Archives for August 2009

Sometimes I think about writing a parody of You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore. It would be about blogging and how it evolved from something that we did for fun into a business that we hoped would make us rich.

Of course when I do write it I am going to have to send an email to the guy who said You Just Aren’t that Funny. I kind of wonder what happened to him. For a while he was one of the resident trolls who used to haunt this place. Those few of you who know me in real life know that I feed off of that sort of nonsense. Tell me I am not funny and I’ll find a way to make you split a gut laughing.

I can’t help it, I am that talented. It is a burden, but I have broad shoulders and can carry load.

Back in those days only a few bloggers were able to generate enough traffic to pull in real advertising dollars and sponsorships were just a figment of imagination. Back then we didn’t have discussions about ridiculous badges that proclaimed our innocence and trustworthiness.

Certainly more than a few of us harbored dreams of being discovered by a publisher or studio. There was always that silent hope that someone would read a post and decide that the world had to be exposed to their prodigious writing ability and pay them huge dollars to write a book.

I’ll raise my hand and say that I am one of them. Seriously, I could do this for a living. I could write books, plays, movies or greeting cards for pay. Don’t believe me, make me an offer and I’ll prove it to you.

Yep, those were the days when we didn’t skewer bloggers for a lack of transparency. You didn’t read a review of a product and wonder why the blogger hadn’t realized that it was obvious that they copied the entire sales sheet verbatim. Back then I didn’t find entire sections of a blog outlining what the sponsorship policy for the blog is/was. And you certainly didn’t find links to media kits there either.

A friendly word of advice to those of you who have a media kit or are thinking of creating one. If you are going to do it you better do it right. Don’t use terminology that you don’t understand and please don’t rely solely upon a spell check to proof read your copy. Within the last three weeks I have reviewed more than a few media kits and found them to be problematic for all of the reasons I listed above.

It wouldn’t be hard to write an entire rant about that alone. It is similar to telling your mechanic that your carburetor is bad when you car uses a fuel injection system. All it does is create a red flag that let’s everyone know that you haven’t got a clue what you are talking about. Keep it simple and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief.

Of course the beauty of blogging is that we all have opinions that we can share and that was mine.

If you are wondering I don’t have a disclosure policy because I don’t write reviews for compensation. I have one spot on the sidebar in which ads run and I run Adsense in my RSS feed. Over the years I have been approached on numerous occasions with requests to do reviews and run sponsored text links.

Until this past year I had always turned them down because I didn’t want to run that sort of blog. But the blog has evolved and in theory I have evolved. I have since decided that I am open to doing these things. It doesn’t mean that I will, but if the opportunity comes around I am sure that I will consider it.

Ultimately it comes back to the question of why I blog. I blog because I find it to be cathartic to write about my life. I find it enjoyable to write short stories and I love the interaction. As long as those things continue I am sure that you will still find me here.

And that is all I have to say about that……for now. 😉

This post initially began with a smartass remark about blogging being covered as a social disorder in the upcoming edition of the DSM IV. I opted to dispose of that because this is a semi-serious post and it deserves a better joke than something as weak as that.

Anonymous blogging is an issue that generates strong feelings on both sides and one that is beginning to be discussed with increasing frequency. The primary complaint is that anonymity provides an abdication of personal accountability for what is written. It is a reasonable concern. I have stumbled upon more than a few blogs that served as vehicles to attack the character of a person(s) and or businesses.

If you have been on the receiving end of some these hatchet jobs you might have found yourself frustrated with an inability to confront the writer or writers of the posts in question. I know of several cases which led to the use of the legal system to attempt to gain the true name of the blogger.

More than one post has been written in which the author suggested that anonymous bloggers are cowards. I understand where they are coming from and appreciate why they might think that those of us behind the mask don’t really stand behind our principles. Of course had they been a student with me they would know that I usually stood before the principal, but I digress.

As the seventeen long time readers know I have been wrestling for a while with revealing my true identity. In concept pulling back the curtain should provide more advantages than disadvantages. It allows me to retain the benefit of my brand while simultaneously growing it more quickly than I have in the past.

After more than five years of blogging I have an established readership and name. For years many of my friends and family have made repeated requests to get a chance to visit this corner of cyberspace. With very few exceptions I have always rebuffed those efforts. I like the anonymity because it allows me to write more freely. Take off the mask and some of the more self introspective posts will disappear.

I kind of like writing those. Of course there is nothing preventing me from continuing or establishing a new blog to keep writing them on. It is not that I can’t discuss those introspective posts, because I can. But I don’t really want to. Some of them are pretty raw and I don’t feel like having to go through a 27 hour explanation with some of the people who will ask about them.

I have very realistic expectations about how many of my friends/family will read this thing. A bunch will take one look and never come back, but I can guarantee that more than a few will hang around. So I really need to ask myself if I am prepared to open that can of worms.

As for setting up a separate blog, well I have five now and barely have time to keep them going. Setting up something new is going to require giving something up, which might not be such a bad thing.

In addition to the benefits of retaining my brand taking off the mask would make it easier to get more writing jobs, at least I think that it would. In theory if they didn’t get scared away by the wacky world I write about it would provide a ton of samples of my writing ability for them to review.

As it stands now it is a bit more challenging to produce as many samples as they’d like.

I don’t expect to make any quick decisions about this. The good news is that I don’t really have to, but I kind of expect to do it. At least I think that I am probably going to, but I suppose that only time will tell.