Non-shady ways to mooooonetize your blog

For me, the biggest challenge with monetizing has been finding legit, non-scammy tools. There’s a lot of shady, scammy stuff that goes down in the world of online advertising, and it’s hard to trust information you find online about any of them. I like to feel good about the businesses I partner with, so I figure it’d be worth sharing some of the tools I use that don’t feel shady to me.

Why our links don’t open in a new window (and how to make it so that yours do!)

Once a month or so I get an email from a well-intentioned reader, politely complaining that it would be much more convenient for them if we would make it so that all links on Offbeat Bride opened in a new window. My response is always the same: Not having links open in new windows is a very conscious decision based on my 20 years of internet use.

Here are a few reasons why we don’t default links to open in a new browser tab or window:

How I engineered a viral post

Recently, a post I wrote about cell phones at weddings went WAY viral, getting shared 43,000 times in one day. It wasn’t an accident. Here’s how I did it.

The biggest business mistake I ever made

I started the Offbeat Bride Tribe on a whim as a way to test out a platform I was curious about, and I have regretted it ever since because A) community platforms suck and B) community management is emotionally difficult for me.