The title to Nick Carr’s post:
The Great Unread
I think it summarizes the post amazingly well. It’s one of the best post titles I ever read.
It also reflects my growing disappointment with blogs. But read on and you will find how I failed, failed again, and eventually managed to beat the great unread. There’s still hope for all of us!
When I first started blogging about software development, then in PHP, later in Ruby, I expected to take over the NYT, or at least ZDNet. If blogging levels the playing field, like they say, than I can reach out to a wide audience and get them to expand their interests beyong politics, fashion and digital cameras.
Unfortunately, the public wasn’t as wise as the crowds. So I decided on a different strategy. I don’t need a million readers, I only need one reader. One reader who will buy my blog for a cool $1m, because … look, it’s a blog! It has content and a domain name!
Sadly, that reader never came, and so I re-strategized. What other option did I have? I decided to make bank on Amazon affiliate links, after all, bloggers read books. All I needed was for A-List bloggers to link to me, including on days when I’m too lazy to post.
With a few exceptions, the cabal of A-List bloggers decided to silently ignore my “bug fix for :nth-child selector” posts. They know it’s important, but they didn’t want to let me grow as a threat. Too much politics. I didn’t realize I’m a threat: I don’t do tech gossip, and no amazing scoops fall my way.
Still, the links never came, and so after the third “unread” experience, I decided to shift gears. As long as there are more people reading my blog than blogs I read, I’m coming out on top. Right? So I unsubscribed from a few feeds.
Mission accomplished.
Photo by Kimi Iwasaki.
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