The Basement

Wow, seven weeks. That's how long I've been blogging. Seems like longer really. I kind of started this on a whim as an experiment and, at least for the moment, I'm pretty obsessed. Lot's of folks have said encouraging things, starting with Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users and most recently Jonathan Carson of BuzzMetrics and Spike Jones of Brains on Fire. Thanks to everyone who has supported me. My brilliant and beautiful wife Hetty doesn't read my blog with any regularity but she make tremendous allowances. She says she doesn't read because she'll get the unrecorded podcast version anyway. But if she read me more then we could spend our time talking about more important stuff – like what she thinks about my blog. Oh well. I'm desperately in love with her, what can a guy do?

Lot's of folks don't say anything – I guess this is not all that surprising but it feels a little more weird than I thought it would. This must be a little like doing radio or making movies – sometimes there's no feedback at all to the stuff I find most interesting. Just funny that way. People are different and I guess that's what's so fascinating to me. People.

I have generated some traffic. This is not entirely accidental; I send a fair number of emails to folks prompting them to review my latest rant, leave comments and try to email thank yous to folks that comment here. If I missed you, thanks for commenting – you know who you are. My number are growing. I'm getting an average of 90-100 unique visitors per day to my blog web site, from all over the US and the world. I have a fair readership in the UK and Australia and have been mentioned once or twice on non-English blogs – although I'm not sure it was flattering. Any press is good press I suppose. I'm not currently measuring feeds but I have 16 subscribers on Bloglines – which I highly recommend BTW.

What I've learn so far – blogging is a lot harder than it looks – especially if you're actually trying to create content and not just mindlessly linking to the most popular stuff. We all talk about "the conversation" but it's harder to get into the conversation than bloggers will have you believe. Scoble has said that being mentioned by an A-lister isn't all that important anymore – you know as it was in the early-early pioneering days of the blogosphere – like February or something – nothing like now. He says the action is in the long tail, or the flatlands or somewhere. It's a nice idea Mr. Scoble, but given the choice I think I'd prefer the link to being patronized. Don't get me wrong, he earned his hammer and he may wield it in any way he sees fit. Sometimes I wish folks would be a little less smug. I still read him nearly everyday. Hmmm. I will say that Kathy Sierra, Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel have all been quite gracious and have help substantially in priming the well. And of course, I can't forget Mimi over at 72hrchikdom - without her, none of this would be possible, more or less.

Another thing that has struck me is how much there is to talk about and how long it takes to say it. I'm beginning to understand the 30 posts/day of A-listers with their single link and incomplete sentence. Blogging is a real time investment if you don't already have a ready-made audience. I find myself struggling to say something interesting to get people here. Tomorrow I will struggle to come up with something interesting to get them to come back. There is also this bizzaro sense of obligation. I don't mind it so much because I enjoy writing (also more than I expected) but it strikes me as oddly compelling. For example, if I ever did decide to stop blogging, I'd have to blog about it. Somehow I feel like I'd owe it to that guy in Italy whose blog I couldn't read. You know, so he wouldn't worry. Hmmm. Maybe I'm just loosing it altogether or I'm just sleep deprived or...or...or...

Well, it's late and this really doesn't meet the high interest standard that we set here at The Basement but I felt like rambling. It's my blog after all dammit.

Thanks for reading. If you really want to make my day (and I fully understand that perhaps you don't) leave a comment, any comment. That, maybe, will lead to another seven week.