SOME RANDOM DUDE

This post will have been the 8th blog entry in two months. To put that into perspective, in the month of March 2007 this blog had 34 posts alone. Frankly, this is not surprising - updates have slowly trickled downward for the past 3 or 4 months now. There are a few reasons for this - which I can get into in a later post. However, it has been clear that the current model of how I have blogging up to this point on Some Random Dude is not sustainable, nor is it smart. The effort/reward ratio is just not high enough - and while I was willing and able to a year ago, I am no longer.

The thing that has gotten to me the most is the amount of manual labor it takes to publish frequently. I would post 3 or 4 times a week and the traffic would frankly not reflect what I think it should have. Make no mistake, I am not in the camp that believes traffic is the sole measure of success and value - however, it is important. About one year ago, I started setting goals for what I would like to achieve with this blog - goals that I concluded would only be possible with a relatively high frequency of postings. That notion then put me into the pattern of regular weekly posts which became more of a chore than it should have been. I do not think that there’s no coincidence between the fact that some of my most popular posts were written before I started posting weekly content. In retrospect, I sold-out quality for quantity and I am kicking myself now for that.
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I have been holding off posting this for a while for a few reasons, but considering how lack-luster the frequency of posts have been on this blog, I thought it may be a good thing to write about. While my blogging has gone down, I have found I have been publishing in short format much more frequently. My Twitter account is updated pretty frequently thanks to some good tools. I found that the short I-only-want-to-spend-10-to-15-seconds-to-post-something format is something I can handle even when I am busy as hell. Why? Because it is completely valid to write “Busy as hell” as a Twitter post.

This very reason is why I got interested in Tumblr. I feel as though Tumblr can be just like Twitter except with the additional media aspects. Luckily, Tumblr has a couple nice tools for posting as well. I find that Tumblr is the best balance of ease/speed and features that I have found up to this point. As free time diminishes, I see Tumblr (or a Tumblr-esque format) becoming a bigger part of my daily postings as time goes by.

Up to this point, my Tumblr is pretty low-brow and is all over the place in terms of content. Additionally, the site is still rockin’ the default style (which I hope to change soon). However, if you can forgive the above shortcomings, I think you may find it entertaining.

somerandomdude.tumblr.com

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Well, May and June were supposed to be a big couple months in order to generate enough comments for a special Comment Love project. I dropped the ball - big time. The beginning of May started off really well and then tapered off extremely quickly and I have yet to recover. A couple large projects, a vacation and a continuing battle with burnout have done my blogging in for about a month and a half. I know I will get back on the horse eventually, it just has not happened yet.

All that said, the charities that we were supporting for May and June, the International Rescue Committee’s Iraqi Refugee Program and the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust were extremely important and I feel extremely guilty that my otherwise unimportant problems got in the way of hitting our goal. Therefore, I decided to donate the maximum amount ($100 to each charity) even though we barely hit half that mark in comments. I really dropped the ball in terms of posting - frankly, I’m surprised we got as much as we did.

The posting frequency will be back up to normal levels soon - hell, just posting this article was a major accomplishment for me in my current state. Ironically, I have been doing a tremendous amount of interesting work that I am really looking forward to sharing. Be on the lookout for posts sooner than later.blogging, burnout, charitable service, charities, charity, comment love, disabled american veterans, international rescue committee, iraqi refugee, love, month and a half, refugee program service trust

So it is a Thursday and there are still no posts on Some Random Dude for this week. What gives? Well, I am most certainly writing and putting together a collection of posts and (believe it or not) real articles. However, I am holding onto them until the month of May where I will (hopefully) be pushing much more in-depth content on a weekly basis than any other month I have blogged. The reason for this is that May is going to be a special month of Comment Love, where the maximum donation will up increased to $100. This means that we will need 200 comments during the month of May to hit the goal. Considering the highest month of comments was a little over 100, I am really going to have to work for those 200 comments.

To get the roughly 50 comments a week, the following must happen:

1. I will need to produce some really good articles - probably more frequent than on a weekly basis.
2. I will need serious help from readers like you to not only comment, but to encourage others to comment as well
3. The month of May must have exceedingly above-average traffic

The only thing that is truly in my control is the first item, so I am working hard to make that happen. If all goes well, I will have some pretty cool stuff coming out in May (fingers crossed). I will be finishing up projects that I swore I would complete and finish articles I swore I would write in order to make this happen. However, to do this, the rest of April is going to have to suffer a bit. I should still be able to put the weekly photograph and the weekly links up, but not much else.

Just a quick update.

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To go along with the Comment Love program, I have tried to add a bit more incentive for commenting. Last week, I implemented the CommentLuv plugin. I must say, the whole thing took no time at all - it was quite a breeze. There are so many ideas and pieces of functionality that I would like to implement on this site, but when I do not even have enough time to write real articles, I have a hard time trying to bite off anything of that scale. Still, slowly but surely, I am trying to add pieces to increase participation.

There is going to be a special month of Comment Love coming up, so I hope this extra addition will help stir up conversation. blogging, commentluv, comments, love wordpress plugin