I am totally addicted to blogging. I've asked hundreds of people if they have a blog, and about half of the people who say no tell me that they tried starting a blog and weren't able to remain disciplined. They'd blog once or twice a month because they "couldn't find time." Personally, I interpret this as "I couldn't find the time for sex." In other words, once you try doing it, you love doing it. Once you get into the habit of doing it, you're addicted. And no, I do not plan talking about my sex life via my blog.

First addictions

With honesty, my blog didn't start because I believed in the idea of meeting and engaging my readers through emails and AIM. I read Richard Yoo's blog, I loved hearing about his travels, and I thought that by blogging I'd be able to influence people in the same way that he influenced me. I don't know him very well, but as a result of having known him and his blog, I've decided to start my own. I decided to apply to TED and now I'm going next year! Hopefully my blogging can and has influenced you in some positive way.

Schedule time to blog

Blogging doesn't take a very long time. You just need to sit down and do it. Schedule a time for yourself, whether it be over your lunch break or right before you sleep. If anything, it should be something you look forward to in your day! If anything, the biggest time waster of my day is talking to people I met from my blog. Last night alone, I spent close to four hours speaking to many different people who I met through blogging. Trust me, it's worthwhile!

Stockpile on rainy days

In the rare event that you have nothing better to do with your time, stock up. I've blogged as many as five times in a given day, publishing each post on a different day. You won't always find time to blog, so write your thoughts down when you have time.

Ignore the money and stats

True bloggers don't need money or crazy statistics to influence them to blog. If I ever had ads or sponsors, the money made would go directly towards funding the trips and conferences I frequently attend. I often get emails from people asking how to attract more readers. Well, firstly, write good content! Secondly, write content that Techcrunch.com won't write about! And thirdly, blog for the sake of blogging. Ignore the statistics until you can fully understand the importance of ignoring them. I looked at my statistics yesterday, but I don't care if I'm getting 30,000 page views a month or 100,000 page views a month. I'd even be happy with 100 page views a month!

And as always, extend a helping hand. Encourage readers to email you, and you'll meet so many amazing people. I get so many, but I try to reply to everyone! So on a final note, I love to hear from you, so feel free to email me about anything - whether it be about tech, business, or even your personal life. :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Businesses often fail when it comes to doing something as simple as talking to their customers. I'm not sure if it's because they're lazy or if because they don't feel the need to, but it's probably the one big thing that can make or break a company Don't ignore your customers! Few thoughts:

1) Ignore the customers and they'll flock to the competitor. When I board an airplane, I expect the pilot to greet me. (thank you, Jetblue) When I buy my clothing from Barney's, I expect store assistants to help me with figuring out what I want to buy. When the help isn't there, I'll just cross the street and buy from the better company.

True story: I was looking for sun glasses in a shopping mall, and I was prepared to buy. I walked in, but the store assistant was too busy tooling around with his Facebook, so I left. I went to the store next door and spent $400 because the man at the door greeted me and gave me his honest feedback on which sunglasses looked good and which didn't. Lesson of the story, always talk to your customers.

2) Ignore your customers and miss out on what they're actually looking for. Company executives are apparently so busy working on their companies that they have little time to solicit the feedback of customers. Problem is, how are the execs to know what's working and what isn't? I think a great example would be Mattel: they sell Barbie dolls to preteen girls, but the execs are probably in their 40's. Unfortunately, girls don't aspire to elegantly dressed dolls anymore. How are the execs to know that the girls of today aspire to be anorexic sluts? Without the constant feedback, the execs would never have known this!

3) Talking to users = Making new friends. I love it when people talk to their users, whether it be about the product or about nothing at all. Hair stylists do this best: You're stuck in a chair and they're cutting your hair. What else is there to do besides talk to the hair stylist about the latest gossip on Valleywag? Encourage casual contact between you and your users and maybe you'll meet your most loyal word-of-mouth marketers.

All of this comes back to how I run this blog. I write a lot, but I want to hear from readers. Matter of fact, this blog post was inspired by a blog reader! Without the feedback, I wouldn't know what you guys wanted to hear. As always, please feel free to reach out and/or comment with your thoughts.

With much love to my passionate readers,

Jessica

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Most of you have only met the superficial version of me. I've been thinking a lot about my personal brand in the recent weeks, and I've come to a few major decisions as to how I want people to perceive me. Through my blog, I have complete discrepancy as to how and what I write about myself. Until lately, it's been completely overdone. For some silly reason, half the people who have heard of me perceive me as a child prodigy. The other half either think I'm arrogant or don't care. The purpose of this blog post is to tell you that I'm more of the normal teenage girl than you probably think.

Firstly, I don't deserve the credibility that I have. I'm out there in the tech world and I'm sometimes mentioned on people's blogs. Big deal! I haven't sold a successful startup and I don't have a product that I've launched this year. Yet somehow, I get invited to speaking engagements and other fancy elitist groups. Instead, you should see me for and only for my enthusiasm and potential. I'm off to an early start, but in a few years, that won't matter. Nobody will care in 10 years that I went to college early and failed at a few startups when I was 16 years old. I guess I'm slightly worried that I've been spending too much time talking to you guys and not enough time doing something great. Until I find amazing success, none of you should have the right to call me smart.

Next, I much rather you guys view me as a child prodigy than as a whore. Sure, my personal branding has been overdone, but at least it was overdone in a somewhat positive direction. Unlike Paris Hilton, people have a slight clue as to what I want to do with my life. Smarts are sustainable, looks are not. As one of my friends said, "if you're going to be famous, at least have a business model." People associate my name to business and technology. As for Paris Hilton, well, people look at her as a hot girl with an empty brain. No matter how hard she tries to change her personal brand, people will be stuck in their old ways of thinking. So, if you overdo your personal branding, "do it with a business model" :)

Internet celebrity Julia Allison wrote on her Tumblr yesterday:

I’m in the midst of a transformation right now. Actually, it’s not so much an internal transformation (although there’s that, too) but a realignment - so my outside matches my inside, so the perception matches the reality.

The quote just comes to show that people don't understand who she is. They read about her in Valleywag, but they don't know how fun, enthusiastic, and smart she is in real life. I've been told so many times by my blog readers that I'm different from how they thought I'd be. Some thought that I'd be formal, proper, intelligent and well-spoken, whereas others thought I'd be a snotty-arrogant-uptight-child-prodigy-bitch. One reader suggested that I overdid my professional brand, whereas Julia blurred her personal and professional brands together.

In real life, I'm just an adventurous teenager. I like to do something called having fun. I have something called friends. I go to class, I do my homework, I play instruments, I play sports, and do all the things you'd expect a normal 17 year old kid to do. (minus the many fun business/tech trips I've been on). Sure, I'm in college, but that doesn't mean much about my personality. Instead, try to see through the fog: all of the random bloggers you stalk are real human beings and have lives outside of the internet. Their personal brand may be completely deceiving for all you know.

Like many girls, I've had that desire to have the spotlight on me. And I've gotten quite a lot of spotlight for a girl my age, but I've come to realize that it's nothing more than a distraction. I'm dedicating too much effort to building up my personal brand and not enough in a) leading a normal teenage life and b) working on doing something amazing, whether it be save the world or build a hot startup. As one of my friends Charlie mentioned, the most brilliant people he knows prefer to keep in the shadows. They don't have much of a personal brand, but their smarts and successes create the true credibility one needs to be known. I guess as of late, this idea has been much more appealing to me.

So what does all of this mean for you, me, and my future in blogging?

1) The blog lives on. I'll always continue to blog because I love you guys so much!

2) I've decided to cut wayy back on my conference going. I have many connections as it stands and I don't need to waste more time networking with 50 year olds.

3) You hopefully won't have to see me on Valleywag again. As I've mentioned in other posts, the influx of press gives you a temporary high.

4) It's soo easy to get drawn into the fun culture of Silicon Valley. It's so easy that you sometimes forget to create something of value.

So for now, I'll try to stay in the shadows. I have no problem speaking at conferences or doing interviews or whatever, but I'll remain honest and true to myself: I'm a kid who's yet to succeed in business.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup and the managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. Big thanks to my friends Jacob Locke, Patricia Handschiegel, and Charlie O'Donnell for having helped me gather my thoughts on this.

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.

EDIT: (10/17 @ 1PM PST)Samsung decided to be smart and send me a phone. I'm hoping to receive it later this week! When I get it, I'll be sure to compare it to the iPhone.

As of Yesterday, I received in the mail a 2nd day FedEx package and wondered who might be calling... why, it was from Samsung! A nice white folder packed with BLACKJACK information guides and a disk with everything digitized. (for those who don't know, the BLACKJACK is a "robust, slim smart device packed with the power and functionality desired by business customers and consumers alike" - says Samsung's information packet)

To sum it up, I wasn't impressed. I could have found everything I wanted just by surfing Google. My request to Samsung is basically: Send me REAL phones and MAYBE I'll blog about it! I wish this PR firm for Samsung (MWWGroup) took a more personal approach to social marketing and the blogosphere. We bloggers love getting personalized mail; not the crappy generic product/service descriptions that everybody else gets.

Until Samsung or Nokia or anyone else sends me REAL phones, I'll continue to evangelize my Apple iPhone. That is, until my battery explodes.

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.