You’ve got two chances to hear me talk, if you so desire. The first is archived and aimed at writers, and the second is personal finance advice done in real time on Google this Friday. (Edited to add: This, too, has been archived; see below.)

Those of you who missed the 2012 Financial Blogger Conference can catch some of it as archived presentations on the FinCon video page. My own speech, “Got voice? How to make your posts more compelling,” just went up.

I came up with the idea at the initial Financial Blogger Conference in 2011, after my “Write like a pro” presentation. Several people asked some version of the question, “How can I learn to write like you?” My response was, “You shouldn’t try – you should learn to write like you.”

I don’t think the problem is that bloggers aren’t creative. I think it’s that they don’t trust their own voices.

Telephone © by plenty.r.

Planning to shop online between Black Friday – which is increasingly more of a Post-Turkey Thursday – and Cyber Monday? A company called STELLAService has determined that the merchants with the shortest phone-support hold times are Nordstrom.com (18 seconds), Overstock.com (44 seconds), LLBean.com (46 seconds), Zappos.com (1 minute, 9 seconds) and Target.com (1 minute, 18 seconds).

That information is based on the 2011 shopping season. I bet it’ll be just as good this year, since retailers are scrambling to stand out among the din of the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

And if you’re buying from a place that leaves you languishing on hold for lonnnnng minutes? Here are six things to do while you wait:

Interested in not just starting but also “monetizing” (ugh — hideous neologism!) your own site? You need this week’s giveaway.

It’s a copy of “How I Make Money Blogging: The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Money-Making Blog,”  an e-book by Crystal Stemberger. The author, who owns or co-owns eight sites, offers how-to advice on everything from choosing the right title to how much you should charge for ads.

Male end, back © by L. Marie

I don’t know what I was thinking when I booked a 6:15 a.m. flight to the Financial Blogger Conference, which starts this afternoon in Denver. Why, oh why, didn’t I travel yesterday?

That will teach me to make flight plans while I’m in New Jersey. Apparently the combined impact of heat, humidity and Tastykakes prevented me from thinking clearly.