I’ve just returned home from another great London Bloggers Meetup, organised as usual by Andy Bargery and this month sponsored by Starbucks. They’ve recently launched an instant coffee brand, called ‘VIA Ready Brew’ (rolls off the tongue that one!). I’m not entirely convinced, but I’ll try a sachet at work tomorrow – my personal Starbucks poison is a skinny chai latte and a ‘rise and shine’ muffin, which I’ll be buying with the Starbucks card loaded with £5, which they were handing out tonight too 🙂
We also heard from one of friends from the online Londonist magazine, on how the 30-odd members of their group manage to produce such quality news and views day in, day out, and also from Chris Tradgett from Buy.at, who was kind enough to impart lots of useful tips for the assembled bloggers on monetising your blog without compromising on editorial quality. Personally I think that’s a real tight-rope walk – I’ve seen many blogs that are so heavily ‘monetized’ that they make you feel slightly queazy, and more to the point ensure that you never ever go back to them, which is why the advertising on my site is very low-key (and consequently why it doesn’t make me any money!)
My only complaint about the evening is how damn hot the second floor room in the Old Crown pub was – as you can see from the image of these two rather sweaty bloggers, it was almost time to hand out the towels (btw the chap on the right is Malcolm, of the aptly named London Review of Breakfasts)
Just on a side note, on my way over to the pub this evening I walked through Bedford Square with a friend where we found a rather enticing new sculpture made entirely out of plywood – rather attractive, although I wonder how well it will hold up during our very damp summer this year…