Recently I recieved, in my Google reader stream, a Wired.com article telling bloggers how to increase traffic. I see several flaws with this article. I will now run through their three "tips" and give my objections, as I am a miserable bastard who hates it when others succeed, and must tear things down. Good lord. I'm a critic.
Tip 1: Do Good PR.
This tip requires networking with other bloggers, commenting on famous blogs, and linking to them. Makes some form of sense. The only problem? Who the fuck is a famous blogger that writes anything I even remotely care about? I enjoy some writers blogs, and those of my friends, but the only famed bloggers are those that specialize in some blend of gossip, news, and pictures of celebrities accidentally showing their crotches to people whilst getting in and out of cars.
Tip 2: Create a Hook.
Here they indicate that you should write a catchy title. Dear lord. Their advice is actually "Scan the tabloids at the supermarket and try to write a headline like this." So I should write a blog mocking say, the rap music industry, and title it "50 Cent Shot by Nude KKK Member!"? In all seriousness, the idea of giving things titles that aren't fitting to the content is sickening.
Tip 3: Piggyback.
I will cut and paste their advice then ream it.
"You may not be able to break a juicy story ("britney shaves head—again!") but you can pontificate on it ("inside britney's shaved head"). Your post will show up in searches for the story, and you'll hoover up the hits."
In other words, you might not be able to be the first, but you can be the most annoying. Again, the example given seems to indicate that the only worthy blogs are those covering celebrity claptrap. Who gives a shit? That's rhetorical, a lot of people obvious do, but the real question is as follows: Should one compromise the genre and content of his or her writing in order to achieve success? Moreover, should one attempt to dip his/her toe into a veritable OCEAN of people clamoring to make money off whatever young starlet accidentally showed pubes at a premiere? It does make sense, to a degree, to go where the money is. BUT and this is a HUGE BUT!
It makes no sense to compromise what you want to do without a guarantee of success. In fact, due to the sheer plethora of celebrity gossip available on the internet, it makes more sense to look ELSEWHERE for money.
These people are why I drink.
At any rate, I will continue to soldier on, attempting to figure out what people would like to read about that is not celebrity gossip and the associate detritus. Honestly, there are other things to think about in this world. Many many many other things. In fact, thinking about the fact that this seems to be all we think about, as I have done for the past few moments, might be a worthwhile endeavor. Maybe one day we can get people being creative or doing, oh I don't know, their FUCKING JOBS instead of reading this stuff.
RJC
Edited to include the Wired article: http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Linkbait_Your_Blog
Enjoy. Or not. If you're reading this, you likely won't.
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4 comments:
I'm right with you, up to the point where you suggested I should be doing my job instead of reading this shit. Learning whoever' hoo-hah was doing the nasty with whoever's bajingo is the only thing that gets me through the day.
On a more serious note, though, the whole blogging phenomenon is no less rife with stupidity than the rest of the Internet. When I was making a pennies from my writing, it was always fun to see what sorts of things brought in massive numbers of random surfers. I think the most snazzy hit-get'er was a blurb about the "Nakedbook" app that someone invited me to on Facebook. Apparently there were a lot of teenage boys hitting me from Google searches for "naked." And I got paid for it.
Wired might as well have said to add BOOBS as a tag to every post. Linkfarms exist for a reason.
Basically, if a person wants to make money writing, they should go write trashy romance novels or novelizations of movies based on books or something. Banking on attaining the dubious quality of "internet famous" is kind of like dumping your kid's college fund into scratch-off lottery tickets while beating off to reruns of Garfield and Friends. Seriously.
In closing, I hope that people stop giving stupid ideas to stupider people and just leave the furthering of the upskirt news industry to Twitter - it seems like it's mostly fazed out celebrity shitshow blogs anyways.
In secondary closing, I'm even more annoyed now that I didn't cancel my Wired subscription before it auto-renewed.
All I will say is that I am in no way banking on getting internet famous. I am instead seeking to reform the internet. This may require some purging and some "stupid cleansing" which is effective death camps for people who go "REALLY?" when you jokingly tell them that Orlando Bloom was spotted "kanoodling" with a dude.
If I'm going make money off writing, I want it to be printed and have some degree of fucking backbone. But in the Blog world, I want more fucking thought. It's a great medium, its just a damn shame everyone can do it.
I wasn't referring to you so much as the folks that unfortunately took Wired's advice to heart. Which would be, I'd suspect, the majority of folks that aren't just "some guy who basically just writes about things that happen."
As "some guy who basically just writes about things that happen," I can say that my personal favorite blogs are those of folks who write for other media in the first place. Then I follow their suggestions of other people worth reading. It seems to work.
At least most things are better-ish than YouTube's comments field. Sort of.
Youtube's comment fields are "LOL FULLA FAGS N SHIT LOL."
The amount of retardation on and perhaps directly caused by the internet is astounding, but we can hopefully overcome them. I agree on the idea of following existing writers, and seeing what they think day to day rather than what they put out in the one painfully edited down volume they might squeeze out a year, or in the case of Stephen King, every two weeks.
I'm going to start tagging my posts with a mixture of "Obama", "Nude", "Homosexual" and "Terrorism", which are a blend of the top Googled words from the past few years.
It seems like a sound plan. Also, I may post this entire comment field as a blog entry due to it being interesting and entertaining.
Also I will change your comments, removing all correct grammar and punctuation. And the word bajingo. On this blog, we use the following: "stink mitten", "fish wrinkle", and "gunny sack."
And rather than any cutesy term for scrotum, I prefer "furry nutbag." What's that? You shave it? Then "furless nutbag."
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