The blogger’s lair

I am trying to market my blog.    I am reading about hits, feedback, links, stats and income streams.  My vocabulary now includes the phrase RSS feed. 

Up to now I was naively under the impression that all I had to do was write well with good content and readers would come.  Flock to me.  Well if not flock then just wind their merry way.  This idea I am told, by those in the know, is 99% untrue.  Having never worked in publishing I am a positive, cheerful soul who believes that good things happen. 

Now me and marketing don’t mix.  I am useless at selling anything and being British am big into self-deprecation – think Hugh Grant in Notting Hill -hence I live in Switzerland and not the United States.  Americans don’t really understand this about Brits or false modesty but that’s a whole other blog.  Initially my intention with julesritter.com was for it to be my virtual business card; to put all my pieces of writing together in one place to facilitate pitching to editors.  But then I got ambitious and all the trouble started.

Did you know that most blogs aren’t read?  They are scanned.  Thus blogs should be written in short sentences –  with lots of dashes – and in Janet and John speak I presume.  Oh what do I know?  It’s all very confusing and all the sites I consult seem to be run by really cool 10 year olds.

Another thing I have learnt is that as a blogger you are not supposed to write too much personal detail!!!!!  Well that’s it my career is over.

The God of blogging is Darren Rowse who runs www.problogger.net.  He’s a cheerful Aussie who earns, according to his site, “a six figure not a seven figure” salary from blogging.  Subtly telling us (we got it) that he earns 999,000 US smackeroonies.  Hence I was surprised that Darren felt we would be interested, via video link on his site, to take a tour of his new office.  Is it me or is this not interesting and not fascinating?  Do we need to know that he has a wireless mouse and screen and that he is fretting over the messy cables under his desk?

I am not quite technically au fait with video linkage but for the sake of progress here is a picture of me in my office (I cheated and had a tidy-up).  So now I just have to sit back and wait for all the hits.