June 14, 2011

To my jaded veteran blogger friends: Get over yourselves.

Peo­ple think that blog­ging has chan­ged a lot in the last few years, far from the heady early blog­ging days of 2000 – 2005 etc etc.

Hmmm. Maybe. Cer­tainly having things like Twit­ter and Face­book make it easier for peo­ple to nat­ter to each other without having to write con­ti­nual blog posts first… the lat­ter is cer­tainly time con­su­ming, and peo­ple are already way too busy.

Actually, the busi­ness model for gaping­void hasn’t chan­ged very much over time. I can only handle so many pro­jects at one time– a dozen at the most. So as a way of gene­ra­ting busi­ness, I only need enough rea­ders to attract one new pos­si­ble colla­bo­ra­tor every so often.

Which works out to be how much? Maybe one out of ten thou­sand rea­ders. Or something.

Wha­te­ver the final num­bers might be, com­pa­red to the ad-driven blogs like Gaw­ker or Techc­runch, they’re rela­ti­vely small ones. And Thank God for that, “Audience” is a bitch.

And then there is the fun of dra­wing and pos­ting car­toons on the blog. In busi­ness terms, that really can’t be mea­su­red. All that can do is create good karma. But I enjoy it immen­sely so what the hell… same is true for the daily news­let­ter car­toons.

I keep hea­ring the same com­plaint a lot these days. That blog­ging isn’t as much fun or as inte­res­ting as it used to be. It used to be sub­ver­sive. It used to be cut­ting edge. Now it’s mains­tream and boring. That kinda thing.

To my jaded vete­ran blog­ger friends: Get over your­sel­ves. Blog­ging hasn’t chan­ged, you have. What’s hap­pe­ning on the Inter­net isn’t impor­tant; What’s impor­tant is that the world knows how you intend to change it. Right here. Right now.

Same as it ever was…

"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter. A new cartoon sent out every weekday morning to your inbox [RSS version here.]. A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.

11 Responses to “To my jaded veteran blogger friends: Get over yourselves.”

  1. Wells Baum says:

    I love blog­ging. No one reads my blog so I write freely.

    Love your work.

    BTW -
    “So as a way fo gene­ra­ting busi­ness, I only need enough rea­ders to attract one new pos­si­ble colla­bo­ra­tor every so often.”

    Put a “r” after “fo.”

  2. Veronika says:

    I’m rela­ti­vely new to blog­ging. I’ve been lear­ning to draw for just over a year now and as a way of kee­ping track of my pro­gress I’ve been pos­ting my work on my blog and having a lot of fun in the pro­cess. I have come across some blog­gers who are ‘com­plai­ning’ about the way that things have chan­ged and have won­de­red why they keep on blog­ging if it’s no lon­ger fun for them. But as your awe­some book ‘Ignore every­body’ sug­gests that’s exactly what I do — ignore the whi­ning and carry on blog­ging for pure enjoy­ment :)

  3. John Dodds says:

    Shhh, don’t tell everyone.

    I was just begin­ning to think that the tide had tur­ned and the social media flo­tsam had drif­ted away on the tide of insin­ce­rity and blog­ging was get­ting very inte­res­ting again.

    Per­sis­tence is not a tac­tic, it’s an inner drive that sepa­ra­tes he wheat from the chaff.

    • Kathy Sierra says:

      “I was just begin­ning to think that the tide had tur­ned and the social media flo­tsam had drif­ted away on the tide of insin­ce­rity and blog­ging was get­ting very inte­res­ting again.”

      I was juuuuuust thin­king the same thing…

      Yeah. Things *have* changed.

      For the bet­ter.
      Shhhh…

  4. Eva says:

    Love this blog , love the ins­pi­ring saying :

    “What’s impor­tant is that the world knows how you intend to change it.”

    Thanks !

    Have a great day !

  5. Beau­ti­ful :-)
    Won­de­ring if I put as much time into my blog as I do twee­ting which bene­fit my busi­ness most…

  6. Pattern-chaser says:

    “No one reads my blog so I write freely.” — love it! :-)

  7. Will some­body please get Hugh back to Alpine, Texas. The sea air at Miami has relea­sed the cut­ting edge blog­ger in him again. Yip­pee.
    And to read KS on gaping­void is such a treat. More from the two of you is requi­red. Please.

  8. […] some food for thought I nic­ked from Hugh Mac­Leod who makes me think a lot, (I pic­ked it up via my friend David Cush­man - who intro’d me to […]

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