During this workshop, we'll explore how to "monetize" – to indulge in some vile jargon – blogs. AdSense plays a role in that, so we've decided to demo it: practicing what we preach... Earnings will go into source materials and the instructors' IPA (India Pale Ale) fund. Teaching, after all, is thirsty work.
Over the last few weeks, we've talked more and more about the community that can anchor around a strong blog. Today we'll examine some strategies for evolving that, through (to borrow a line from Truman Capote) other voices and other rooms.
Original content reigns supreme in the search bots' beady electronic eyes (more on all this next week). But that doesn't always equate to the author slaving over a page or keyboard – or, indeed, behind a vid-cam, these days. Interviews, commentary, memes and sourced multimedia are all devices that help create fresh, pertinent posts without heavy compositional lifting.
Assignment: Incorporate at least three sources – quotes, memes or multimedia – to add texture to your blog. Bonus points for original audio or video uploads!
A blogger is a one-woman band: author, photographer, videographer, cartographer, designer, publisher, advertising exec, marketing guru, legal department, etc. That's the pain of the genre – but the beauty too. You're the boss: free to flourish and flounder both without a lot of hoop-jumping.
The title "citizen journalist" increasingly applies to people paddling in the datastream like this. This elastic term stretches from reader-comment sidebars to pro-curated sites of user-generated content and blogs writ so large they rival the mainstream media. Take FiveThirtyEight: A site run by a baseball-stats nerd, a poker player, and a documentary filmmaker has a readership akin to the Houston Chronicle's, according to Joshua Benton at Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab.
Media's converging online in a swirl. Text rubs shoulders with broadcast video now. Bloggers turn pro and pros crowd-source. Indie media is the future, insists pundit Mark Cooper. "It is the independent, citizen and community media that provide the seeds of an alternative journalism, he claims in The Huffington Post. "These alternatives tend to be structured viral communications, in which a light touch of hierarchy can go a long way. The examples are well known, beyond blogging, which tends to be the least organized form of expression. We find things like Wikis, online posts, collaborative production and distribution in peer-to-peer networks, opens source software, crowd sourcing, and new forms of copyright, like the Creative Commons, etc.
"The critical challenge for these outlets is to become trusted intermediaries. The critical challenge for society is to figure out how to tap into the immense energy of the public sphere in cyberspace while preserving key journalistic attributes someplace within a much-expanded public sphere. To build trust, the new journalism will have to produce a steady stream of output that readers find authoritative, correct and useful."
Sites that lure eyeballs back – and inspire readers to action – are known as "sticky" (finally: a fun and comprehensible bit of web jargon!). Pure talent helps, sure. But the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house rejected Jack Kerouac, George Orwell and Sylvia Plath, among others. Sometimes the mainstream media overlooks genius at first pass. Ditto online readers.
But you can woo them ... first and foremost by writing with their needs in mind. As tough-love web guru Vincent Flanders points out: "Nobody cares about you or your site. Really. What visitors care about is solving their problems. Now. Most people visit a web site to solve one or more of these four problems:
They want/need information
They want/need to make a purchase/donation.
They want/need to be entertained.
They want/need to be part of a community.
"Too many organizations believe that a web site is about opening a new marketing channel or getting donations or to promote a brand or to increase company sales by 15%. No. It’s about solving your customers’ problems. Have I said that phrase enough?"
For those of you promoting a business, take heed of the 80/20 rule. Experts agree that readers respond best when only one blog post in five is a plug. Some grey area exists, certainly, such as writing in your field of expertise without explicitly pushing your brand. The same formula applies to Twitter and social network sites like Facebook and Linked In. No one likes a relentless hustler – in person or in cyberspace.
But it's not enough to interact with the community, you have to join it, as Web Consultant Mack Collier points out on The Viral Garden. So this week, we'll explore how to create original material that attracts and maintains an audience, while reaching out to other content-producers. And next week, we'll delve into the mechanics of search engines and how to deploy social media tools to build readership.
Chris Pirillo argues that bloggers should say something original at least once a day in this terrific advice post. "Create, don’t regurgitate," he urges. "Make yourself uncomfortable."
Developer Jeff Atwood makes some similar points on Coding Horror: “Switch things up. Seek out uncommon sites with unique information. Dig down to original sources and read the material everyone is commenting endlessly on.”
The key word there – the takeaway message – should be sources. You need 'em. Anchor your blog in the wider world of facts and reflections. Citing experts (or even Joe Public) lends scope and authority to your work: it's no longer the sound of one hand clapping, but part of a larger dialogue. And building a community is what the web's all about.
Musing about you're eyeglasses, for example? Dorothy Parker got there first. By alluding to her famous line, you're evoking information deep in the readers' memories, which helps them connect to your material and retain it better. WIN! Or dig even deeper and find a great spectacle quote that hasn't been hounded into the land of cliché. DOUBLE WIN! Or perhaps link to another blogger's exploration of the topic. BONUS OVERTIME GOODNESS!
Articles, blogs, books and quotation compilations are great tools. But you can take it further: talk to people.
As Metascene explained in Ten Tips for Building a Bionic Weblog: "Play reporter once in a while. Research under-reported stories and do some leg work for your readers. Find an angle that no one, including mainstream press, has reported on."
Don't be shy about interviewing. Most folks love to discuss their passions – and will treat a citizen journalist with the same respect as a professional (so expect anything from fawning to projectiles ... but mostly gracious help).
Great places to harvest interviewees include Twitter, Facebook and Help A Reporter Out, as well as listserves and electronic bulletin boards.
Research beforehand to formulate intelligent questions. Jot down key queries, so they don't slip away during a good conversation. Avoid questions with a simple yes or no answer; Try to get subjects to elaborate. Remember to listen, not talk, advises Christopher (Chip) Scanlan, author of Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century.
Start with easy, confidence-building queries, then weave in tougher material – if any – towards the end. Always conclude with: “Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't covered?” and “What elements would you emphasize in an article?” Often the best comments arise then.
In most countries, you must ask permission to capture the conversation on audio or video tape (record the subject's assent for maximum protection, though clip that off any broadcasts). I take notes too, because technology can easily fail. For example, Oxford Times Features Writer Reg Little once interviewed a haughty Noble Prize laureate, only to discover the recorder was on the wrong setting. The two-hour conversation was captured on high speed – creating a super-soprano, chittering, Alvin and the Chipmunks effect. Poor Reg spent long, long hours interpreting the tinny squeal. Background noise, battery failure and tampering can also ruin recordings.
“Off the record” means the subject is imparting sensitive background information not for print. Strictly speaking, they must specify this before the statement, but use your discretion. “Not for attribution” means you cannot use that person's name, just a vague description like “a Johannesburg shopkeeper” or “a Syrian homemaker”. Avoid this whenever possible, as it weakens your credibility.
Yeah, it can be, pushed to a pro limit. But happily, you have a great shortcut at your fingertips: email. It takes mere minutes to find an expert, then politely dash off a question or three. Should an answer arrive – and in time – you can just cut and paste the sucker right into your text. Ideally, publish the person's full name, credentials (if applicable) and, where appropriate, a link to his or her site.
Q&A sessions go one step further, making another person the focus of the post. Hey, presto: original material with little elbow grease involved! Best of all, this format encourages the link love, because most of us are vain creatures at heart. Case in point, when Traveling Mamas featured my friend Sascha Stokes, she linked to the post ... and so did I, because of a mention. Nowadays, I'd probably tweet and Facebook it too – driving traffic via three avenues. As we'll explore in depth next week, inbound links – especially ones from popular sites with strong keywords – boost blogosphere mojo hugely.
The Interview with a Traveling Mama is a frequent feature on that co-authored, award-winning blog, so CajunMamma didn't even need to formulate fresh questions. But think about the wealth of content that's slowly accumulating ... perfect should the team ever expand to books or a web portal.
Consider how your blog might benefit from regular elements, especially those with reader-generated content or a guest blogger, which build community and cut down on your keyboard time.
Five elements tend to distinguish amateur writers from seasoned veterans, honed chops aside:
Research – read on your topic before you start writing. Even 15 minutes surfing sites, articles and Wikipedia will give you a huge edge – and perhaps even some strong angles and link-worthy material.
Source – ideally a post is a conversation, not a monologue, presenting pro and con viewpoints where appropriate (balance strengthens a piece, even one with a strong opinion, by bringing credibility. "I'm not just a whacko banging a drum", it telegraphs. "I've looked at both sides of the equation and back this one. Now you can do the same."). Connect to the larger world via links and quotes. Cite studies and statistics, tracked to their source of origin. Name interviewees and experts, and explain their relevance to the subject at hand.
Fact-check – question what you read, especially online. If a source seems questionable, double-check it against two others. Don't wing dates, facts, foreign phrases, famous quotes or recaps of news events: be accurate and perhaps even link to authoritative sources, so readers can explore the topic further. Whenever you draw from others' content – whether that's a Flickr photo or a quote from an AP story – honor the creator's hard work with a citation and a link. Not only is this gracious, but it builds accountability, authority and community.
Redraft – blogging can be a very immediate medium, but it doesn't have to be. Quick posts encourage sloppy reporting and careless writing, neither of which inspire readers. So, when possible, put aside your draft for a few hours or days. Return to it with fresh eyes. Be prepared to take a few swings at the thing. Remember that most professional authors – those not on breaking news deadlines – revise a piece anywhere from 5 to 50 times (or more, like the award-winning Edward Readicker-Henderson, who also teaches for Writers.com). As a blogger, you're paddling in their pool. Stay competitive with thoughtful, well-polished posts.
Self-edit – Google names. Run spellcheck (Word has a grammar function. Click "options" in the Spellcheck dialogue, then tick "check grammar with spelling" and "show readability statistics". This helps your police overlong sentences and passive verbs). Read the piece aloud. Print it and read it in a new medium away from your usual workspace. Ask friends to look over a draft – or fellow bloggers. You have the start of a support network right here in class ... grow that further by contacting like-minded writers. As Kevin O'Keefe points out on Real Lawyers Have Blogs, a quick message – especially after a link or citation – can lead to fruitful relationships.
Topnotch publications still employ fact-checkers to verify stories (Julian Barnes wittily details the New Yorker's laborious process in Letters from London, an excellent read). These meticulous folks demand every URL, interview transcript, page number and contact detail, so authors keep airtight records – a wise habit for bloggers too.
Should a dispute ever arise over a quote, threatening a libel suit, you'll have ammunition. A handful of my blogger-journalist colleagues have taken out liability insurance, but they cover controversial themes: such tactics aren't common yet. Still, it's worth covering your butt. Hang on to your notebooks, source materials and original versions of any digital recordings (Sherry detailed some great tips for audio-archiving in this recent post. Take advantage of today's cheap e-storage now, on-site and off.)
Even the most conscientious writer – blogger, journalist or book author – misses a few tricks: we're only human. But honor your own work and the reader by running as tight a ship as possible.
Self-editing applies to the "assignment desk" as well. Where a pro has a boss – or even a handful of 'em – suggesting and vetting story ideas, bloggers are in DIY territory.
And that can be a cold, cold, lonely place some days...
Since regular posting is so important, following are some tried-and-test ways to jump start your blog's entries.
The anecdote – a curious thing happened on the way to the Forum...
The flashback – revisit scenes from earlier times, perhaps triggered by a current event or news story
The sound-off – commentary on news, issues or some rant-worthy incident
The rave – saluting others and their achievements
The meme – a set of questions passed around by bloggers. Answer, then "tag" others to do the same (see below).
The pundit – drawing together several news stories or events to make an observation about modern culture.
The curator – cataloguing elements of your life, from purse contents to old ticket stubs. Ideally some conclusion or insight arises from this.
The cliffhanger – a series of post, generally short, which knit into a larger narrative arc. A kind of essay-on-installment, this breaks off on a suspenseful moment each chapter to bring readers back to the same bat-time, same bat-place...
The review – try something, from an experience to a product, and report back.
The debate – comment on another blogger's post, expanding the issue.
Q&A – conduct a short e-interview with a relevant party.
The newsflash – reaction to a breaking story, including links.
The competition – conduct a contest among readers. Offer a small prize, virtual or otherwise.
The photo break – Post nothing but visuals, perhaps with explanatory captions.
The video dodge – Embed a YouTube video, if you're too rushed for original content.
What to avoid: blogging about not blogging enough or the stress of posting routinely. Who wants to hear you whine? Not even your parents...
And especially not my parents. Who call and critique my blog unbidden.
Many writing programs employ an in-class drill. The teacher delivers the beginning of a sentence, then the students press pencil to paper and write continuously, without erasing, for a fixed period of time (two minutes is typical). Designed to free up writer's block and the quiet critical "inner editor," this exercise can evoke some interesting material. Following are a few suggestions, if you want to try this at home (having a friend or family member write some on an accordion-folded sheet of paper will duplicate the surprise element).
I've always wanted to visit ...
My parents and friends would worry if I ...
Something I always wanted to try, but didn't, is...
I've long regretted ...
My most bittersweet moment was...
The one item I'd rescue from a housefire...
The childhood memory that makes me blush most is...
The last time I felt giddy with happiness was...
I wish I could buy the world a Coke and tell everyone...
A person I admire, but find frustrating, is ...
The end result of these scribblings won't always be a post, of course: that degree of navel-gazing may not suit your style. But return to your responses a few days later and scan for universal themes. What common emotions surfaced, elements your readers might connect with? How can you tap the power of those shared experiences via your blog?
A tub of hummous or a trip to the zoo can spark an entry – anything, really... But sometimes ideas don't spin effortlessly out of the ether and bloggers need to go digging. Look to full-time journalists for cues on how to handle this. After all, most face down writer's block daily to earn their bread...
Companies and groups, like charities and tourism boards, often offer media or press kits. These might contain publicity material, recent articles, leaflets, fact sheets and sometimes royalty-free digital images. Many organizations happily provide information via email – or have extensive websites that include story ideas. Always identify yourself as blogger, then ask to receive updates. Citing your readership statistics will help, along with any other credentials.
Some press releases offer vital tips; others are just hyped-up junk mail. But these can be helpful, when casting a wide net for post ideas. Large companies keep lists of journalists and bloggers, who then receive press releases (and sometimes free samples, like herbal remedies for jet lag or moisturizer designed for convertible drivers). Many now host events for new-media authors from meet-and-greets to press trips (free or heavily subsidized junkets). For example, Bertolli Sauces flew our former student Mardi Michels to the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival 2009 in San Francisco, where she demonstrated her deconstructed-pesto pizza in the company's show-kitchen.
Getting onto press lists can be tedious and time-consuming. You need to track down the publicity office, then ring, write or email, supplying your contact information. Eventually experienced authors land on master lists sold or given to PRs, but the process can be slow at the start. Limit efforts to companies that especially intrigue you.
Harried bloggers and media staffers sometimes draft short items (“filler”) from press releases or media kits alone. That's dangerous, as only one side emerges: the shiny, happy face of officialdom. Louise Purwin Zobel, author of The Travel Writer's Handbook, advocates crossing out all the adjectives in brochure-like texts, then reading the last page for the facts . Don't let these superlatives infiltrate your text. Scan for generics like “beautiful” and “stunning”. Then explain why: stretch for more precise, evocative terminology. “Show, don't tell,” is the maxim to remember.
Apply the same skepticism to brochures, as well as information from company blogs, and in-flight and in-house hotel magazines. Glean the key information, then leave the jargon and hyperbole behind. And double-check all facts: a harried work-for-hire copywriter can easily make mistakes...
Strong reporters avoid unbalanced pieces that echo a corporate party line. At the very least, sleuth down comments (both pro and con, should the topic inspire any controversy). Wherever possible, seek concrete statistics or experts to verify claims of “increasing numbers” or “a hot new trend”. Search the Internet for more candid perspectives: reader-review sites and bulletin boards are especially helpful on this front. Even 15 minutes of research can save a post from becoming a slobbering, sell-out puff piece.
On a more playful note, let's turn our attention to the real purpose of the internet: to showcase kittens, nudity and dancing babies.
The term "Internet meme" is a neologism describing a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the web. Basically, they're inside jokes ... just writ large. Memes can range from a questionnaire to an art project to video clips riffing off the same theme.
The term "viral" describes ideas that spread rapidly and organically like this (not, say, through mainstream media or an advertising campaign). As Novelist Neal Stephenson explained in 1992's Snow Crash: "We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information."
These phenomena spread via email, blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, etc. And yes, they can be deeply, deeply annoying. But they're here to stay and even spawned a whole field, memetics, that explores "transmission in terms of an evolutionary model" and just had its first convention at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 2008's ROFLCon.
Memers are very fond of citing Richard Dawkins as the term's originator. Mainly, I suspect, because they want to justify spending hours and hours animating a banana...
In the blogsphere, "meme" (rhymes with "theme") refers to a creative task, which then anchors a post. This could range from a set of personal questions to Photoshopping a raptor head on to a still or video. Here's a flashy twist on the "interview" format, using Flickr and mosaic maker, for example.
The best memes catch on and go viral. Authors tag each other, kind of like a chain letter. But there's no reason you can't borrow some classic formulas. In fact, sites like The Daily Meme suggest thousands of 'em, like listing your favorite bands from A-Z.
Ceremonies
Cheesy old memories
Confessions
Count your blessings
Critique consumer or pop culture
Curate the web
Dealbreakers
Examine your paperwork
Favorites
Food faves
Inventories
Nostalgia
Phrases
Place yourself (widget maps)
Play favorites
Podcast old voicemail
Scars
Scraps ripped from magazines
Share your expertise
Show some love
Timelines
Memes can be a terrific tool to get writing. They add original content – so key for the searchbots – and vary the texture of your blog, which helps maintain reader interest. But, as with all things, moderation is key. Too much "paint by numbers" material can alienate an audience.
Multimedia posts are another great way to add texture to a blog. But for continuity's sake, never assume your readers pressed "play". Many just don't want to hear your three-year-old singing in the shower or your grandmother's recollections of the last Depression. That's where search-bot-friendly teaser text helps: you can relay context or key points, also helpful on the Man from Mars front.
OK, quickly, some key concepts and places to learn more (multimedia production is a whole nother class – or classes – so we won't plunge deep into the mechanics of all this.). Podcasting Readers can download a radio program, in effect, and play it on a computer or MP3 device. The real advantage is portability: they don't have to remain online to stream the broadcast. For a short little snippet – that witty answering machine message – I'd plump for audio. Podcasts are perfect for, say, your barbershop quarter's recital...
You'll need a microphone, of course: these plug into an audio jack or a USB port, depending on your machine. Then pick an editing program. Some favorites include GarageBand (free with Mac's iLife suite), Audacity (free and the most popular option) and Odeo Studio or "Producer Tools" as it's now known.
After you've recorded and mixed the material, compress it with editor tools, then export it as an MP3. If that's not an option, save it as a wave file, then convert using iTunes.
Finally, publish your podcast and create an RSS feed, so folks can find it. Feedburner plays nicely with Blogger, but watch your data transfer limits there. PodOmatic and Liberated Syndication are popular options. Audio uploads Ambitious bloggers can store MP3s on a server, then embed them using this code:
More on exporting MP3s here. Just be warned: this is deep geekery. Video fabulousness for beginners Depending on your recording device, you may need to change the format to AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real and Windows Media. Most bloggers use QuickTime Pro ($30) for such conversions. Editing-wise, trawl through your applications folder. Recent PCs ship with Windows Movie Maker installed, while Macs have iMovie. Both are a good place to start creating slideshows or short digital videos. Just be mindful of setting your cinema masterpiece to music: a copyrighted soundtrack could land you in trouble, as we discussed earlier in the course.
Should you decide to upload original content to YouTube, kiss your exclusivity goodbye. Your material could even go viral, sharing your greatest karaoke moment with the entire planet. Also, heed the warning: "Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself." Stephanie Lenz posted a 29-second home movie of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy – and wound up with a lawsuit. However, a US court ruled this was fair use of the material in August 2008.
Still, how much headache is a Prince song – any Prince song, even Raspberry Beret – really worth?
You'll see plenty of violations of the policy from classic rock videos to clips from the latest blockbuster. That's because YouTube requires copyright holders to issue a takedown notice a la Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Blogger allows you to upload video directly or share it from YouTube. For the first option, hit the film-strip icon on the post's beige control bar. Browse to find the relevant video, title it and click "upload" (the process can take about five minutes). Your material will be hosted on Google Video. By and large, the service is a good one, offering some revenue-sharing even. But its upload-verification can take a few days, which annoys fast-moving bloggers.
For instant gratification, post via YouTube:
Click the "Share" button on the YouTube video's page
Scroll down and click "Setup your blog for video posting."
Click "Add a Blog/Site"
Choose "Blogger" as your Blog Service and fill in your Google Account login information.
Choose which blogs you'd like to add to your YouTube account. You can choose more than one.
From now on, when you click "Share", you'll be given the option to post YouTube videos directly to your blogs!
Other good options exist for sharing and sourcing film clips, including Vimeo, Videoegg and Revver (offers some monetezation). Check out Digital Video Guru for further tips.
Finally, Hulu allows you to embed trailers for films and TV shows (as well as watching many full-length features on demand for free).
As you start to deploy more multimedia, it's helpful to understand the movements that underpin the explosion of user-generated content – and how best to navigate some of their key issues as a blogger.
First off, take a look at your tools. Chances are good that many owe their existence to the Free Software movement: the computer world's Summer of Love, which stretched from the 70s into the mid-80s. Developers decided to share code around, instead of hoarding trade secrets. And this cooperation started a tsunami of programs and widgets.
A quirk of the English language caused a great deal of confusion around the word "free," referring here to a freedom to distribute the software as opposed to price. (Think "free speech," not "free beer".) To avoid seeming anti-commercial, geek-speak shifted to the term "open source". In fact, there are no restrictions on charging money for open source software – many companies prosper providing easy installation packages and support for often complex systems.
The key to the open source software is the license, the most common of which is the GNU General Public License (GPL), launched by Richard Stallman – an American hacker, developer and software freedom activist – in 1983. In short, it allows anyone to download the code for any open source project and modify at will. However, if they try to sell those changes as a new product, they have to make the source code available as well. Granted it's a little more complicated than that, but you get the gist...
Proprietary developers, like Microsoft, claim that sharing intel makes it easier for someone to find and exploit flaws. Thus, they argue, maintaining opaque source code provides security itself. Open-source advocates counter that when bugs are exposed, a waiting army of engineers springs into action happily. Those programmers are motivated by the fact that their businesses are running this software: they want the quickest, most elegant fix possible.
As more companies find open source products to their liking, they are willing to donate money and developers to those projects. Several years ago, IBM invested heavily in a tool called Eclipse. From a business standpoint, it was cheaper to devote some cash and brainpower to an existing project than to reinvent the wheel in-house. While its improvements are available to everyone else – including competitors – IBM has a large say in the direction of development, insuring Eclipse will meet the company's future needs.
Current power players in the open source arena include Apple, Google, Firefox and Linux – an incredibly stable, Unix-type operating system.
A lot of what we all love about the web – the cheap, the easy, the breadth, the wildcat freedom from the mainstream media's "elite" stranglehold – stems from GNU's Stallman, Linux's Linus Torvalds and other visionaries. They lay the philosophical groundwork for the very platforms we're blogging on.
Their counterparts on the "content" frontier also are shaking things up. Foremost among them is Lawrence Lessig, a law prof turning copyright on its ear. As he notes in Free Culture: "the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries."
"Digital technologies," Lessig continues, "tied to the Internet, could produce a vastly more competitive and vibrant market for building and cultivating culture; that market could include a much wider and more diverse range of creators; those creators could produce and distribute a much more vibrant range of creativity; and depending upon a few important factors, those creators could earn more on average from this system than creators do today."
Lessig helped found the Creative Commons (CC), a system similar to the open-source GPL license. Whenever we author a creative work – write an essay, take a photo or paint a picture – we own its copyright, even without registering it. Basically this requires anyone who wishes to use our material to ask, and potentially pay, us. A CC license relaxes these restrictions by varying degrees, allowing people to recycle our content in certain situations.
The CC website details the licenses and their nuances here. Flickr breaks it all down in more human language, however:
Attribution
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give you credit.
Noncommercial
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Share Alike
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
The noncommercial licenses cause no shortage of discussion online. For example, if you place a noncommercially licensed photo from Flickr, but have a few Google AdSense ads along the side, does that make your blog a commercial enterprise? What if the blog supporting a business? Unfortunately, no solid answers exist until a body of case law develops.
Until then, here's our non-lawyerly take on things: if the licensed work isn't selling a product, then it is a noncommercial use. Take the Flickr photo and blog example above: all those uses would be noncommercial. But, if you were selling your book on your blog and posted a Flickr photo in the ad, then you would violate the noncommercial clause.
Cautious bloggers can always buy commercially licensed photos from microstock photo agencies, which can charge as little as 14 cents. These image archives often contain lucky shots by amateurs and cutting-room-floor sweepings by professionals, all royalty-free. Some popular options include Dreamstime, Shutterstock, BigStockPhoto, Fotolia and the original agency iStockPhoto.
Unsurprisingly, rogues have already abused these communistic practices. In the highest profile case, Virgin Mobile took 100 images off Flickr for an ad campaign. Young Alison Chang of Texas unwittingly – and without pay – starred in one of the promotions. Humiliatingly, she became known as the "dump your pen friend girl". Her family's suing Virgin Mobile, but also CC for a breach of duty, "by failing, among other things, to adequately educate and warn [the uploader]... of the meaning of commercial use and the ramifications and effects of entering into a license allowing such use."
CC nutshells its side of the story here. What's most fascinating is the lawyer's tactic, which revolves around the girl's right of privacy, not the licensing brouhaha.
Powerblog Boing Boing also stumbled, publishing a 500-word piece by sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin with an erroneous CC license. Ironically, the poster was Cory Doctorow, a former professor who once lectured on copyright at the University of Southern California. As this rant noted: "If even the most dedicated, foaming-at-the-mouth Commons evangelists can't use it properly – what hope do us mortals have?"
It's certainly tricky: basically we're building the airplane in mid-flight, as user-generated content booms. But don't despair. We'll explore more tips for being a good cyber-citizen and protecting your own work in the last week.
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About this site
Taught by a professional writer and a retired Microsoft programmer, the Blogging Frontier is a Writers.com online workshop that focuses on the art and the craft of new media. Instructors Amanda Castleman and Mike Keran guide students through the basics of setting up a blog and explain terminology. The course then launches into more advanced topics such as earning money, search engine optimization, and working with images and multimedia.
Weekly feedback includes writing critiques and technical ones, setting this ten-week course apart from similar offerings. Dates for 2010: April 21, July 28, October 27. Late-enrollment open until day ten, space permitting.
For a more in-depth answer, search on "word + Wikipedia". The site contains extensive entries on tech subjects. Since the content's user-generated, journalists and academics consider it the "best place to start and the worst place to stop" research-wise. But to solve a quick jargon panic, Wikipedia is your friend...
, an excellent read). These meticulous folks demand every URL, interview transcript, page number and contact detail, so authors keep airtight records – a wise habit for bloggers too. 
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