Blue Collar Blogging

I have been blogging for close to a decade now. The C-Blog here has been going since 2005 when I started it, but I did blog for awhile before that under a different name. Over that time period, I have learned a few things about blogging, and I will share those tips here.

1. Keep it simple.

I know this nugget has been tossed at you many times before, but I am throwing it straight at your skull. I find that when people design a blog that is crammed full of shit and design elements that I don't want to read it. I also hate white lettering on a black background in the gothdeathmetal school of blogging. Do your readers and yourself a favor and lay off of this garbage. Go for a minimalist design in the layout of your blog. Here is the finest example of the "less is more" school. Do you need to be as minimalist as Leo? Probably not. But the elegance of that blog shows that your blog should have a similar elegance in design. This comes from eliminating non-essential elements. Ultimately, it is about the words and nothing else. The rest is eye candy. Resist the impulse to make it better by adding more shit. This will almost always fail.

2. Establish a brand.

People go for branding. For me, the most iconic brands are the Nike Swoosh and Apple's apple. The brand itself doesn't have to be all that spectacular. It just has to be unique and consistent. When you have a brand, people associate everything you do with that brand. They have certain expectations of that brand. A reader is a customer, and a customer is simply one "accustomed" to doing business with you. In this case, it will be reading your blog. This is why I stress that the most important thing in any venture is integrity and consistency. You are establishing expectations and meeting them. This is how all successful businesses are built. Bloggers should run with this idea.

3. Don't give up your dayjob.

I have never understood how anyone could be a full time blogger. The reason is because I can't write for more than four hours. I can read, surf the net, and post snarky comments on Facebook all fucking day. But to sit down and churn out original content for more than a four hour stretch is not something I can do. Consequently, there are 20 hours left in the day to fill with other things. If you're going to blog, what you do in those 20 hours is as important as what you do in those four hours. I have found that the real writing comes when I am working. Many of the ideas for this blog have come while standing over my kitchen sink scrubbing a pan. I find the best writing is born out of living, so you need to do some living in order to do some writing.

4. Use Google search terms for titles.

If you search for something on Google, Google does auto suggest culled from the search queries entered by countless other people. Those search queries make excellent titles. This tells you what people want to read, so help your readers find what you have written. Make their search your title. The bulk of your blog traffic will come from these people. They will only stay and read that one piece, but at least, you won't be ignored.

5. Decide if your blog is a subject blog or a personal blog.

A subject blog is a blog where you focus on writing about a particular subject. It can be as broad as hunting or as refined as African Wild Animal Safari Bowhunting. But once you've established your subject, you are locked in. If you started writing about cycling, you can't morph that into triathlon when you decide you like doing the Ironman.

A personal blog is different because the same element is you. I went with a personal blog because my interests change all the time. I did a subject blog once, and I was exhausted for material after about one week. With a personal blog, I can go where the wind takes me. This advice would have been very helpful for a guy like Everett Bogue who ended up being a subject blogger when he is really a personal blogger. I may abandon minimalism in the future (unlikely), but the C-blog remains because the C-blog is me. It changes with me. I don't ever have to nuke my blog, erase it, or regret it. I have resisted the urge to edit out old stuff because it is part of the journey.

6. Post daily.

There are two kinds of writers. There are those who wait for inspiration to strike before they write. Then there are those who sit down everyday and write. I write every fucking day. I don't wait for inspiration. Here's the funny thing. I find the best inspiration often comes when I am writing as opposed to just thinking about writing. You need to treat it like a job. Good writers have a good work ethic. They hit the keys everyday without fail. And what happens if you write a bunch of crap? Just toss it in the garbage. I have written many things and then hit the delete key. Then, I began again on the very same subject only it came out better the second, third, or even fourth time. Writing is work. Treat it like work. If you only went in to work when inspiration struck, you would be homeless and penniless. Trust me, my boss could give a shit if I am inspired to work. He just wants my ass there doing what he is paying me to do.

7. Get a thick skin.

If you are someone who can't handle criticism, do not become a blogger. Some bloggers try to get around this by turning off the comments on their blogs. No one is fooled by this.

The thing you have to remember about criticism is that it comes in two varieties--factual and aesthetic. Factual criticisms come when you get something wrong. People point it out, and you end up being corrected. Thank the people for the correction and be humble enough to accept it. Aesthetic criticisms deal with matters of taste. Because taste is purely subjective, these criticisms don't amount to shit. This is why it bothers me not one bit when people tell me my writing is utter garbage. I often get compliments on the very same piece, so I take it all with a grain of a salt. You should, too.

8. Fuck copyright.

I remember the first time I saw something I wrote that was stolen. I was a bit shocked. This person had utterly plagiarized the work. Because it was a woman, she had replaced all the masculine pronouns with feminine. But it was my writing. Nowadays, I am flattered. I don't give a shit. If you want to know if your work is valuable, your best clue is when people steal your work and put it out as their own. Since then, my views of intellectual property have changed considerably such that I encourage people to take my stuff. I think IP is a ridiculous concept. You can't steal an infinite thing, and ideas are not scarce. IP is artificial scarcity. I prefer the more valuable commodity on the internet which is ubiquity. Dropping copyright is a great way to get your stuff out there.

9. Fuck money.

I have no advice on how to make money from blogging. Some people try advertising. Others have tip jars. Others sell products or books. Any sort of creative endeavor such as art, music, film, or whatnot are going to be hit or miss financially. There are literally millions of blogs out there. Being the one that hits it big as a blogger is not unlike winning the lottery except the payout is much smaller. The internet makes it more likely that your work will be discovered, but it also makes it unlikely that you will make very much money at it. Successful bloggers make enough to quit their jobs but not enough to be driving a brand new Ferrari.

I think the era of being paid for creative work is virtually over with. This is because creative work was tied to a physical medium such as paper, vinyl, or canvas. In the digital world, this is no longer true. This might seem sad to some people but not to me. Advertising generates a lot of money for companies like Google, but the products that sell are either financial or physical. This is part of the reason I stress blue collar work or the medical field. The physical will become a premium in a world where knowledge and ideas are as common as dirt. But I digress. . .

10. Fuck collaboration.

A collaboration has as its root "co-labor." This means more than one person working together. Some bloggers decide that the best way to go is to form a partnership. The reasoning is that the combination of talents will create something better than the individuals could acting alone. This almost never works. You can have contributors to your blog and all that. But in the end, blogging partnerships usually result in one of the people doing all of the work, getting all the glory, or what have you. The best example I can give of this is the econ blog Marginal Revolution that has Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok as co-bloggers. The reality is that MR is 90% Tyler Cowen. Tabarrok labors in the shadow of his more prolific colleague. I just went over there, and there isn't a single post from Alex on the page.

If you blog, you are the boss. You call the shots. It falls on you. Partnerships don't work.

I can't think of anymore tips to add. These are just the things I have learned over the years, and I may learn some more as I continue this gig. Good luck as a blogger, and if you have a blog, leave a link in the comments section of this post.

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