Wednesday, October 31, 2018

weblogs as a network

All these years, I've been using these weblogs. One reason I keep using them is that they are useful to me, in organizing my thoughts, in getting ready for a writing project, etc. Late at night, I'm tired, I want to write but am drained of creativity, I'll write on my personal weblog. I do something professional, and want to keep track of it, I put it here; this is where I keep track of various language-related interests. Recently I've gotten more alarmed about the downfall of the country, and I've put that here too.

They had another purpose, though, and that was to sell my books, or put my name out there. This has not worked. Or at least, it hasn't sold any books to speak of. It could be that you have to have thousands and thousands of views before people actually click on "buy," but in any case, they haven't made it to the last step; maybe I'm a crappy writer. Or it could be that weblogs tend to be a backwater of the web, and, if you don't keep "refreshing" them, they get even more so. Why should Google put them up on the search pages?

In the publishing business, I have another weakness; I publish only on Amazon, and have not really sought out other venues or ways to sell things. Amazon has millions of titles, and mine, selling as little as they do, are way down in the vast uncharted bottom of the sea. I thought I could use these weblogs to advertise a little, but here I have two new releases on Audible; I have a facebook page, an Amazon page and a Twitter, and still, I'm in some backwater. Either I'm a sucky writer, and everyone's figured that out, or, you have to pay some real money to get real people to see you. I don't know, really. My son has a YouTube channel; he makes plenty of money; I'm jealous, and still, I sit over here wondering if I'll ever get "discovered." It could be that I have only my own stubbornness to blame. Or it could be, I should just be more of an instagram poet.

But meanwhile, the weblogs have a steady trickle of traffic. My personal one leads (1094 visits/mo.), followed by this one (943), and the link-haiku e pluribus haiku (489). Music (363) and poetry (341) follow. Five more are over a hundred: boxcars (268), quakers (269), lubbock (247), ESL closet (216) and folk tales (169). I don't know if being over a hundred qualifies for anything. My sense is that maybe I have to push a little to get them to go anywhere.

They get stale; I go months, or even years, and don't touch them. When I get back up there I see an e pluribus haiku ad, outdated, maybe six or seven years old even. I don't have a regular system for updating them, and as a result, they get kind of ignored in the shuffle. I was looking through them in doing this research, and there was one I'd forgotten I had.

When I'm on my own, I do them mostly for my own gratification. If all they do is represent my current interests, or in the case of my personal weblog, my current rambling thoughts, love for family, nostalgia, etc., then at least it's all here, uploaded, and when the computer crashes, it's still here. I'm kind of organized on the blogspot. It's got everything I've thought and done, everything that's important to me. On that level, it doesn't matter if anyone sees them.

On the other hand, if you need 10,000 views to get one "click" or "like" or "buy," then I'd better get going, and in any case, it wouldn't hurt to have a little upgrade.

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