In September, I did an interview with Greg Cryns, who caters to a large group of work-from-home moms in his newsletter. Afterward, he e-mailed asking how he should introduce me and mused whether it was a good idea to explain my domain name in his piece.

“I don’t want to scare them off,” he said.

It’s easy to forget that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the acronym OMG (often translated from web lingo to mean, “oh my G-d”) is basically a direct violation of the third commandment and that the F in OMFG, the last acronym, is largely considered to stand for an expletive.

I find it interesting that in the race to save time, internet culture has largely rid itself of many unsavory words and phrases by abbreviating them and that these abbreviations have taken a life of their own. Today, I hear as many people in regular conversation saying “oh em gee,” as I hear them saying “oh my G-d,” or “oh my gosh.”

Still, for many, abbreviation or not, OMG still means “oh my G-d,” and runs counter to their belief systems and notions of propriety.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something new in terms of advertising on my site and applied to join the BlogHer Ad Network.

Their guidelines clearly state that any blog that is submitted must be “without profanity in the title and/or URL.” I’d read these before submitting but thought nothing of it–after all, I wasn’t actually cussing. Or was I?

———- Original message ———-
From: Jenny Lauck
To: AVF
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 4:45PM
Subject: Your BlogHerAds application

Hi, AV!

I’m so sorry for the long delay in reviewing your application. We’ve got a policy that prevents us from accepting blogs that use swear words, the names of deities or abbreviated forms of phrases that include either – I’ve been hounding our co-founders to change this policy so that we can accept wonderful blogs like yours, and I am really sorry to say that they cannot change the policy at this time – however, should they change their minds, I will e-mail you right away.

Wishing you all the best,
Jenny

Not only was the abbreviation not enough to get by–apparently the mention of a deity was also inappropriate!

An ex in a fit of rage once told me that my drama should be a franchise. “If drama was a natural resource, you’d outperform the Middle East and Russia combined in terms of exports.”

It’s a mean thing to say, though not entirely untrue, as I do, admittedly, have an amazing tendency to get myself into the most ridiculous situations. One of my dearest friends likes to joke that if she ever received a phone call from me that didn’t kick off with “O-M-G. O! M! G! OMFG!” she’d know I’d been sequestered and that she was speaking with an impostor.

As a joke, I looked up the domain name OMGOMGOMFG.com. At the time, I didn’t think I would ever have a self-hosted blog–but in a world where domains are the new real estate, why not own it?

Later, when I did decide to launch my own blog, I wondered about whether I should get a blog with my regular username online. I remember thinking, “what’s easier to convey and remember: avflox.com or OMGOMGOMFG.com?” It’s partly about recognition, but it’s also about who you are. I don’t take myself so seriously–I write because I know no other way to be. Writing is the only way I know to process ideas about topics that matter to me, yes, but mostly, I do it because it’s fun.

And if you can give your host a laugh with your domain name, well, that’s something, too.

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger is one of the best resources for anyone wishing to get started making money by publishing online. At the end of the summer, he ran an article titled 8 Reasons Why Your Blog Might Not Be Accepted Into an Ad Network that had some helpful information for people trying to get into ad networks like BlogHer.

Rowse listed the most important elements of a blog when being considered, among them: design (does it look good?), content (is the content well-written, informed, original, focused, etc.?), focus (is it personal or does it fit a niche?), hosting (is it self-hosted?), and traffic.

“Each network also has its own standards on adult content, use of language (swearing) and other topics that they may or may not cover,” Rowse added.

His book Problogger: Secrets For Blogging Your Way To A Six-Figure Income, co-authored with Chris Garrett, lays the ground rules and topics worth considering for those wishing to start income-generating blogs. Chapter 3 deals with the set-up, including choosing a domain name:

For a start, if you want to build credibility and a sense of professionalism around your blog, a domain name can help. Similarly, a carefully selected domain name has the ability to enhance the branding and memorability of a product, service business, or even person… Many discussions on domain name decisions talk about a choice between choosing a domain name with keywords in it to domain names that are more brandable or generic. It’s worth stating up front that it is possible to achieve both, but I would prioritize memorability and branding over keywords.

At the beginning of the year, Rowse expanded a little on this topic at Problogger.

“When choosing domain names do you get a keyword rich or more brandable name?” he asked.

Keyword-based domains use words about topics you’re discussing in them. Rowse listed TheMovieBlog.com and SimsGamer.com as examples.

“Firstly it communicates something to your readers very quickly with regards to what your blog is about,” Rowse wrote about these keyword-based domain names. “The other positive is that search engines take a good look at the words in your domain name when deciding what your blog is about and how to rank it.”

Brandable domains, on the other hand, may relate to the topic, but they’re largely about creating a brand identity.

“These blogs would be suited ideally to developing a blog that is aiming to build a community of loyal readers,” Rowse said. “Of course these blogs can also do very well in search engines but this is usually for other reasons (keywords in URLs are just one of many factors). Blogs that have these types of domains include Boing Boing, Gizmodo and Dooce. In fact if you look at Technorati’s Top 100 blogs, you’ll see that most of them have brandable names and not keyword-based ones.”

Problogger.net is an excellent example of a keyword-based and brandable domain name.

“It’s not always possible to get both,” Rowse wrote, adding, “in fact, it’s getting harder and harder and many bloggers are faced with the choice of one or the other.”

“Remember when putting ads on your blog was a travesty?” I asked my friend Atherton Bartelby during our usual midday coffee break. “Now I go to blogs and go out of my way to scan ads after reading posts in order to see if there is anything I want to click to help support the bloggers I like.”

“Oh! I do that, too,” Atherton replied, laughing. “A blogger has to eat, right?”

“Absolutely,” I responded. “Though it’s very interesting to see what monetization is doing to a lot of blogs as well. Very few ad networks want put up with a lot of the content that defines a lot of blogs.”

“Totally,” Atherton agreed. “It’s like, hey, I would write a piece about this tonight but my BLOG AD NETWORK wants me to rewrite Hansel and Gretel!”

“Except in my version,” I said going along with him, “the ad network doesn’t want me to talk about the witch being cooked alive. I can either have the children scare her away with a broomstick or convince her to go vegan because that’s better for her health, the common good and the environment anyway. They’re pushing for the latter!”

We burst into a fit of hysterical giggles. At the same time, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much blogging was suddenly starting to feel like working in a newsroom. Sure newspapers keep their advertising departments out of the newsroom, but anyone who’s been in one knows how that works sometimes. You just don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

There are two kinds of bloggers: the ones who rush in and the ones who plan every minute detail.

“A number of people regret spending too much time thinking about blogging and not actually blogging,” Rowse wrote in a reflection on a series at Problogger about all the things successful bloggers today wish they’d known when they started blogging.

Of course, “some regretted that they didn’t put a little more thought into their blogging before they started. Too much planning can kill a blog (or at least can kill the opportunity for your blog to become established as first and can kill your passion for a topic) while not enough planning can lead to a blog that doesn’t reach its potential because its foundations are shaky.”

It’s a careful balance we’re striking between profitability and continued growth and self-expression.

“The domain name and platform you choose are just two elements of many that go into making a blog successful,” Rowse says in the What We Wish We Knew series. “They are important–but if you get it wrong you are not dead in the water.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get into BlogHer,” Atherton told me later in the day. “Are you having second thoughts about your domain name?”

“Not in the slightest.”

It’s true. The internet and the culture developing herein is a wild new world and if that’s not enough to make you go “OMG!”, I don’t know what is.

pass it on!

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