Those two guests were Heather Reinhard (@ThetaMom) and Corine Ingrassia (@ComplicatedMama) who are also bloggers, with the sites Theta Mom and Complicated Mama, respectively.

With so many women-owned businesses starting up (especially online) and looking for a community and resources, Corine and Heather want Launching Mom to be their go-to place. They joined the Blogging Angels to talk about collaborating, grass roots promotion, and balance.

This week’s links

Heather and Corine built their site on the Ning platform, which is easy to maintain, and scalable. Mom Bloggers Club is also built on Ning.

Heather is a brand ambassador for MomAgenda.com.

Trumpeting Media and Splash Creative are examples of partnerships with more than two partners.

Qwips.com started out as a husband-and-wife team, but investors don’t like married couples.

Nancy cites Silicon Valley Moms as a good reason to make sure you have a partnership agreement in place just in case problems arise.

Between the offensive ads and the elephant kerfuffle, GoDaddy.com is a very divisive company in the mom blogging community. Making a rock video out of an elephant hunting trip didn’t help.

Liz Gumbinner made very good points after the Super Bowl as to why David Beckham in his underwear is OK but the GoDaddy.com girls are not.

Kim Moldofsky’s (Mom Impact) presentation at Blissdom (you can see the slideshow here) about what bloggers make was anonymous, but Cecily K’s (Upper Case Woman) post for MomCrunch was not.

Amy gave her Golden Halo to Houzz.com, which is basically home design porn. Many thanks to Jill Asher for telling her about it.

Rebecca gave her Golden Halo to the new weekly podcast on Slate about grammar, Lexicon Valley.

Corine gave hers to all of the bloggers who showed support for Susan Niebur and her family in the time leading up to Susan’s death, and Audrey McClelland while her husband Matt was in the hospital.

Nancy gave hers to a new anonymous blog, Snaps to my Wild Hair, which she thinks is written by her friend Alice, but doesn’t know for sure.

And Heather gave a bonus halo to KidzVuz.com, since co-owners Nancy and Rebecca are the very definition of Launching Moms.

Plagiarism. It happened again, in a high-profile way, in the mom blog space. A well-known blogger, Amalah (and we apologize if we pronounced your blog’s name wrong, repeatedly), detailed in a post how her words were stolen. The woman who stole them seems to be at the center of several dramas, but this is the latest and, we think, it may just be the end of brands wanting to work with her.

This week’s links

“The Plagiarist’s Tale” in The New Yorker

The plagiarized article in question was published this week on Babble’s Being Pregnant blog.

According to one blogger, Kristin Ruiz had a history of questionable behavior regarding other people’s content.

Cecily K  and Lisa Belkin both use other people’s words in ways that don’t break any ethical rules, and start interesting discussions.

Carol Cain once had her blog posts stolen and passed off as someone else’s.

Jason Blair is famous for posting articles from places he’d never been to.

Angel Amy wrote about the Chrysler Contest Fail, which coincidentally also involved Kristina Ruiz.

BlogHer is a good example of a site that runs popularity contests the right way – you have to register, and you can vote only once.

Nancy gave a rare (but deserved) self-halo to a picture that her mother in law sent her recently.

Amy gave her halo to Stephanie Schwab for her post on Social Media Explorer, The Decline of Blogs (and How PR can help avoid it)

Last, Angel Amy said that Kristin Ruiz had originally published the post in question on her own blog, but it was actually posted on AlphaMom.com. Amy regrets the error, and the other Angels managed to talk her back down from the ledge of Nancy’s apartment.

This is the closest that a couple of us have gotten to yelling at each other across the table. Money does that.

Whether you agree or disagree with what Cecily posted, it’s a fascinating subject, and I think we could have talked about it for hours – not just the numbers, but whether or not bloggers should be giving up this info publicly. Angel Amy was one of the bloggers who participated in the survey, and she thinks it’s important to get those numbers out there, to help other bloggers in their negotiations. What do you think? Is it just tacky, or is it time to lay it all out there and help each other make more money?

This week’s links

Jessica Gottlieb listed the highest sponsored post rate in the survey, at $1,000.

Kred.ly is a new-ish site that is giving Klout a run for its money in gauging twitter influence.

The post we discussed originated with another post of Cecily’s, Mommy Bloggers for sale: $7!

We’ve all done sponsored posts through the Clever Girls Collective.

Amy, Rebecca, and Julia Beck attended a fabulous, delicious party hosted by Jennifer Perillo. Thanks, Jennifer!

Amy gave her golden halo to an article in Digiday about why publishers are betting on sponsored posts.

Heidi gave a golden halo to all of the mom bloggers who’ve had babies lately, who have been posting fabulous pictures of their adorable little babies, including Jessica Shyba and Jen Rabulan-Bertram.

Nancy gave halos to Family Travel Forum, Traveling Mom, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Omni Hotels for sponsoring and/or running the recent Family Travel Conference.

Rebecca gave a halo to all of the Social Media Women out there who took down the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and to Joanne Bamberger for her excellent new website, The Broad Side.

This Week’s Links

The Rose Gold ZENBOOK Ultrabook from Asus is gorgeous, as is the HP Spectre slimbook with Gorilla Glass.

Hell, we were just thrilled to sit.

We talked with Ben about Ultrabooks, The new Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone and the just-announced Lumia 900, and the $100 challenge that Ben has been running on the show floor. We also talked apps vs. experiences, Microsoft’s future at CES, and our friend Ben had an announcement that nothing to do with phones, CES or Microsoft!

We also gave a roundup of the most interesting things we’ve seen so far at CES, including Disney Appmates, the Casio Digital 3D Printer, GeoPalz, and the Samsung Galaxy Note. Plus much more that we simply don’t have time to write down here because we have to get back to the show floor!

The new Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone

The just-announced Nokia Lumia 900

Amy had her caricature drawn by an artist on the Samsung Galaxy Note

Thanks for joining us Ben!

This week’s links

Gay NYC Dad got a shoutout from Rebecca for…coupons?

Traveling Mom founder Kim Orlando sat down with us to talk about managing a large website, weekly twitter parties (Mondays at 9pm., #TMOM), twitter vs. Facebook, why travel writing is the best job she can imagine for herself, and much more.

This week’s links

Kim uses Hashtracking.com to gauge the effectiveness of her twitter parties. Heidi also mentioned TweetReach.

You never know who will find your URL if you get it out there on a t-shirt, like perhaps a VP from Spa Finder.

Amy’s been losing weight on Slim-Fast, despite baking more than ever (because she enjoys torturing herself).

Kim gave two golden Halos. The first went to SouthWest Airlines and Windows for their free airport holiday photos. The second went to City Buzz, for including Traveling Mom in their segment that runs continuously on hotel room TVs.

Heidi gave a Halo to Angel Amy for organizing a campaign with One.org called 12 Days of Change. She also gave a halo to Penelope Trunk’s post on TechCrunch titled “Stop telling women to do startups.”

Amy gave her Halo to Gail Dosik, of One Tough Cookie, who has a fantastic site about cookies and cakes and who makes the most beautiful edible creations. And is just a nice, generous person to boot.

Rebecca gave hers to GothamGal Joanne Wilson for her post about why she supports women-owned start-ups.

Nancy gave a Horn to an article in Slate, titled “Don’t support your local book seller.” She also gave a Halo to Jeff Bullas, for his post “20 Stunning Social Media Statistics.”

Jennifer’s posts about food have always been very personal. She never just puts up a recipe. There’s always a story that goes along with it, often related to family, especially her daughters or her beloved Mikey. Her blog has taken an even more personal turn lately: food writing has taken a little bit of a back seat as she writes about her late husband and her new normal in a way that is both raw and beautiful. But she’s been getting back into writing about food slowly, and her posts have been more eloquent than ever.

We sat down with Jennifer over some banana bread that Nancy made for us. We can’t give you the yummy banana bread, but please join us as we talk about writing, grieving, friendship, and – of course – food.

This week’s links:

Amy uses Duncan Hines Premium Brownie Mix to make her brownies, and Jennifer loves them. There, the dirty secret is out.

Nancy made us some very yummy banana bread – we’re going to link to it here, so check back soon!

Jennifer’s favorite butter is Kerrygold, but recommends Land O Lakes for us regular people who don’t have access.

Want to churn your own butter? Both Lefferts Historic House and Queens County Farm will let you.

Jennifer wouldn’t have met Gluten Free Girl, the White on Rice Couple, or Bowl Licker if not for the food blogging community.

Jennie’s “A Pie for Mikey” tribute to her late husband went viral, and thousands of people made this pie shortly after her husband’s death.

Life is short. Use the damn butter.

Nancy gave her Golden Halo to The Duchess of Fork, who posted a recipe from Jenny of Picky Palate for Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. And no, you can’t substitute Trader Joe’s Jo-Jos or Newman-O’s. They have to be Oreos, because Oreos are the best.

Amy gave her halo to Danielle Wiley and her post on Babble’s MomCrunch about how to figure out rates for sponsored posts.

Jennifer gave her Golden Halo to Erica from Ivory Hut, Maggie from Three Many Cooks and Aimee from Simple Bites and under the high chair, who started Bloggers without Borders. Their first campaign was a college fund for Jennifer’s daughters.

And Rebecca gave her halo to Savvy Blogging for a post about high level planning and low level planning for your blog.

How do we know that it went well? Because we sent out a survey asking our attendees how it went, and we got some really valuable feedback. We went through the results during the podcast, as well as discussed what it’s like to plan an event. Listen in!

This week’s links:

Survey Monkey is free to use (although you get more functionality if you upgrade to a paid plan).

Perrin Kaplan and Zebra Partners were amazing to work with!

Our event was at the beautiful Suite & Tender in San Diego.

Striiv was one of our event’s sponsors, and their awesome product is coming out very soon! Reserve yours!

Qualcomm provided us with some fantastic phones to give away at our event, all running their Snapdragon processors.

Kidzania is sending one of our attendees, Jennifer Desrochers, on a trip for four to one of their amazing parks!

Blissdom is coming up again, and not all of the Angels can make it this year.

Elena Soninno (@CiaoMom) was one of the people who stood up at our event and presented her elevator pitch – and she did a great job!

Finslippy: probably not suffering any for not having the word “mom” in her blog name.

Nancy gave her Golden Halo to @DebontheRocks, for Maslow’s Hierarchy of Social Media Status Updates. Hilarious.

Rebecca gave a halo AND a horn to Eventbrite, because while they’re very useful, they make things very difficult when more than one person needs to access the administrative info for an event. Sorry, Corrine!

Amy gave her halo to a great post on her friend @Chilihead’s site, Blogging Basics 101, about how to keep an editorial calendar for your blog.

And last, we missed you Heidi!

***We’ll be posting the info we mentioned from our BlogHer event as soon as we can, please check back!***

If you’re not familiar with Lisa Belkin, she writes the Motherlode blog for the New York Times. Insightful, curious, and always on top of trends and hot topics in the parenting community, her column deals with the specifics of parenthood. From gender issues to sick children to kids leaving for college, her column has seemingly covered everything, and yet she finds fascinating new topics to post about multiple times each week, and is still going strong after two-and-a-half years.

Listen in as we talk with Lisa about writing in the digital age, work-life balance, men doing housework, why mom bloggers are not always taken seriously as business people, and much more.

This week’s links

Lisa gave Angel Amy’s career an early boost, linking to her columns about paying her children to be good, and lying.

Don’t know who or what Walternate is? You must not be a Fringe fan!

When the New York Times writes about women bloggers making money, the articles are published in the magazine or the Fashion & Style section.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ time use survey.

The New Male Mystique, by Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute

Susannah Breslin and Why Women Shouldn’t Go To Tech Conferences

Huge shoutout from Rebecca to Corine Ingrassia

Nancy gave her Golden Halo to Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan

Lisa gave her Golden Halo to her latest Motherlode Book Club selection, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet by Melissa Fay Greene

And Amy loves the new hair products coming soon from her hairstylist, Sarah Potempa

The Blogging Angels were thrilled to have two fantastic co-founders of the The Clever Girls Collective as guests for this podcast, recorded at BlogHer 11 in San Diego: Sheila Dowd (left; @xiaolinmama) and Cat Lincoln (right; @DearBadKitty). The vetted group of bloggers who make up the Clever Girls Network was conceived as the Clever 100, then quickly became the Clever 1,000, and now has over 3,500 members – and the company turns a profit. No small feat in two years. So listen in as we discuss how this all came about, and where it might lead.

This week’s links:

The Clever Girls have run four or five thousand contracts through electronic signature company Echosign – check it out.

Nancy recently participated in a Clever Girls sponsored post project (sponsored by Bing) about how social media has changed her life.

If you love the Clever Girls’ newsletter, thank Kristy Sammis! (@KristySF)

The other Clever Girls co-founder, Stefania Butler, always knows the next big thing. She’s a social media psychic. (@citymama)

Cat’s advice for starting a business? Get a really kick-ass lawyer (theirs is Deb Ludwig).

Nancy had high praise for the open mic night at BlogHer, especially the reading by Erin Kotecki Vest (@QueenofSpain).

As always, Chris Brogan is hurting for page views, so we’re giving him some link love.

Nancy’s Golden Halo went to the women behind the BlogHer open mic event, the Listen To Your Mother Show.

n a fit of shameless brown-nosing, Amy gave her Golden Halo to the Clever Girls’ “Ladies who Tech” brunch at BlogHer.

Heidi gave her Golden Halo to Kiyonna, makers of beautiful clothing for women size ten and up, which gave Heidi a gorgeous red dress during her Momtrends make-over.

Rebecca gave hers to the collective feeling of being at BlogHer with all of these other amazing women.

Sheila gave a Golden Halo to the women who run BlogHer, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, and Jory Des Jardins. She also gave one to the ladies who came to BlogHer who weren’t sponsored.

Cat gave a Golden Halo to the Clever Network, and also to all of the first-time conference goers.

And last, Sheila gave props to Sarah ( @GoonSquadSarah) who excited our techie sides and creative sides by producing power strips and nail polish for the Clever Girls to give out at BlogHer.

Is there a minimum level of presentability for any conference, or is BlogHer a big Anything Goes fest? Will you have Wi-Fi at the hotel and in the conference rooms? (At least one of the Angels will be packing one of these.) Should you bring your laptop? (Angel Amy will make fun of you if you use pencil and paper, but that’s just because she can’t read her own handwriting.)

Want a little man between your beds, for you and your roommate to share? Order this little guy, from Bed Bath & Beyond.

Angel Heidi pulled out a borrowed review unit of the very Blackberry-looking HTC Status during the podcast, which set her and Rebecca off on a long argument about who exactly are millennials (turns out they’re Gen Y – sorry, Rebecca!).

Decide where you want to be at BlogHer before you get there – peruse the BlogHer agenda here.

Angel Rebecca gave horns to a post by Patrick Evans (as shared by Alli Worthington) about marketing (or not) to Gen Y.

For reasons not entirely clear, the Angels were talking about Faith Popcorn and S&H Greenstamps. Sometimes we can’t even follow our own tangents. Plus, we’re old.

Angel Heidi gave her golden halos to apps that help you focus: Rescue Time, Keep Me Out, and Anti-Social.

Angel Amy gave her halo to PacSafe’s laptop bags, which she loves.

Angel Nancy gave hers to a post on MomSpark about how to prepare for BlogHer.

See you in San Diego!

So what are we harping on this time? From handwriting to people who think technology is the devil’s work to intrusive ads, we getting it off our chests.

We love Mabel’s Labels! Wait, that wasn’t a complaint. But we’re complaining about all the stuff kids have to bring to sleepaway camp.

Heidi mentioned a new site called Altly, which is supposed to be like facebook, but with privacy settings you will actually understand!

Common Sense Media is developing a Digital Driver’s License – we love this idea, and so does Bill Clinton!

Amy doesn’t know what to do with comments. Do you answer every one? Do you end each post asking for them? Do you beg for comments on twitter and facebook? What do you do when comments get nasty? We want to hear how you handle comments on your blog.

And oh, the no-follow attribute! Back in the day (2005) google decided that it was going to get rid of comment spam by making sure that spammers got absolutely no SEO benefit in the google search engine by getting their spammy comments posted on sites and blogs. (Read here for a much better definition of no-follow than Amy was trying to give on the podcast.) However, lots of people think the whole idea sucks.

Heidi, who is pretty much incapable of complaining and being mean (and we love her for it!), gave a golden halo to Little Passports.

And Nancy must have used up all of her bitchiness earlier because she gushed about the ease of starting a blog with Weebly.

When twittering gets in the way of real life, by Katie Rosman

That person that Katie and her husband had dinner with at SXSW? None other than Brew PR founder @Brooke.

Guy Kawasaki tells people to UFM if they don’t like what he tweets.

Amy does NOT follow LaToya Jackson, Nancy, she follows the wonderful @ToryJohnson, CEO of Women for Hire.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, on Kindle

From Left to Write discusses Katie’s book

Amy loves gdgt.com.

Mashable’s post about the best tips for using twitter.

PriceGrabber.com has made Heidi’s inbox happier.

The Museum of Me from Intel

This week’s links

Nikki, @MommyFactor on twitter, started us off with a couple of great questions about what to do when PR people don’t follow through, and what to do when you’ve shared info with a company that ends up not working with you.

LinkedIn. Are you in?

Angel Heidi had to run early, but gave her golden halo to Sparked.

Mail Chimp and Constant Contact are two companies that can help you with newsletters.

The Angels LOVE Fresh Direct (the three of us who live in NYC are loyal customers). But we did not have a good experience trying to work with them.

Amy Lupold Bair, @ResourcefulMom on twitter: the queen of the twitter parties.

Angel Amy discovered Intuit’s Billing Manager at Blissdom in 2010. [NOTE: Listener Lisa (@NewYorkChica on twitter) let the Angels know that Billing Manager is no longer accepting new sign-ups. Angel Amy checked it out and discovered that the Billing Manager service is being discontinued as of September 2011. After getting up from the fetal position Amy started looking into other free invoicing programs, and settled on testing out the following: Zoho, Billing Boss, Invoice Expert, and Volutive. She will be trying them out and reporting on them in a future podcast.]

Angel Rebecca uses Mint to keep track of her finances.

And a tip from Rebecca: do NOT invoice through PayPal.

Amy is in love with her Cuisinart stand mixer, recommended to her by Jennifer Perillo @JenniferPerillo on twitter).

Wendy Aaron’s post about product placement.

The Kitchen Couple designed Rebecca’s IKEA kitchen, which she loves. And now she’s discovered IKEA Hackers.

Amy posted a couple of amazing videos about people who have transformed teeny tiny apartments into amazing living spaces, and Nancy introduced us to the crocheted apartment (ick).

It’s because the four of us are tech-savvy computer/phone/game console/gadget-laden moms who all have different wants and needs in our homes for how we use the internet. And as much as we would like to pretend that we have all of these devices slaving away exactly as we want them to, in reality it’s often the opposite – sometimes, the devices are running us.

So, instead of trying to wrangle all of the different controls on all of our different devices, we’re excited about the prospect of this soon-to-launch service giving us an easy, apps-based way to tackle the issue at the source: with the internet coming into the house. You can check out the myi online magazine, and of course, listen to our podcast to learn all about it!

And a HUGE apology to @NYCPatty – Amy went back to her notes after the podcast and realized that she hadn’t “stumbled” upon her Golden Halo link, it was sent to her by the Blogging Angels fan who writes A Day in My NYC. Thanks Patty!

This week’s links:

Angel Rebecca at the Mom Congress in Washington, D.C., and even at the White House!

SocialSklz

Monica Villa, The Online Mom

Katy Widrick’s post about sharing your blogroll

Recchiuti Chocolates

Family Online Safety Institute

WiseStamp

Getting asked to be an ambassador can be flattering, lucrative, and full of insider experiences that are priceless. Or it can be a big waste of time where the company is basically using you. Go in with your eyes open.

We also talk about how (and when) to ask for money, and what not to do if an ambassadorship goes sour (do as Angel Amy says, not as she does!).

This week’s links

Kids Club Thirteen

Nicole Feliciano’s tweets and blog

Liz Gumbinner’s tweets and blog

Jessica Smith’s post about letting people pick your brain

Kim Moldofsky’s post about working for free

A post on Problogger about why the writer’s mom didn’t make it as a blogger

Via Consumerist, Cloud Girlfriend (which has changed it’s purpose a bit since this podcast was recorded - oh well)

The best Mother’s Day gift ever in the history of the world

Blog World

We’d love for you to weigh in on ambassadorships! Join the discussion on Facebook.

This week the Blogging Angels discuss all those pleas on twitter, facebook and blogs – “Vote for me, pretty please?” “I hate to bug everyone, but I need your vote!” and how they’ve handled them (or in Angel Amy’s case, completely mishandled them) in the past.

This week’s links:

Meagan Francis, The Happiest Mom

Angels Nancy and Rebecca’s new website, Kidzvuz.com

Rebecca’s article about the underwhelming amount of help she got from people she had helped in the past

No, seriously Vera Sweeney, Nancy IS following you!

@FrenchFoodieMom’s tweet about popularity contests

How to kill your blog with social media

We referenced Scott Stratten again. This is becoming a habit

My Workspace feature on Mom Blog Magazine

Babble.com - they don’t beg for votes

We love ElissaPR!

How to be a social media jerk

Ed Voices’ open letter to parents

Angry Birds

This week the Blogging Angels tackle this confusing area, using the recent Disney Social Media Moms Celebration as a jumping off point.

This week’s links:

Chris Brogan

Rene Syler

Georgia Stitt and Susan Egan

Mom Central’s list of blogging conferences

Chrysler’s twitter debacle

Let’s Panic About Babies, by Eden Kennedy and Alice Bradley

Catch A Fire

Anna Quindlen & Lisa Belkin’s post on The Motherlode, The Best Part of Parenting

Camels and Chocolate