Bait and Trap (Or Was It Snatch?)

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

Spy Stories and Advertising Women

I’ve been reading up on putting ads on one’s website. And you think, “Ah, do you really have to go and ruin a good thing with something as vulgar as ads?” That is, provided you consider this a good thing. And to that I say, “Well…er…sorry…” I don’t know. I’ll probably try it, because I’m curious. I doubt I’ll be able to make much money, considering my record high of fifteen site views in one day. I’m working on that, yes. But I get the impression the view count needs to be in the hundreds for significant revenue to occur. And after all, every site has ads, right? We’re used to them. There’s even a term: banner blindness. Yep. Let me just mention at this point that those Evony ads are ridiculous.

I’m more interested in the ads that pay just to be seen. While ostensibly the pay-per-click ads bring in more money, who really clicks on ads? I suppose someone has to, or else it wouldn’t be marketable and people wouldn’t be publishing articles on the most profitable locations to place ads, but seriously, can you remember the last time you clicked on a banner? I can’t. Somewhere within the first four minutes of using the Internet in one’s life, one realizes that banners always lead to disappointment, irrelevance, and wasted time.

You know those sites that are unbelievably long, contain massive amounts of text – mostly quotations from supposedly living and breathing consumers giving rave reviews to whatever the product might be, and show pictures of ‘hot’ people using the product (hot being a word used in this instance to mean ‘people we would all wish to imitate/be/become’)? I can’t believe those sites still exist. Doesn’t the format itself veritably scream “Scam, scam, scam!”?

But thus is the digital world we live in. I fear it won’t be long before every relatively flat surface that ever possesses even a slight chance of being looked at contains an advertisement for something. Anything. Complimentary nose hair trim.

That last bracketed definition was a reference to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, I hope you got it. I’ve read maybe seven of the books in that series, and even now I wish to bring closure to that story. It intrigues me. However, more than the story of the siblings, it is the story of the author himself that grips my attention. Now from his insinuations both before and after he tells each successive tale, these two stories could very well be intertwined as one. He claims to be looking for them. He also has a long-lost love, Beatrice. And he’s on the run. Now let me tell you folks, that is all you need for a thrilling story/life. Quest. Pursuit. Long-lost love.

I would’ve simply said love, but nearly every story has love and it’s so terribly done. There are a lot of examples and directions I could go from that statement, but I’ll keep the focus on spy stories – that’s what I care about. Soppy chick flicks may be sickening but they’re not in my diet, and therefore not in my toilet. Mission Impossible III’s ‘romance’ is. Still.

I’ll be honest, I was rooting for that woman’s death from the very first scene – her being tortured. I knew already at that point that if she lived, she would be nothing but a nuisance and annoyance to both us and the main character, Tom Cruise. And that’s exactly what happened. Of course her dying in the first scene would not have prevented her from ruining the movie, because after that scene the writers pulled a U-ey and flash-backed to what led up to that point. Alas.

And you think I hate women now, don’t you. There, there. Try to leave your knee-jerk reactions at the door and bear with me. All will be revealed in due time.

The truth is, I hate a lot of women in movies. I don’t hate the actresses, although sometimes they bug me. I hate the characters.

And I feel I am justified in that sentiment because I believe women in reality, or ‘real women’, rather, don’t act like that.

And that’s where I’ll leave you for tonight. Call this a sneak peak at what’s on my mind and what I’ll be developing in the near (that term being incredibly relative) future. Lemony Snicket. Thrilling spy stories. Women on the screen vs. on the street.

But now I’m off to watch Zoolander, seeing as it was recommended by a highly thought-of friend. Better not let me down. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too promotional here, but after finding Icefilms.info, I’ve never looked back.

-Brad