Search Results for: Texas Monthly

How a 26-Year-Old From Dallas Turned Fashion Blogging Into Big Business

Affiliate marketing is almost as old as the Internet; it developed back in 1994 thanks to pornography sites, and it was implemented by Jeff Bezos at Amazon shortly afterward. Here’s how it works: Say you search for flights on Priceline. The hyperlinked airfare results aren’t just any old links. They’re affiliate links. The act of clicking one saves a Priceline cookie to your browser before sending you on to the airline’s website. If you buy the ticket, the airline website will see Priceline’s cookie and will pay Priceline a commission. Affiliate marketing companies like Commission Junction and Linkshare, which created these trackable links, were aimed at developers. A company called Skimlinks made them easier to implement, but it didn’t focus on the fashion market. Baxter, who had interned at a tech start-up in San Francisco, saw an opportunity. If they could make it easy for bloggers to integrate affiliate links to retailers into their posts, everyone involved stood to profit. Retailers could make more sales. Bloggers could earn commissions. And a company that facilitated the transaction and negotiated the commission could take part of the proceeds. After all, many prominent bloggers were already including retail links in their #OOTD (“outfit of the day”) posts anyway.

Sitting at Starbucks, Amber could immediately envision the company. She decided it should be called rewardStyle, and while she was designing the logo on a napkin, Baxter used his iPhone to register the domain name. By February 2011, they had a test platform for the site. She reached out to a few blogger friends and asked them to try it out. “You don’t have to pay anything, you don’t have to sign any contracts, you just have to see if you start making money,” Amber said.

Francesca Mari, writing in Texas Monthly about the business of fashion blogging.

 

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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Confessions of a Fat Bastard

Longreads Pick

The life of Texas Monthly’s full-time barbecue editor.

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Aug 28, 2014
Length: 13 minutes (3,402 words)

The Emotional Toll of Witnessing 278 Death Row Executions

With each passing year, the act of witnessing executions weighed on Michelle more and more heavily. Larry retired in 2003, and she felt his absence, wishing for the much-needed levity he had always brought to their work. She got married that same year and in 2005 gave birth to her daughter. “I started thinking about it all in very personal terms after I had a child, and that was my downfall,” Michelle told me. “I had trouble maintaining a sense of neutrality, because I began to empathize with everyone. If I saw the mother of an inmate in the witness room, I would think, ‘I can’t imagine if I were standing here, completely helpless, watching my child die in front of me, knowing I couldn’t do anything to save him.’ And then I would see the mother of the crime victim at the press conference afterward, talking about how her child had suffered in some horrendous way at the hands of whoever had just been executed, and I would think, ‘If I were her, I would’ve wanted him put to death too.’ ” Those around her noticed that she had grown more subdued, and a nurse once pointedly asked her during a routine doctor’s appointment if her job was taking a toll. “One of the hardest things for me to see was how often the victim’s family was let down by the experience, by how quick and easy it was,” Michelle said. “They didn’t walk away feeling like they had in any way been made whole.”

Pamela Colloff, in Texas Monthly, on Michelle Lyons, whose work for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice required her to witness the executions of death row inmates.

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Photo: nakrnsm, Flickr

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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The Murders at the Lake

Longreads Pick

In 1982 three teenagers were found savagely stabbed to death by a lake in Waco, Texas. Four men were found guilty and two were sentenced to death. Were they guilty? Michael Hall spent one year reporting this five-parts series for Texas Monthly:

This story examines the case through the viewpoint of five people: a patrol sergeant who investigated the crime; a police detective who became skeptical of the investigation; an appellate lawyer who tried to stop the execution; a journalist whose reporting has raised new doubts about the case; and a convict who pleaded guilty but now vehemently proclaims his innocence.

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Mar 28, 2014
Length: 99 minutes (24,844 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Longreads Best of 2013: Here Are All 49 of Our No. 1 Story Picks From This Year

Every week, Longreads sends out an email with our Top 5 story picks—so here it is, every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free Top 5 email every Friday.

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