The idea of fame and celebrity status will at one point or another flood your mind. Remember when you were seven years old and you said you wanted to grow up to be Brad Pitt or Britney Spears? This sounds dorky, but when I was seven years old, I aspired to be as smart and successful as our good friend Bill Gates. I wanted people to admire me for my amazing achievements. Now, it seems as if people enjoy talking crap about all of the celebs I've mentioned above. Then what good is having celebrity status?

Here's a tidbit from Meghan Asha's blog:

Strangely, it was compelling to watch someone else doing daily activities in front of a web cam. What makes some people such exhibitionists? My friend Julia Allison is all over the Internet with intimate details of her personal life. It seems like exposing yourself to the virtual world is an addictive cycle that leaves one with an initial high and low (once you’ve read others nasty comments on your video or blog).

After thinking this through, I will have to agree. I've been filmed for documentaries and TV shows. (one which I decided NOT to allow released because I felt like a schmuck.) Like pretty much every other girl in the tech scene, I've been on Valleywag. I once had a webcam show that I promise never to do again. Basically, the idea of having lots of publicity and being in the public eye is VERY appealing. But after a while of having video cameras watching you do this and that, you want to just go back to normalcy.

Publicity is best (I feel) when it comes in doses. Doing an interview or being blasted on Valleywag every so often can be fun. When it happens daily, you get bored. Getting publicity and fame is just like taking drugs. You get a high, you get a low, and if you get it too often, you become addicted. When the attention goes away, you wonder what happened to your celebrity status. Not like I'd know... I've never been famous! But these are still important thoughts I need to let out.

There are, however, very positive points to having all of this:

1) You get credibility. People are impressed by the noteworthy interviews/tv shows/etc.. added to your resume. I take advantage of it all the time!

2) People recognize you. I remember going to the Super Happy Dev House Party back in August and so many people there recognized me! One person I met even told me that his buddy IMed him with a link to my blog. Or getting emails from random readers saying that they saw you at a random part of the city. Awesomeness!

3) Publicity = Traffic to your blog = New friends! I love getting emails from you guys. I love meeting my readers in person and becoming true (non-internet) friends.

I can go on and on, but you get my drift. Take the publicity in doses and take control over your image. I haven't been the best at doing that. I've been trying to get attention as a smart, yet fun and awesome blogger chick because that's truly who I am. :) I hope its working!

PS - I'll try to keep the sex appeal to a low, but my male readers prefer otherwise.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

Thanks to everybody who commented and voted on my recent poll: Should I go to the South by Southwest conference or go to school? I'm not a class cutter, but it seems as if SXSW takes preference. I'll meet great people and learn a little of something. As of Tuesday evening, 69% of you told me to go to SXSW, 29% told me to go to school, and 2% told me "other." What other is I can't tell you!

However, I do have an issue. I need cash! The trip is expensive. Airfare will run me $350 and hotel will run me about $400. I've decided that because of all of these trips, it makes sense for me to have sponsors. No, not pesky advertising banners on the side of my blog, but trustworthy sponsors who I can publicly thank for sponsoring Jessica Mah in action. If you have any ideas, please let me know! To whoever gives me a good lead, I'll give you my VIP pass to SF Beta :) And lots of e-kisses and e-hugs!

More to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Many of you have heard the news: Robert Scoble is finally putting blogs on his website! And of course, this means that many people are criticizing him for taking back his previous opinion on putting ads on blogs. In a nutshell, the two of us held the same opinion: That advertisements on blogs don't make enough money to be worthwhile. Only that his opinion has changed, and I'm not sure if mine has too. I look up to the guy and I think about every word he says.

Think about it: I'm a poor college student paying over $45K a year to go to school per year while blogging during my lunch breaks. If I put up some sponsorships on my website, maybe I could afford some new gadgets and pay off those (non-existent) financial aid loans!

Yet again, I could live without a new MacBook Air. So for now, unless any of you guys insist, I'll keep my blog ad-free. :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

I was surfing through PayPerPost.com after reading about how bloggers who make money from the site lost their Google PageRank! I clicked to check out one of the featured members' blogs, and I laughed at my discovery...

I was sent to a website called texas-sweetie.blogspot.com, a blog written by a pregnant Texan woman trying to make money on her blog by taking on PayPerPost advertising opportunities. Only problem being, most of her blog posts are clearly advertisements that she's paid to post, so who the hell would want to regularly follow her "writing?" Below is a sample of her daily writing:

... Chemises are mostly on sale now that saves you a couple bucks when you buy one or more. Check out the website.You will find sexy costumes,sexy clothes,plus size lingerie and many more. You can also pick a sexy gift set for her under $25. Go shop now and let the woman you love be feel even more sexier and beautiful...

Wow, I'm now more compelled than ever to buy myself a chemise... but not really!!!

What's even funnier is, the blog posts on her front page that ARENT advertisements talk about PayPerPost. Observe:

Strange as it is,PPP suddenly got exciting with a lot of opps coming out minutes ago and then quickly got quiet. I don't understand.They seem to give all the opps at once then if you are slow,you end up grabbing one or two opps.

Luckily,I learned how to be fast so I can have few opps to post. I am just hoping that all of my newly posted entries are gonna get auto approved as it my only way to now that I am doing well in my blogging. Still pretty sleepy here but it's ok. Me and my baby are gonna be fine because God is taking care of us.Happy Friday morning everyone!

Hah, no way! So you're basically admitting that the entire purpose of your blog is to make money through PayPerPost opportunities, eh? I'll give her a little credit for trying so desperately hard to make money for her baby, but seriously - blogs like this represent what PayPerPost is. I've seen other blogs who do a way better job at doing "social advertising," but how is this one woman able to get away with such bad writing?

I guess Michael Arrington and Nick Denton aren't far off when they say PayPerPost has some serious problems... As a disclosure, I signed up for PayPerPost to see what it was like and how it worked, but never would I accept money to write positively about a company... When companies send me something, they do so full knowing that I might just call their product/service lame.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

Yay, after many long hours of driving, I'm finally at Power Shift - a conference on combating global climate change.

I'm sitting in a panel that discusses fighting global change in local communities, and here are a few things I got out of it:

1) When making an argument for creating a sustainable world, make it relevant to the group of people you're talking to. How does it benefit them?

For example, this girl from Sugarland, Texas had a discussion with her mayor on how to create a sustainable city. Ended up that the mayor had many of the ideas she offered, but didn't want to make them public because it could possibly upset the large and powerful oil industry. To make it work, keep in mind how it may or may not benefit the individuals you're talking to.

2) Connections, connections, connections. Find allies and don't be afraid to ask them questions. Students always seem so freaking hostile towards business executives and government officials. There is some truth behind their thinking, but hostility doesn't solve problems. Once again, look at everything from THEIR perspective. Suck out as much info as you can and use it for your mutual benefit.

When I meet with founders and management at companies, I ask them about their business. I ask them about their ideas and why they do what they do. I ask them why they don't do X, and more often than not, they've thought of the idea and found a reason as to why it wouldn't work. (or they're in the process of implementing that X) At the end of the day, I give them good or bad press via my blog. :)

3) It's important to be able to measure everything. Set goals and measure your improvement by solid numbers. This way, you know what's most effective, what's best to invest more time and money into, etc...

For example, in regards to advertising, it's important to have necessary data: who's visiting your business, where are they coming from, etc… this is why TV advertising doesn't work. You have no way of distinguishing if your customer is coming from a TV ad or from word of mouth. Google AdWords, on the other hand, offers you control over everything. You can cap your spending to any amount of money, you can specify the physical location your visitors are from, you can specify certain keywords, etc…

4) Garnering support is all about targeting communities. Get huge groups of people excited about a common cause. I'll write tomorrow about their conference marketing… but I must say, it is borderline manipulative.

In a nutshell, the conference would recruit "campus coordinators" who would take charge of organizing the conference trip to Power Shift. Basically, the conference organizers made these campus coordinators feel super important and gave them the noble responsibility of bringing as many people as they could to this conference. Brilliant.

The bottom line? Everything about this conference has SO much to do with business, whether it be related to marketing, communications, etc… If you want to combat global climate change, be a doctor, be a fashion designer, or whatever - you're going to be using business related skills. If you want to help stop global climate change, look at the source: big and powerful corporations.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Wow. Once again, I'm disappointed with Ask. They're still spending millions of dollars on these stupid advertisements! I'll give them some credit because their decent ads that show some benefits Ask has over others, but in reference to my post about Super Bowl ads, why do they waste money on this?

Ask is an internet company, yet they choose to advertise via billboard and TV. People aren't likely to change their normal way of doing things just because they saw this advertisement. And even if they did, how is Ask supposed to measure the success, demographics, etc... of the visitors coming from these ads? They can't.

Everybody says that Ask's goal in advertising is to bring traffic to their site. I've spoken to a few Ask employees about this, and they claim that the ads are actually meant to build up brand value. Traffic isn't their first priority. My personal concern - they've been running these ads forever! When will they actually get something accomplished? A 4-5% profit decrease per year doesn't justify the millions spent on this form of marketing.

My personal take? Build a product that doesn't directly compete with Google. It doesn't matter if your algorithm or website is better or easier because Google already has recognition as being the market leader. Find a specific audience to target and a new niche/market to go after. It doesn't matter that bloggers like me are writing them up if they can't manage to convert it to dollars and cents.

For your entertainment, here's an advertisement:

In response to a comment #9 on TechCrunch, I agree - The money spent on advertising could have been spent on database storage or pay for research/development in a better product.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

I've been an AT&T customer since the iPhone came out and I despise them. The support sucks, the service sucks, and the company sucks. My connections from AT&T are basically living versions of Dilbert.

AT&T decided to be dumber than they already are. They recently created the above advertisement - I've seen it on quite a few websites and even on billboards in San Francisco. What a huge waste of time and money. I mean, who the hell makes up a city with a terrible name to advertise their product? Why would I want to pay for bad cell phone service if their advertising staff is drooling enough to decide that this is a great idea?

There's much more at stake than wasting time and money. Bad advertising is destroying the brand. eBay screwed up with their windorphins ad campaign. Ask.com also had meaningless billboards and TV ads that didn't get anybody to use the search engine. At the Searchnomics conference, everybody was coming up to the Ask.com employees, asking them why they had such dumb forms of marketing. Point being, this is a botched attempt to make AT&T look like a "fun" company.

If you see any of these ads on the highway, please let me know!

[Credit to Drew Levin for his collaboration] Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.