9/11, largely thanks to his irrational invasion of Iraq, has not disturbed Bush's branded "what, me worry'' countenance.

Instead, predictably, the administration's response to the leaked conclusions of the shared assessments of both civilian and military intelligence agencies was the same old historically ignorant claptrap that leaves U.S. policies completely out of the equation.

"Their hatred for freedom and liberty did not develop overnight," said White House spokesman Peter Watkins. "Those seeds were planted decades ago."

What seeds are those? It was "decades ago" that the CIA encouraged Muslim fanatics worldwide to go to Afghanistan to fight a holy war against a secular regime backed by the Russians. The end result of that engagement was -- after the Russian troop withdrawal and the consequent U.S. attention deficit -- a devolution into civil war, warlordism, and, eventually, the takeover of the country by Osama bin Laden's friends, the religiously extreme and oppressive Taliban. Seem familiar?

It should: The same deadly process has been taking place under Bush's watch in Iraq since our idiotic 2003 invasion.

If the Bush administration were serious about protecting us from terrorist attacks, it would end the ineffectual "war on terror" model and instead treat terrorism as a pathology that needs to be clinically and relentlessly excised. If terror groups such as al Qaeda are a cancer in the world's body politic, as the intelligence estimate suggests, then the goal should be to surgically isolate and neutralize the malignant cells.

''We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere,'' reads a section of the National Intelligence Estimate that Bush declassified on Tuesday. ''The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.''

A few Washington leaders do seem to be taking this sobering assessment seriously. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told CNN he was "very concerned" about the estimate, adding that, "My feeling is that the war in Iraq has intensified Islam fundamentalism and radicalism."

But the rest of his party, and their cheerleaders in the media, fell into line, including the occasionally independent U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who seemed to suggest that U.S. policy decisions don't matter at all.

"If it wasn't Iraq, it'd be Afghanistan ... that [terrorists] would use as a method of continuing their recruitment," said McCain, without offering evidence of this flip claim.

Much more considered was the testimony this week of retired Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 and served as a senior military assistant to former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

"If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents," said Batiste in joining other retired generals in calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Bush administration, he charged, "did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq."

Of course, unlike McCain, the retired generals can speak the truth because they are not running for office based on a record of six years of lousy GOP leadership. But those not wedded to the short-term fortunes of the Republican Party in an election year should welcome the nonpartisan sanity being offered by the intelligence agencies and military brass. With his security policy, Bush's alleged strong suit, exposed as a clear failure, it is time for the nation's political middle to make a corrective move and give Congress back to the opposition to provide a check and balance on this arrogant administration.

In the name of defending our security, the Bush administration has suppressed any intelligence information it could, ignoring the public's right to know, as much as is feasible, what is being done in its name. We must never forget that our system of government is based on the utility of freedom -- that truth will expose error -- and just such an accounting is long overdue.

-Chuang Tzu -

The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.

The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

Blogging for dollars

It's not just a hobby - some small sites are making big money. Here's how to turn your passion into an online empire.

By Paul Sloan and Paul Kaihla, Business 2.0 Magazine

September 8 2006: 12:37 PM EDT

Michael Arrington is a partying kind of guy. While showing off his home in Atherton, Calif., he boasts about how he crammed 500 people into his one-acre backyard at a bash in February.

Then there are the official parties, like the one he threw in mid-August at August Capital, a nearby venture firm. Arrington posted an open invitation on his website at 3 a.m. By sunrise, all 500 spots were taken; the onslaught of traffic crashed his site. "I knew it would be fast," says Arrington, who houses so many out-of-towners in his ranch home that he often isn't sure who's crashing on which mattress on which floor in which room.

Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur behind a long list of unrecognizable startups, has suddenly become one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley. Why? The answer lies in TechCrunch, Arrington's blog about new technologies and companies. In the year since he launched the site, he has amassed such a strong following that he's become a go-to person for VCs and tech execs looking to leak corporate tidbits or announce news. More than 1.5 million readers regularly check out his site. But here's what gives Arrington real distinction: He's pulling in $60,000 in ad revenue every month. That's 10 times what the site was making earlier this year, which was when Arrington, convinced of the potentially monstrous riches ahead, quit his day job as president of a startup to blog full-time.

With Internet-like speed, blogs have gone from self-indulgent hobbies to flourishing businesses. Real businesses, with real revenue streams from real advertisers--not overhyped next big things with pick-a-number valuations based on selling out someday to some overenthusiastic big-media sugar daddy. Boing Boing, a four-person operation that bills itself as a directory of wonderful things, is on track to gross an estimated $1 million in ad revenue this year. The digital-media news site PaidContent.org, headquartered in the second bedroom of a Santa Monica apartment, is set to post even more than that. And Fark.com, a site packed with sophomoric humor run by a lone guy in Lexington, Ky., is on pace to become a multimillion-dollar property. In short, some of the most popular blogs, long the bane of the mainstream media, are themselves becoming mainstream.

What has changed? For starters, blogs today benefit from what might be termed uneconomies of scale: They are so cheap to create and operate that a lone blogger or a small team can, with the ever-expanding reach of the Internet, amass vast audiences and generate levels of profit on a per-employee basis that traditional media companies can only fantasize about.

At the same time, advertisers--shunning old-line media in favor of the Web--are discovering the unique power of blogs. Blogs offer a personal touch in the mediascape; small sites have become our guides to a content-saturated world. As such, their recommendations are highly valued by readers--which naturally has made advertisers take notice. In recent months, big-name companies like Banana Republic and Coca-Cola (Charts) have for the first time run campaigns on blogs, in the belief that blog communities often consist of concentrated numbers of the passionate and influential people all marketers want to reach. Intel bought its first blog ad in March; now all its ads run on blogs as well as traditional outlets. Says Thom Campbell, head of media strategy for Intel (Charts), "The audience on blogs is the cream of the crop."

But before you quit your day job, consider that this isn't easy money, nor is it guaranteed to last. For one thing, the market is small right now: Web ad agency Organic puts ad spending on blogs at $40 million this year. Bloggers are typically selling only about a third of their available ad space at top rates. (The rest goes at heavily discounted prices.) And as with any business dependent on the mercurial ad market, prone as it is to sudden skids, the threat of crashing and burning always looms.

Still, the blogging-for-dollars phenomenon is only in its infancy, and already blog ad spending is roughly twice what it was last year. With overall Web advertising expected to grow by 50 percent to $23.6 billion in 2010, it's certain that more and more ad dollars will land on blogs. For a growing cadre of bloggers, the opportunities to score fat profits from pumping out posts on whatever their particular passions might be are widening--and one consequence could be a radical reshaping of our notions of how to build a successful media company.

The monetization of blogging can trace its roots to late 2002, when Google (Charts) created a revolutionary system that allowed anyone with a website to run ads. The technology, called AdSense, matched ads with a site's content. Each time a visitor clicked on a linked ad, the site's owner got paid (a model now referred to as cost-per-click advertising). For the first time, anyone could be a real publisher with real advertisers, with no need for the big sales forces that magazines, newspapers, and other traditional media employ.

For do-it-yourselfers, however, the revenue stream created by AdSense in its early days was for the most part simply beer money. At the same time, display ads--the banners, buttons, and skyscrapers that had fallen into disfavor with the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000--began to make a comeback on major destination sites such as Yahoo (Charts) and MSN. Marketers pay for those kinds of ads based on a formula known as CPM, which stands for cost per 1,000 impressions.

The promise of these two Web advertising models whet the whistles of wannabe publishers, and among the first was Nick Denton. He bet that he could run sites as low-cost one- or two-person operations and offer advertisers ready-made, easily targeted niche audiences. He reasoned that he could eventually one-up automated systems by handselling display ads for his sites at premium CPMs. But to lure advertisers into uncharted blog waters, he initially gave away ad space for free.

Denton launched his company in New York in 2002 with the media gossip site Gawker and the gadget blog Gizmodo. Gawker Media now runs 13 sites, including such edgy titles as Defamer and Wonkette. Denton recently announced that he's "battening down the hatches" and selling two sites, but his core properties are on a tear: Gawker Media sites clocked 66 million pageviews in June, more than double the traffic they saw a year earlier. Denton won't discuss financial details, but industry experts estimate that Gawker Media will bring in as much as $3 million in revenue this year. Gawker Media's average CPM is between $8 and $10; CPM rates on Google AdSense and competing automated systems are estimated at anywhere from 50 cents to a few bucks.

Another pioneer, Jason Calacanis, provided a big shot of momentum to the blogging-for-bucks phenomenon last October when he sold Weblogs Inc., his conglomeration of 85 sites, to AOL for a reported $25 million. "Everyone in the ad industry took notice after that deal," says Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic.

All the while, big-picture changes have been unfolding in the background, contributing to today's blogging business sweet spot. By constantly improving its algorithms, for instance, Google engineers have made AdSense a far more powerful placer of more-varied and better-targeted ads; AdSense alone is expected to generate sales of $4 billion this year.

At a more fundamental level, the Web has become deeply embedded in our daily lives, for business and pleasure, in ways no advertiser can ignore. Today 71 percent of American households have Web access; Americans ages 13 to 24 now spend more time online than they do in front of the TV.

As for blogs, they've exploded: There are 50 million of them, and two new ones are launched every second, according to blog search engine Technorati. To some experts, all these developments mean but one thing. "This time, Web advertising is for real," concludes Karen Francis, CEO of San Francisco-based ad agency Publicis & Hal Riney. "And marketers are all looking for new opportunities online."

Trying to provide those opportunities has become the mission of a host of would-be blog entrepreneurs. John Battelle, a founding editor of Wired magazine and the creator of the now-defunct Industry Standard (as well as a freelance columnist for Business 2.0), was working on a book about Google when he had an epiphany: Where mainstream publishers were spending a fortune buying subscriber lists and shoving subscription cards into magazines, bloggers were building huge audiences for free. Yet even popular bloggers couldn't make a living full-time; existing networks like Google and BlogAds weren't paying enough.

Unlike Denton, Battelle had no interest in owning sites. He figured he could simply peruse the blogosphere and analyze Web tracking data to find out which bloggers were already generating heavy traffic, and then serve as a middleman between them and advertisers. He launched his startup, called Federated Media Publishing, last fall with seed money from the New York Times Co. (Charts) and eBay (Charts) founder Pierre Omidyar.

Battelle compares FM's model to a record company. He and his team are the band managers; the bloggers are the bands. The key difference is that bloggers own their content, earning 60 cents of every ad dollar. Like a band manager, FM works closely with its acts, yet ultimately it's up to the bloggers to keep pumping out material. "If they stop writing, the ads go away," Battelle says.

He has signed about 75 of the most popular bloggers of various stripes and hopes to land a few hundred in all. His authors range from tech-oriented guys like Arrington and Om Malik, who writes about telecom on GigaOm and just left his full-time gig with Business 2.0, to Heather Armstrong, whose deeply personal Dooce site is bringing in enough money to allow her family to live comfortably. Her enterprise has a staff of two: Armstrong and her husband.

FM's eight-person sales force has been aggressively approaching big marketers, armed with detailed and persuasive demographics. The data has helped FM steadily boost ad rates on its sites. The average CPM doubled in the past six months to roughly $8. The aim is to get rates between $20 and $30, which, Battelle says, would put his blogs on par with sites like CNET and NYTimes.com. But thanks to the uneconomies-of-scale twist, overhead at FM sites like Boing Boing, Battelle's top act, is almost invisible compared with that of any mainline media concern.

Journalist Mark Frauenfelder founded Boing Boing, then a paper-based cyberpunk zine, in 1988 and took it online in 1995. Four years later he accepted a freelance assignment to write what became one of the first stories about blogs--and afterward decided to turn his zine into one. He discovered the power of building traffic by "deep linking" to specific stories or items on other sites. Other bloggers would return the favor, and the community grew. "I was getting a thousand visitors a day, and I thought, 'Oh, that's fun,'" Frauenfelder recalls.

Eventually he discovered that the more posts Boing Boing put up, the more traffic grew; he recruited three friends to keep the posts coming hot and heavy. By 2004 the site had 20,000 visitors a day, rivaling many mainstream magazine sites. But the team was spending about a thousand bucks a month in Web hosting fees. That's when Frauenfelder called Battelle, a former colleague, and began selling ads for the site. Today, Boing Boing's roughly 325,000 daily visitors make it the most lucrative property in Battelle's stable. Though not all of Boing Boing's ad inventory is sold, the site will gross more than $1 million this year, based on CPMs and traffic. "It's turned out to be a good business," Frauenfelder says.

But Battelle believes an eccentric blog called Fark.com, a collection of reader-submitted links to amusing videos, jokes, and curiosities from all over the Web, could become the most profitable site in mainstream blogdom. Already it vies with FM stablemate MetaFilter for the top spot in blog traffic rankings. Fark founder Drew Curtis made up the site's offbeat name as code for the real F-word when posting in chat rooms in the early 1990s. In 1993, while a student in England, Curtis began sending e-mail messages to friends back home with weird items he found in the news. In 1999 he decided to post them on a webpage.

Fark is incredibly cost-efficient: Almost all of its content is generated by its readers, and aside from Curtis it has just two contract employees, both tech guys. Fark devotees post links to news items accompanied by rubrics like "spiffy" and "dumbass," annotate them with blurbs of text, and open them up for comment. Controversial items about politics, religion, or sex ignite all-out flame wars--and, naturally, boost traffic, which overall stands at 40 million pageviews a month. The beautiful part is that virtually none of the content (pictures, videos, etc.) is hosted on Fark, which simply links to the goodies. This means that, despite its huge traffic, Fark doesn't incur the crushing bandwidth fees that eat into profit at sites like video trove YouTube.

Without a dedicated sales force, however, Curtis had trouble drawing mainstream advertisers. That changed after News Corp. (Charts) purchased MySpace and AOL bought Weblogs, moves that only boosted advertiser interest in blogs. "That hit like a hammer," Curtis says. Within days of the Weblogs sale, Curtis inked a deal with his first major advertiser, the National Hockey League. Curtis recently signed on with Battelle's FM and cut a side deal with Dennis Digital, a division of Maxim magazine's publisher. Dennis approached Curtis because Fark's audience demographic matches Maxim's. Curtis won't disclose his current revenue but insists that he can soon log monthly ad sales of $600,000 to $800,000. Battelle expects Fark to become the first indie blog to earn a million dollars a year in profit. "Fark's going to get there," he says.

Arrington also stumbled into the blog business. He was tossing back drinks at a bachelor party in Belgrade in 2005 when another Silicon Valley entrepreneur called with an idea for a startup based on the new technologies that have come to be lumped together as Web 2.0. Arrington began doing research about the emerging tech trend. He couldn't find one comprehensive source, and as he compiled his information, he decided to post it on a blog. "It was purely a hobby," he says.

People began reading. People began posting. Traffic grew. In addition to building many startups, during the 1990s Arrington had been a lawyer at the Valley's prestigious Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he worked on IPOs and mergers, and his sources from those days began feeding him information. In March, for instance, he published screenshots of Google's new calendar application before its release. He was quickly contacted by a Google attorney, who asked that he reveal the source of the leak. (He refused.)

More and more people started to flock to TechCrunch to read scoops and analysis about new ventures. Arrington's big financial boost came a couple of months ago when he redesigned the site. He created six small boxes and announced that he was selling ad space. They sold out in a few days.

That's no surprise, considering how affluent and techie his readers are. Thirty-six percent say they spend more than 40 hours a week viewing online content, and even better, they check out TechCrunch multiple times each day. More than a third earn salaries topping $100,000, with 12 percent making more than $250,000. It's a coveted group for some advertisers.

"Sixty percent of our business is from startups," says Jeff Kearl, chief marketing officer for software maker Logoworks, which recently bought a TechCrunch sponsorship. "Arrington's blog is the epicenter of the startup community."

Big brands also want in. Apple and Hewlett-Packard just signed on to advertise on TechCrunch. Intel is planning to run ads on the site, complementing ads the chip giant has already placed on sites like Boing Boing and Gizmodo. A major appeal, Intel's Campbell says, is that a blog's unique interactive properties can vastly increase the reach of an ad, as it bounces around the Web and triggers comment on myriad sites.

Intel's current campaign for its Core 2 Duo chips brags about performance measures, something Intel hasn't done in its ads in years. By running these ads on blogs occupied by tech fanatics, Campbell expects that people will test the company's claims and write about them. "We're going out on a limb," he says. "But I'm always looking for integrity where we advertise. And these authors are passionate about their subjects."

Success stories like Arrington's have helped spur a gold rush-style stampede into the blogosphere. One of the most ambitious efforts comes from Sugar Publishing, founded in April by 32-year-old San Francisco software entrepreneur Brian Sugar with $250,000 of his own money.

Sugar Publishing's mainstay property is PopSugar, a fast-growing celebrity gossip site with 12 million monthly pageviews, an audience that took sites like Boing Boing and Fark years to build. Sugar Publishing doesn't expect to earn a dime until the end of next year, but just two months after it was founded, a Boston-based VC offered to pump in $2.5 million, valuing the company at $10 million.

PopSugar and a new generation of blogs, like Egotastic and PerezHilton.com, have built massive followings in just the past few months by devoting themselves to celebrity gossip. "We create editorial for an ADD culture," Sugar says. His ambition is to drive traffic from his gossip blog to 12 ancillary sites he'll launch during the next two years, all of them aimed at women younger than 35. The projections that Sugar shows investors claim that his small blog empire will bring in $15 million in revenue in 2008 and $40 million in 2009.

Far-fetched? Maybe. But consider this: Sugar hasn't even hired a sales staff yet, but Banana Republic already approached Sugar Publishing and bought out its entire ad inventory for a week in July. The campaign, called "Drop Your Pants," offered customers a discount if they donated pants to charity. It was the company's first blog buy.

"People who read blogs are more likely to recommend products," says Chris Nicklo, Banana Republic's vice president for brand management. "There was an amazing viral explosion."

The rapid march into the blogosphere isn't limited to entrepreneurs and advertisers: Investors are moving in too, including some with lofty pedigrees. Alan Patricof, a highly regarded VC who early on bankrolled the likes of Apple (Charts), AOL, and New York magazine, recently invested in ContentNext, the publisher of PaidContent.org and other blogs run by journalist Rafat Ali. Ali's blogs are logging about 5 million pageviews a month, and he's on pace to generate revenue of more than $1 million this year. And VC firm Softbank Capital just invested $4 million in Arianna Huffington's political and news blog, the Huffington Post, a site also backed by $1 million from Patricof's firm.

Despite all the ferment a critical question remains unanswered: Do blog ads work? Sure, readers can click on ads and view an advertiser's website, potentially even making a purchase, but that rarely happens. Intel's Campbell says the industry standard is a click-through rate of less than 1 percent.

But major advertisers aren't just looking for click-throughs; they're looking to get in front of the right audiences. "Blogs are very targeted, so one would project that ROI is very good," says Publicis & Hal Riney's Francis. "But it's still early. What may get ad dollars today may not get them tomorrow."

Any downturn in the economy and ad market will, of course, hurt bloggers. The sheer numbers of blogging-for-dollars artists charging into the game could also muddy the market and put pressure on ad rates. And profitable blogging is hard work; a solo act like Dooce's Armstrong must post constantly to keep her traffic and ad revenue up. "There are days when I panic," she says.

Still, in some ways the lean, do-it-yourself ethos of blog businesses makes them ideally equipped to deal with business cycle blows. It's far easier to weather a downturn when your costs are next to nothing. Plus, many players are diversifying, even within the blogosphere. "I know that I'm riding the Web 2.0 wave," says Arrington, who points out that he turns down frequent VC offers, some in the $5 million range, because he doesn't want to give up editorial control. Now he's preparing for a day when the wave crests.

He just launched a gadget site and staffed it with a former writer for Gizmodo, which is part of Denton's network and is packed with big-name advertisers such as Nokia and Sprint. He has plans for a gaming site and a site devoted exclusively to analyzing heavy-duty enterprise software. Even as he expands, however, he expects to keep his expenses--now about 12 percent of revenue--at no more than 30 percent.

And occasionally there are bonuses. With little effort, Arrington got dozens of sponsors, mostly Web 2.0 startups and VCs, to bankroll the party he held at August Capital. So after a night of revelry, Arrington had pocketed an extra $50,000. Now that's something to blog about

Ousted Thai PM Thaksin calls for swift elections

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the main opposition called on Thursday for swift general elections in Thailand as military coup leaders banned "political activities".

Thaksin, in a statement from London two days after he was removed in a bloodless coup, urged all parties to work for national reconciliation "for the sake of our King and country".

It said Thaksin "hopes the new regime will quickly arrange a new general election and continue to uphold the principles of democracy for the future of all Thai".

It gave no indication the billionaire telecoms tycoon, who won two landslide elections before facing an anti-corruption street campaign a year ago, was planning to return to Bangkok, despite an invitation to do so from coup leaders.

He would have to face charges already filed, including election fraud, and others may be looming.

The administration said it expected to complete a probe this month into whether Thaksin's family legitimately avoided tax on their $1.9 billion (1 billion pound) sale of the company he founded and into allegations of corruption in government spending under his rule.

Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva called for elections in six months after army chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin promised a civilian prime minister in two weeks, followed by a military withdrawal, political reform in a year and then new elections.

"We are encouraged that they don't want to hold onto power and that their job is to put the country back on the democratic path," he told Reuters.