Category: Blogs

I’ve been off work almost two weeks.  Feels good.  Especially after such a stressful December.  That’s why posts aren’t following the normal schedule.  Normal blogging schedule resumes Monday.  This weekend, I might look around for a match to shoot.

Other bloggers review their best stories for the year.  I choose to satisfy my inner traffic whore and look at my traffic stats for the year.  The numbers look a hell of a lot better than my 401k which kind of looks like this, only with a negative slope:

Thank you to all my readers, and I hope you have a great New Years celebration.

There’s been a bit of activity around the gun blogosphere about linky love not being shared as freely as some would like.  This is the eternal problem of the blogger, namely, how to get linked and build an audience.  There are some things I’ve found which work.

You have to think of your blog as an enterprise, so in order to get linked, you have to market yourself.  Now, there are smart ways to market yourself, and annoying ways to market yourself.  A smart way to market yourself is to pimp your best material around to other bloggers.  Note that I’m saying your best material.  Not all your material is great, because I know at least half (probably more) of the stuff I post is crap.  There’s a fine line between occasionally e-mailing a post you think is good, and putting a blogger on your mailing list to receive every single post or mailing you send out.  The former is acceptable, and even welcome.  The latter is annoying.

A second way is to link to bloggers as a way of getting their attention.  Now, when I say link, I don’t just mean point out something the other blogger said.  If you’re linking up the food chain, this is especially important: the blogger up the food chain will know what he said.  He will also likely know what other bloggers at his level in the food chain have said.  The trick in marketing your blog through strategic linking is to offer something that advances the conversation.  The essence of blogging really, is a rolling conversation (or rhetorical food fight, depending on the subject).

Understand that bloggers have editorial priorities.  Even if what you have is very good, it might not fit in with what the blogger wants to blog about that day, or the blogger just might have better things to do at the moment, and by the time he gets around to your post, his editorial priorities are different.  Also understand that bloggers who cover a lot of blogs, like I do, have to resort to a lot of skimming to get to it all.  We miss a lot that way.  Your fine literary work may have actually just gone unoticed by someone who does generally follow your blog.  It happens.  Also understand some bloggers are more generous with links that others.  SayUncle links more than me, and I link more than, say, Jeff Soyer.  If you target a blog who never links around, you’re a lot less likely to get something in return.

If you follow these guidelines, you should get links every now and then, and people will start noticing you.  That assuming, of course, you’re following the first rule of blogging, which is to have something to say.  A lot of bloggers post a lot, but don’t really say much.  Having something to say can be a lot of work, but if you do, and you’re marketing well, things should be happening for you.  If they aren’t, it’s likely a deficiency in one of those two key things.

A lot of people have said a lot of things about Kim du Toit over the years, but it takes a special kind of person to tell someone who spent time in prison for opposing Apartheid that he:

has been so spineless over the years, and sneered his own derision at good principled men, that he deserves a slap in the face for dropping in here and loosing more of the same himself.

Kim is never someone I would accuse of not having the courage of his convictions.

In case you guys haven’t noticed already, I’ve told Bitter she can post here from time to time if she has something to say. I don’t intend this to be a true group blog at this point in time, but I have been known to have guest posters from time to time, much like SayUncle does.

From SayUncle, on the whole three percenter kerfuffle part III:

I mean, at least the birds aren’t douchebags.

Well, if you’ve ever gotten too close to a baby blue jay, you might think differently, but point taken.

UPDATE: More from Ahab

Wyatt is once more a father, and Clayton Cramer is now a grandfather.  Congrats to both.

This is really bad news.  Thoughts and Prayers from us all.  Let’s hope he’ll be on the mend soon.

To Kim du Toit.  Today is the day he retires from blogging.

Looks like his infection has reoccured.  We hope he has a speedy recovery.