My New Blog Passion (aka My New Niche)
Doing a "blog drive-by" is my new passion. After visiting some of the links from Nirmal's article, Blogging Mistakes-Complete List, I realize that this is considered a mistake by some bloggers. I disagree with their assessment in this instance. They point out bloggers who do a quick mention of another website and link to it and nothing more. This is not what I do. I not only link to a blog that I've visited, but I actually read the articles on their blog and even comment on some of them. It's a different ball game altogether.
An example of a blog where I read multiple articles is at www.mapelli.info. What led me to the blog? A link from Nirmal's article, The Blogging Mistake I Did For 25 Years. I didn't comment on Francesco's blog because the comment would have been "Ummm, the Internet didn't exist 25 years ago" or something like that, which was already well-covered in other comments.
When I first started doing my "drive-bys", I did it for one selfish reason: To get pings to other blogs which would obviously point back to mine. I kept doing it for reasons that are completely unselfish: To promote other bloggers and to point my readers to interesting blogs, articles and videos. Judging by the outbound clicks I'm seeing with Clicky, it seems to be working well. I try to do the drive-bys daily but some circumstances (such as DSL and power outages) have been throwing monkey wrenches into my well-oiled machine.
To put it all into one neat package, or perspective if you prefer, I have found that promoting a small fraction of the more than 70 million blogs on the Internet gives me more satisfaction than all the visits I will ever receive on my own blog. The fact that some of my newest regular readers are reading my blog specifically because of my drive-bys is a fantastic side effect that I didn't expect.
I want to thank jer at nyquil.ORG for unwittingly inspiring me.
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Hi,
I have added your blog to Technorati Favs and also added your blog into my blogroll.
Thanks, Nirmal. As you probably found out, I got you first!
Richard,
As far as I'm concerned there's no set rules to blogging. We're ( the people doing the blogging ) making them up as we go along. We're writing the rules I've been considering doing my own version of your "blog drive-by" for about a month or so – just for some new content.
Think of it this way . . . you are providing a service to your readers by pointing people to new and interesting blogs they may not find another way. Additionally, your providing a service to those blogs who may not have found new readers another way.
It's your blog and you can drive-by if you want to.
You're right, Jim, but we "over-the-hill" bloggers don't know what we're taking about. Just ask anyone under 30.
Did you notice that none of your links to mine pinged back? I wonder why that happened… usually that should have been a pingback.
It's all voodoo, Hari. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I don't worry about it too much. The ping-o-matic machine might have been broke at the time or something.
How did I inspire it? Was it just the suggestion of switching the name around?
Yes, sir, that is all it took.
It takes much effort to drive around the blososphere – the one thing that continually amazes me is that there are so many people with something to say. If you can get past all the white noise, follow links, scan the articles, dive into a few, you will find some very interesting "stuff" – I don't spend enough time commenting (and in my mind, thanking them) for the time they spend, the thoughts they put out into the world, and effort it takes to just "do it".
So here's my thank you to you Richard.
Thanks to you too, Arnie, for stopping by.
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