Capturing Chaos

Today is a week since I joined Entrecard—a period of figuring out how it works, how to best use it, and of just general tooling around from one blog to another, and discovering some worthwhile ones along the way. I tend to be the person who pushes a button just to see what will happen, so much of my learning has been hands-on rather than reading the FAQs and help files. I save the reading for when I’m really stuck, trying to understand something.

My page views have increased dramatically, but I have no idea yet how many will translate into new readers. The cost of advertising here (EC credits) has gone up surprisingly fast. I don’t know whether that’s normal, but it’s encouraging.

The main thing that I’ve found, to my relief, is that you really don’t have to spend hours every day or drop a huge number of cards. My biggest day so far has been 17 drops, and most days I drop more like 10 or 12. I’m sure my page views would go up faster if I did more dropping, but I’m happy with slow, steady growth that comes from interested readers and not just from droppers who have no interest in my content.

It’s possible to be selective about reciprocating drops, and what blogs you accept as advertisers. In fact, it’s to your advantage to be selective about advertisers since your acceptance rate is one of the statistics available to prospective advertisers, who may also be picky about who they share space with.

I can honestly say that I’m happy with Entrecard, which has never been the case with any social network that I’ve joined in the past. Entrecard’s goals are clearly defined, and you’re free to use it in the way that suits you best.

I’ve never been a celebrations type of person, and as I get older I prefer to spend most of my time to myself, and observe the various kinds of human madness from the sidelines. So, I spent xmas eve, and the day, doing exactly what I normally do—surfing the web (pretty boring on holidays, I can tell you), reading, writing, and watching movies.

Up to a point, observation is a great source for ideas, but writing about my observations doesn’t always work out. Too much of what I see is depressing, and the appropriate comments on human nature just sound like complaining. I try not to complain about what can’t be changed, especially when it comes to how other people live their lives. They do what they’ve been conditioned to do, what their temperaments bias them toward, and what society offers them. They’re insiders and I’m an outsider, and our views of the world are very different.

Which leads to the Lemonade Award, which was kindly given to me by Ambrosiavenus at Chronicles of Caelan , and which I have declined. I understand the purpose of the award, which is to highlight bloggers whose writing is worth your attention. That’s an admirable motive, but it’s something I already do by adding people to my blogroll, and by quoting them now and then, and pointing to their blogs. Continue Reading »

Wrideo is a fairly new social bookmarking site for writers, one that I believe has great potential for becoming a central source for information on every aspect of the writing business. “Wrideo.com was created to aggregate useful and interesting articles about writing.” The categories under which you can post blog or article links are: writing, freelance, ghostwriting, home business, publishing, marketing, monetization.

The site is nicely designed, and very easy to use. You post links with tags and short descriptions. The space you’re given for the description is adequate for a well-written “hook.” Articles can be voted up or down, and readers can leave comments.

Once you’ve posted at least one link on Wrideo, you can set up a simple profile that includes your website, any information about yourself that you want to include, and the list of articles that you’ve bookmarked on the site.

For the first time, we have a chance to promote writers that we admire, without the competition that exists on general bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit. You can promote your own work on Wrideo, of course, using the same courtesy that you would use on any other bookmarking site. Participation and sharing are the key to getting noticed and read.

I recently submitted a blog post to my very first writing carnival. So the link to “Leaving Your Comfort Zone” is up on Incurable Disease of Writing, along with a links to a bunch of other writers’ posts well worth reading. Some very nice stuff is published there every week.

Just Write Carnival

I had doubts about using Twitter for networking and getting readers for my blogs, but I succumbed to some enthusiastic users, and signed on. Today, I’m signing off. Using social networks of any kind has been painful for me, and a waste of time. I gathered that Twitter might be different, but in its essence, it’s no different.

Two principles lie behind social networks. They allow you to link up with old friends and find new friends. And there’s the catch. If you don’t have any friends, and I don’t necessarily consider internet or real-life acquaintances my friends, then your only option is to find new ones. And that means very much the same thing it means in real life: hanging around the fringes where people gather, and asking to be friends with them. Continue Reading »