Humbling experience
Blogging can be a very humbling experience.
Earlier this week, posting what I believed to be a clever post and then getting zero, count em, ZERO, Nada, gornisht, none, EFES, comments is a real downer.
The saving grace though is the little NEXT BLOG button on the top frame of most BLOGSPOT blogs.
Most bloggers are good citizens and do not remove it from their Blogs.
Have you ever hit that button? It brings you to a random blog hosted by some other shlemiel. And I must say that most bloggers get absolutely zero hits as well. So I've got lots of company.
So why do I blog? I think I do it for myself. Still, it's nice to have feedback.
I've been toying with the idea of putting up a hit counter. After all I know you're really out there, but you just find everything I say to be so witty and correct that you've no need to comment, right?
Ha, Fat chance.
14 Comments:
I recommend the hit counter. :-)
And thanks for pointing out that button. I was wondering why I was getting referrals from totally random blogs in different languages.
Wow, that was fast! and from JA, no less. (Funny, I never even realized you have a blog)
Thanks for the feedback.
BTW, what do use for RSS?
ok, ok. I will comment. And yes, I hit the next blog button all the time. I noticed that most of the time it brings me to foreign language blogs though..
Rafi, when I hit the next, I get mostly, but not all English. Maybe it's not a random blog, maybe it's sensitive to the originating location.
Hey, no need to get sensitive about your blog, unless perhaps you had some ambitions of becoming real popular in the blogworld. But that can change; even the popular bloggers started out writing lengthy posts with few responses. It takes time.
Just because some of us don't post comments doesn't mean we weren't reading it or appreciating your thoughts. I admit that I am not inclined to post a response simply to tell the person "Good post!" When I post, it's usually because I feel I have something to add.
I myself am at the stage where I've posted several brilliant pieces of writing and gotten very few responses, but I suppose that's the way it is. I'm a latecomer to the blogworld anyway. I should have started this years ago. It's really up my alley.
I still haven't figured out entirely what I'm supposed to do to attract more people to my blog. I suppose it's partly a word of mouth thing. There are websites that help increase traffic to your blog, like blogexplosion. I also went looking around the blogs of frum and formerly frum folks, and that seems to be the primary people I've attracted to my blog so far. We seem to speak a similar language. This may be a mistake, considering that I only occasionally write about Jewish topics. My main interests are movies, books, and the English language. But I admit that I was first drawn into the blogworld by reading about the Slifkin affair.
KP, yes I know that. Adding a hit counter, which I did last night, shows I get more traffic than I believed. I guess eveyone agrees with everything I'm saying so they don't bother posting ;)
I seem to remember posting something on your blog once.
BTW, whats a Kylopod?
BHB
Like your blog.
I think there are plenty of us around.
We just dont walk around agonizing in public.
My father is the same way.
he always says "thats for the raboonim" (for example - fasting on any fast day other than the big two)
He davens at early minyan, always a hat and jacket. yet when he goes on vacation, he wants to be on vacation from other yidilech as well.
He told me that the 1000 year old people in bereishis were misunderstood. "they represent a lineage, like the Hashemites of jordan"
Like you said, regardless of wether some rav will say thats kefirah, it doesnt change what you believe.
You did post something at my blog. That's what brought me to your site. And that's one of the added benefits to posting at someone else's blog: they may be drawn to yours.
One word of advice, though. If you want to attract a larger audience, you may need to be a little clearer. The frum blogging world seems to have its own language. There's a lot of Yeshivish, some Hebrew, and many abbreviations. I often have to stop and think what people are talking about. For example:
MO = Modern Orthodox
UO = Ultra-Orthodox (somehow, it seems less harsh as an abbreviation, kind of like the way SOB is milder than son-of-a-bitch)
TMS = Torah Moshe m'Sinai
GH = Godol Hador
Of course, even having a glossary ain't gonna do you much good if you're not familiar with the concepts. Even with my (partial) yeshiva education, I think I understand only about 95% of the lingo. Occasionally, I find myself at a loss.
I've tried to avoid Yeshivish when writing my own blog entries, because I'm aware that not everyone in my audience is Jewish, much less frum. In my most Jewish post so far, I made sure to say Orthodox instead of frum, Exodus instead of Shmos, and so on. I even avoided linguistic jargon like cognate.
I must admit that the "clever post" to which you referred had me at a loss. I simply don't know what you were talking about.
For the record, "kylopod" is not a word. I bet you looked it up, though. :) If you type it into Google, I can pretty much guarantee that all the hits points to something I've written. It's a word I invented in 1996, when I first signed up to AOL.
I'm phobic of centipedes. Centipedes belong to the biological class called Chilopoda, and a member of that class could be called a chilopod (sort of like a whale could be called a cetacean). But some AOL member had already selected "chilopod" as his name. So I altered the spelling slightly: voila! Kylopod. That's been my main email address ever since.
KP, Thanks for the info. but I'm really only looking for an OJ crowd. (even my name suggests that). I'm not looking to be a superblogger, it's just nice to know there's some traffic. Yes, of course I looked up Kylopod!
Errm, I read the gematriot - they were all very good. But I couldn't think of anything clever to add..... so no comment.
KP, Thanks for the info. but I'm really only looking for an OJ crowd.
OJ! That's what I'd like, with a small order of fries, thank you. Or maybe you mean OJ in the sense of "The gloves don't fit, you must acquit."
Hi there!
I'm commenting so you know I've been here!
I wish I knew how to put up a stat counter on my blog so I would know how many people visit without leaving comments!
Kasamba, go to WWW.SITEMETER.COM and it gives you step by step instructions. It takes around 10 minutes. There might be better meters, but that's what I picked without any comparison
Or scroll down to the bottom of my blog and click on the Meter.
BHB,
The more controversal the issue, the more comments you can expect.
Sounds right?
LY
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