Similar to what I said in my last post, I’ve been thinking about how to make this site more appealing to draw more visitors. I was thinking of what leads me to a blog. Not much, to be honest. I don’t read many blogs, which is probably a result of my poor opinion of them. In general I find blogs to be painful due to the poor grammar, boring due to the blogger writing about things I and the rest of the world have very little interest in, and distasteful because of the often cheap backgrounds and website structure. And now I see that my blog, as much as I try to avoid calling it that, basically falls under the above description. I most fervently hope I can at least avoid the first faux pas, however. I’ll take a properly written boring blog over a grammatically heinous moderately intriguing piece any day. Is that true? I suppose it depends on how far ‘moderately intriguing’ can stretch. My point is, get the grammar right, folks. I can bear terrible structure and irrelevant content. Just please be a little more careful with the easy stuff. There’s no excuse. You’re doing a bad job of representing yourself to the public, no matter how much you swear that no one cares. I judge you when you use poor grammar, that’s why I joined a Facebook group saying just that. See, I’m an activist for positive change. Ha. As if joining groups changes anything. Remember that.
So now all of you will be jumping on my every typo, right? That’s the idea. I figure if I ask you guys to let me know of any mistakes in my writing you’ll feel like I’m using you and won’t do it, but if I give you the opportunity to prove me a hypocritical bastard, well, that’s just too juicy to pass up, isn’t it? That’s what I should’ve done in high school to get decent peer editing – claim my grammar was perfect, my flow was excellent, and my conclusions impeccable. Ever get the feeling your fellow students didn’t really care about your essay or what grade you got? News flash: they didn’t. Except in terms of how the comparison with their grade made them feel.
That reminds me of Zoolander, which I watched last night, like I said before. There’s a funny bit involving the phrase “Earth to…” which I would say is probably the funniest part of the movie. Yeah, it’s not too funny. I was disappointed. It wasn’t worth my time. So few movies are, don’t you think? One of these days I’ll probably put out some really harsh movie reviews just to let out steam and increase this load of content not getting read.
I think the main thing is that I’m just sick of Ben Stiller. I think I was sick of him the first movie I saw him in. I just don’t find him funny.
But that’s enough on that. I accomplished my grammar goal. My primary objective is to discover what makes a blog appealing, even return-worthy, and how I can utilize that to gain followers and make money. Muahahaha.
Kidding. I would like to make money, and I will shamelessly flaunt ads to do so (barring those Evony travesties), but this isn’t about gaining followers. I would like to someday be able to call it a community of creators and appreciators, so I need to spend time thinking about how to get to that point.
I just read a blog article entitled “The Top 10 Snipers in History” or something along those lines. I saw it in some list on WordPress and clicked on it because I’m very interested in snipers. So what my articles need are captivating titles. They also need relevant and popular tags so that they’ll show up in searches. I would say that so far I’m succeeding in these two things. What’s left is to enlarge my content stash.
And how to keep readers here once they arrive? Well, interesting articles, for one. That’s so subjective. In the future I may write to please readers – when I actually have readers – but for now I’m sticking with what interests and pleases and satisfies me (as far as content and style). I had another thought earlier. The blog has to do something for the reader. If I’m putting out wonderful works of literature and especially poetry, that’s good enough on its own because readers will be inspired by the works and attempt to liberate their own creativity, or simply bask in the beauty. But I’m not. I hope to, but I’m not currently. So I need to help you out somehow to motivate you to return here the next time you’re in need. Good but not great prose needs practicality – the interest keeps you reading, the help brings you back.
Something like a guide to further information. That would be the simplest, probably. That list of snipers would’ve been greatly enhanced by links to websites with more information, which I’m sure exist because the author definitely wasn’t writing off the top of his head. I haven’t really written any information articles yet – but then again all my posts are information to a certain degree. So I should consider offering links for further enlightenment. It’ll at least draw the frantically procrastinating middle schoolers.
DIY (not DUI) blogs seem to be fairly popular. So I might want to consider putting that sort of slant on some of my articles. Surely I have plenty I could teach how to do. Mm…like fruit revolutions, for example. I’ve been meaning to make a video about that and post it on Youtube.
Speaking of videos, I also thought of making a video on how to get a job in Japan, a detailed version of Andy’s which I embedded in another post, put it on Youtube as a reply to said video, and include a link to this blog in that description. That would surely draw a few bored surfers. Andy has a pretty sizeable fan base which I can take advantage of (I mean that in the most parasitic way possible).
Until then, I guess I won’t be seeing you, because you haven’t yet arrived, but you will.
-Brad
Inspiration's Waiting Room 