Gifts for Bloggers

What, oh what, to give your beloved blogger for the holidays?

These are just a few of the designs you can get on mugs, T-shirts, buttons, mouse pads, magnets and yes, even -- underwear! -- from cafepress. Hmm. Maybe we should offer our bears?

Of course, books are always a good choice: Books on Blogging

Then there's my personal favorite:

She-Blogger coffee mug from tild~

I actually own this, and use it often. I love She-Blogger.

Of course, there are more practical gifts for bloggers. There are tech gifts of all sorts for all budgets, from spendy laptops to sweet USB gadgets. If you'd like to give to the blog, as well as the blogger, here are a few ideas:

• Contribute to hosting fees. Some blogs are hosted on free sites, but many pay a monthly or annual fee for hosting, support, and features that are rarely available on free sites.
• A flickr pro account is a good choice for a blogger who uses lots of photos (and I see that until the end of January, if you buy one as a gift, you get three months free for yourself.) There are other options as well; be sure to choose the one your blogger prefers.
• A picnik pro account offers lots of easy online image editing and creation tools, and excellent integration with the most popular photo hosting sites. As with flickr, the pro account offers features not available in the free version.
• Other blog expenses that the reader doesn't see, but the blogger likely pays, include an annual fee for the domain name (such as bloggingblog.org) and possibly a fee for podcast development and hosting (like Hipcast.)

Blogging can be a costly habit, with even more expenditures for designers and clipart and professional statistics packages, but most of us don't have to worry about that. And some, of course, display ads to take the edge off even basic expenses -- but you need heavy traffic to make that pay -- and few have enough traffic to make the annoyance worthwhile.

For more ideas from other folks, check out these posts - and have a lovely holiday!

• Eight Gifts for Bloggers 
• Gifts for Bloggers [Warning: PopUp!] 
• 10 Best Gift Ideas for Bloggers 
• Ideal Christmas Gifts for Bloggers 
• Top 10 Christmas Gifts for Bloggers
• Gifts for Bloggers: Gossip Bubbles!