1) Firstly, I don't often write about startups. When I do, I fully endorse the startup or fully despise the startup. It's never something in between. Getting a blogger to write about you involves building a relationship. Most startup marketing people don't understand this concept and send generic emails to bloggers. It doesn't work! So, the best way is to send me a pointless email that tells me how awesome my blog is, even if you don't think it's that great. I've probably fallen for this dozens of times, but hey, it works!

2) Real bribes. Startup founders seem to enjoy taking me out to lunch or dinner. While I was at South by Southwest, I managed to get away without paying for a single meal. How? Well, my blog readers! Half were friends who I wanted to build a lasting connection with, the other other half were random startup founders who wanted nothing more from me but my connections and minimal influence. (no, not that many people read my blog or know who I am.)

3) Do something special and tell me about it. No, I don't mean that you should do something stupid just for attention. For those people, go to Valleywag. For startup founders who did something funny that had a real purpose and intent, let me know about it! Take for example Xobni's recruiting video, which I heard about from my friend Bryan Kennedy.

For the rest of you, I'd suggest following one of my prescribed tips above. Whether it's me or Michael Arrington who you're trying to get a hold of, you can't just send generic emails. Those end up in the spam folder. One blog reader of mine suggested that I "write them up and completely misrepresent their purpose, their name, everything!" While that idea sounds incredibly appealing, I enjoy having people not hate me. :)

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. She's totally overrated and you all know it.

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)

In a nutshell, Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA franchise and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network. [wikipedia] He recently wrote on his blog about how he was pissed off about an interview he recently had with Deadspin.com sports blogger Will Leitch, who wrote a somewhat nasty critique about him on valleywag.com.

And as usual, valleywag.com went back to critique Mark Cuban even more for critiquing Will Leitch! I don't blame valleywag for doing that, because it's what they do best. However, Mark Cuban has every right to complain that a blogger took advantage of the interview and spun it off, basically into writing nasty comments about Mark.

I'll take a bold stand: I like Mark Cuban. I respect him, and I think he can teach us a lot about running an organization, whether it be a basketball team or an internet start-up. I especially loved his recent blog post about honest and respect: being absolutely honest with evaluating yourself and others. Going back to topic, his interviewer might have had a lot of fun bad-mouthing him on valleywag, but that's a permanent action that will prevent others from wanting to work with him.

I'm used to speaking to business execs and start-up founders, and I don't blog about the stuff they explicitly tell me NOT to make public. Sure, I would love to tell all of you about so-and-so's latest and greatest projects, but that would completely destroy my credibility. I was nasty about Meg Whitman two blog posts below this, and that probably hurt my credibility. If I sat down and learned about what she did, I probably would have had more respect for her as a CEO. If I sat down with Mark Cuban and I disagreed with him on something, I'd tell him on the spot. I'd tell all of you about it if I had the permission to.

Looking back at this issue from blogger Will Leitch's perspective, he needs to be fun and entertaining to keep the traffic flow coming. Mark Cuban just so happens to be an easy target because of his personality and the fact that he's incredibly rich. Ethically speaking, I'll say that Leitch has the right to bad mouth Mark Cuban without Mark's permission, but I don't see how it'll pay off in the end. If anything, having not blogged about Mark or posting some sort of apology would clear up his reputation if he wanted to speak to another CEO in the future.

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.