Dad Blogger

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Shh…come closer because I don’t want to yell. More importantly I am not very good at whispering, one of the challenges of having a deeper voice is that whispers are sometimes non-existent.

I am working at Odd Dad Out.

Basically, this site is designed to make dad bloggers as rich as the moms (wink, wink). Did you know that a recent Harvard* study found that mommy bloggers are paid three times the amount of gift certificates and free samples than are their male counterparts? This indicates a disparagingly wide gap in gender blog equality, a gap that needs to be closed.

Yep, got me a gig there as one of the featured writers so now I have to work hard on being clean and respectable. Ok, that is not going to happen but I can promise that you don’t want to miss out on the stuff that is going on there.

So take a moment to head on over and read my post Be a Better Blogger- Write More Frequently.

Fear not, I am not closing up shop here there is plenty more Shacky goodness to come.

My six year-old has been running around asking everyone she knows if they know the meaning behind “Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears.”  Since she is a clearly a child prodigy I asked her to tell me why 2010 is NOT the year of the daddy blogger. And then my beautiful, witty and extremely bright girl said, “what is a blogger.”

Apparently, I a self proclaimed daddy blogger have failed to educate her in the ways of social media. She doesn’t know what a blog is, doesn’t have a Twitter account or a Facebook page. The girl hasn’t the foggiest idea what it means to be LinkedIn, StumbledUpon, or Reddit.

But say Inigo Montoya and she’ll join you in saying “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to Die!” And I have got to tell you that I appreciate knowing that she is serious so be smart and don’t kill me or you will face her terrible wrath and I’ll probably haunt you.

So my friend the blogger with the Superman fetish wrote a post in which he regaled us with his recollection of what happened at the Type A Mom Conference and why 2010 is not the year of the daddy blogger. Over at DadLabs more fuel was tossed on the mighty fire a post called Do DadBloggers Suck?

And just when I began to gag on it all Backpacking Dad produced the piece Why don’t dads read dad blogs? And so I find myself shaking my head at my colleagues wondering what the hell they are thinking. In between large puffs of my cigar and copious amounts a brandy that you can’t afford I decided that I must respond.

Gentlemen in the old country we would have called this conversation, narishkeit or nonsense. But that is ok because part of the joy of being a blogger is getting to engage in all sorts of nonsense and oodles of mischief. You see we are taking ourselves far too seriously and we are missing the point. So if the three people who are still reading this will bear with me I’ll transition into a more serious post.

What is the goal of blogging? If the goal is to become professional bloggers who earn an income from blogging the question is how to do so. The answer is relatively simple. Provide brands with access to their target demographic ideally during a time and place when they are making purchasing decisions. That is all you have to do, show those prospective sponsors that you can help them reach prospective customers.

In a professional setting anyone selling sponsorships has a media kit that they provide to prospective advertisers. The standard kit usually contains an editorial calendar and demographic information regarding the readers.Sometimes that comes from an audit conducted by an impartial third party and other times it is based upon user surveys or registrations conducted by the publication.

If you want to make your dad blog into a professional venture you can do so. You can build your blog into something that has a media kit that you can present to potential sponsors. But before you get there you need to remember that no business is built overnight. You need to remember that building a blog requires time and energy.

Last year I wrote a post about Why Some Blogs Fail in which I cited a survey which said that 95% of all blogs are abandoned. You can look at that statistic from a negative perspective or you can see it as opportunity.

I see it as opportunity. This past Sunday I tweeted about the influx of “dad blogs” this year and made a prediction regarding how many would still be around in 2010.

I stand by my tweet. If I have learned one thing in 6.5 years of blogging it is that most bloggers don’t last. That Technorati survey just proves my point, but that doesn’t really matter. The real point here is that I think that it is premature and silly to say that dad bloggers can’t share the success of the mom bloggers.

It is not a competition and even if it was smart brands/bloggers recognize that the genders are different and how you market to them is sometimes going to be different. But that is neither here nor there. In fact, at 1:30 AM I wonder what I am rambling on about.

Oh yes, dad blogs, brands and bucks. I don’t care if the CNN guy was supportive, a jerk or something else. He doesn’t define me. Frankly I don’t care if television and movies portray dads as bumbling fools because they don’t define me either. I do that.

And if I want to make this corner of cyberspace into something that generates more than coffee money I will do that because the tools and resources exist. I’ll take those tools and use them to differentiate and distinguish myself as a valuable content provider who can put you Mr. Advertiser in front of your target audience in a unique and cost effective way.

Related links

The Daddy Blogger Community
The Rules of Blogging- How To Make Money Part 1
I Don’t Want To Be A Mommy Blogger
Dear Angry Mommy Blogger