July 27, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:The Weissblog has a fine
The Weissblog has a fine rant about the Salon blogging initiative. Personally, I haven't much of an opinion on the matter, but I do enjoy a good rant now and again.
What I was really struck by, however, was one of the new salon bloggers in the comments section who thinks that the publicity is worth the price. Honey, you're barking up the wrong tree. I say this as someone who has really quite a lot of readers. More than I ever in my wildest dreams imagined. And I love each and every one of you. I have absolutely no idea why you all come to read me every day as opposed to any of the other outstanding blogs out there, but I'm deeply grateful that someone wants to listen to me. I had a difficult childhood, you know. But I digress.
The point is, that my entire publicity effort for this blog consisted of one (1) letter to Glenn Reynolds and one (1) letter to Rand Simberg. It's not that I mind other people publicizing their blog to me -- we've all got to get started somehow. But other than Pej and Jim Treacher, I can't think of blogs where this approach has actually been successful, and with Jim it only works because he's got funny cartoons to back it up, and with Pej it only works because he's an outrageous flirt, and also, he threatens to kidnap your family members and kill them if you don't link to him. I'm very fond of my family members.
Ads? Worthless. Indiscriminate emailing? Pretty much worthless. The only thing that will drive traffic to your page is getting people to link to you. And the only publicity I've seen that really works is making insightful comments on other people's blogs and leaving your URL -- or doing the same over email. "I'm Here" is not a workable ploy -- so are 100,000 other people, sweetie.
No, the only thing that will drive traffic to your page is -- well, clearly not brilliant content, because in that case what are you people doing here? No, clearly what sells is bullmastiff pictures. Well, I'm going to meet that demand with more, and better bullmastiff pictures. From now on, Sunday will be Bullmastiff Snap of the Week, starring my own beloved baby, Finnegan.
See, friend? That's how you drive traffic.
Posted by Jane Galt at July 27, 2002 7:54 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links