UrbanUpdate

It’s late (for me), I had a terrible shitty night of sleep (or lack of) the last two nights, and just feel like rambling.

How sad is it that some bloggers feel they need to make up fake comments on their own posts and other posts about them, just to make it appear that they’re more popular/well-liked then they actually are?

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Long ago, I turned down initial offers for paid advertisements on my blog. I thought “I don’t do this for the money, so I’m not going to have advertisers” and then a few months later as I got more and more offers I realized – that was effing stupid. A text link in the sidebar is about as unobtrusive as you can get, and blogging DOES take time. Why would I turn down a little side money? There are things, though, that I still do turn down. I tried to sign up with a blogger ad site, but didn’t go through with it once I found out that they require you to put their banner ads “above the fold” i.e. right up at the top in the sidebar. I’ve turned down other blogger advertising networks for their garish banner ads that blink and flash. I don’t fault fellow established bloggers who have joined up with these networks, it’s just not for me personally.

But when I come across these newbie Blogger blogs where it’s all advertising, all the time, and they expect me to take them seriously as a sex blogger? No. I recently came across such a blog because the owner tried to leave a comment here. She’d apparently put up some dummy content to get Google Adsense to partner with her site (They won’t partner up with sex blogs, I looked into that for someone before) and there are Google Adsense banner ads in the sidebar, in between each post, and sometimes IN the posts!  wow. Not many quicker ways to get me to vacate a blog and never return. There’s another blog that I used to read where the author would put in tons of photos peppered about the post – not their own, mind you, just either stuff they found in Google Image search or worse….Amazon. and then it was linked to their Amazon affiliate account. The post would also be scattered with Amazon affiliate links – half the time the stuff would be barely or not at all related to the content.

A few weeks ago one of my text link advertisers tried to get me to agree to a paid post. Wherein they would write the content, it would contain links back to their store, and they’d pay me for publishing it.

NO. I told them quickly and in no uncertain terms that I do NOT do that. Perhaps it was something lost in translation, perhaps the word “no” in english means something else in her language, but she kept at it. Asking me 6 times in different ways. What if I wrote the post, she asked? Then it would be false content. NO. I write sex toy reviews and I do not ever agree to publish a positive-only review in exchange for a sex toy. I include the links but I say what I want to say, I give my honest opinions.

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You know what the nice thing is about having a blog vs having a “site”? I can do what I want. :)

I can write about what I want to write about. I don’t have a constraining set of topics that I must stick to. I can happily waltz along to other blogging things, whenever I want and it’s infrequent that a reader complains.

I can bitch about shit if I want. I can post rants or fluffy kittens.

I am a blogger. I happen to be a sex blogger. And I am proud that I am a sex blogger and will never get offended when called that. Instead of thumbing my nose at silly community projects, I do my best to promote them and include everyone.

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There was a time when I changed my RSS feed contents to “summary” rather than full text. I, wrongly, assumed that it would get me more traffic to my actual site where they would be more apt to comment and interact.

Doesn’t happen that way.

I have a number of blogs in my feed reader that use either the summary method or, worse, the title-only method. And I find myself skipping posts because the title or the first few sentences didn’t reel me in. Or because I’m just too lazy, or don’t have the time, to click through and read. And I would bet that a lot of others feel that very same way. Your thoughts on this?

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And finally, I read this over the weekend in Readers Digest (shaddup) and thought it was really appropriate and agreeable, especially what I’m seeing on Twitter, with this phrase being used a lot in the ever-irritating movement of hastags.

“Just Sayin’??”

They’re two little words innocuous enough on their own, though together they are poison. Just Sayin’ is the Hummel Lil’ Rascal of figures of speech, harmless until you look closer and see the slingshot in his back pocket. The way it’s used is in the form of a pulled punch. “No one above the age of seven should be seen chewing gum. Just sayin’.” “My boss smells like a brewery. Just sayin’.” It’s like a coy kicking of the dirt. “I’m going to say something offensive, but by adding these two words, I won’t have to take responsibility for it.”

Julie Klam, author of You Had Me at Woof