kicking puppies is bad

I recently converted my blog from a successful online dating tool focused on why people should love me (or at least try to bang me) to a purposeless rant (because I’m no longer looking for someone to love/bang).  I had a pretty good readership when my readers thought there was a possibility that they would get into my pants.  Many of the posts had 50+ comments.  Then I moved things over to wordpress, and stopped allowing people to think they could get in my pants.  My readership has declined drastically.   According to wordpress stats, the only people reading this were directed from searches on “testicular cancer” and “epilepsy”.  I apologize to those folks for wasting their time.  I have no info on “testicular cancer” or ”epilepsy”.   I blame the crummy search function on wordpress for wasting your time.  I really didn’t mean to.   So, no one reads my blog.  And that is mostly ok.  I mostly write it for me. 

One of the few people who still reads this blog regularly decided it would be a good idea to encourage me to increase my readership.  And, in trying to be helpful, he sent me a link to what might be the most retarded blog post I have ever seen.  The initial post (“How I’d Promote My Blog if I were Starting Out Again”, by Darren Rowse) had one main recommendation: to “create anticipation”, although it promised  five other great ways to increase your readership if you came back and read future posts.  Yes, Darren wrote a 720 word entry that ended with, “I’m going to cover five areas that I’d focus upon as a new blogger attempting to give my blog a start. I hope you find them useful.“  That’s right.  After duping us into reading an exceptionally long post about  NOTHING, he basically said “read my blog more and I might have something useful to say.”   He calls that “creating anticipation”.  I call it “wasting my time”.  This was supposed to make me want to sign up for his RSS feed so I wouldn’t miss the “real” content?  WTF?  All it made me want to do was kick him in the nuts.   At least I don’t pretend you are going to learn anything when I blog about NOTHING.  I state right up front (see the first sentence) that my blog is a “purposeless rant”.  

And Darren had 96 comments!!!  And they weren’t “You’re Retarded – I just wasted 2 minutes reading a post that said nothing!” (although I was tempted to add that, so he would have 97).  They were positive comments.  They said things like, “Way to leave us hanging Darren. :) Looking forward to the followup posts.”   

I thought maybe this post was an anomaly for Darren.  Perhaps his other posts contained content, and this was just a really bad example on an off day.  So,  I clicked to read the five content areas he mentioned he would discuss.  They were unhelpful.  He suggested things like advertising with adwords.  I can’t imagine who that would get to read my blog.  Would I want the kind of readers that clicked on adwords and found me?  What had they been searching for, “argon inflated nut sacs”?  What kind of freaky person would search for “Argon Inflated Nut Sacs” and then click on the ads that are associated with it?

A while ago I read an analysis of who actually clicked on online ads.  I don’t remember the statistics, but it said something like, “There are are 14 Mormon housewives in the midwest that just sit there clicking on ads all day. Apparently, they have nothing better to do while they pop out kids and wait for Jesus to rescue them.”   The analysis also said something like “Intelligent non-creepy internet users click on less than one ad each month.  Usually they only click ads when they are actively seeking to buy something and the ad is appropriate.”  I’m not trying to attract scary middle-aged Mormon midwestern housewives.   And I REALLY don’t care enough about this blog to actually PAY people to read it.  I may be egocentric enough to blog, but I’m not that bad. 

Apparently Darren is OK with the creepy Mormon housewives readers.  He got a comment from Jennifer, who liked his retarded post and said, “Thanks for your work!!!  I can’t wait! Are you going to write this post late in the evening tomorrow to keep us watching all day? :)”  Really?   She is going to watch his blog all day?  Anticipating his helpful hints about gaining readership?   I wonder if *she* has a blog that she is trying to increase readership for.  It would explain her excitement.  I bet it is filled with unicorns and rainbows. 

Darren’s final suggestion was to include “great content” (duh?).  It’s too bad he didn’t listen to his own suggestion.  Just in case Darren is right and “creating anticipation” really works, tomorrow there will be a post titled “My sister’s poo smells like lollipops and rainbows.”  You should come back and read it.  I’m sure it will be a fine piece of journalism.