Moon Shot into the Blogosphere

The Dodge Retort (TDR), my eclectic blog, celebrated its third anniversary on Tuesday. That’s third as in three weeks.  You know, Internet time.

This isn’t my first blog. I have done several others working for an employer and learned about a tenth as much in a year as I have in three weeks. That being on your own heightens your creativity and motivation is an understatement.

It’s noteworthy that on Tuesday, TDR enjoyed its best day in page views – 535. That might not sound like much, but starting 21 days ago at zero puts it is perspective. One colleague remarked that page views just satisfies my “vanity.” Perhaps. Page views by themselves aren’t the point, but building an audience and following is.

With this good start, I am confident I can build a substantial following. What’s satisfying are my efforts being rewarded with traffic growth. Best of all, I learn something new every day, sometimes every hour.

Am I making money? Of course not: this is a blog (I do make money from freelance writing, however). But sooner rather than later, someone will write the playbook on blogs making money.  I suspect joining an ad or affiliate marketing network (there’s about 60 of them)  is a bit like putting solar panels on your house and selling electricity back to the power company. On the sunniest day, you might make three bucks. And at my nascent traffic levels, I might make a penny or two. As Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons points out, he made a whopping hundred dollars on the day his Fake Steve Jobs blog hit 500,000 page views.

Former Ziff Davis colleague Joe Panettieri at Ninelinesmediainc.com which launched in January, 2008 may have it right. He and his partner are making money with three focused-technology blogs which they sell themselves. In others words, they’ve created a their own self-funded media company complete with blogs, events and newsletters.  That is the path Joe recommends and he seems to be making a go of it even though Nine Lives launched into the teeth of a recession. After all, publishing empires Ziff Davis, CMP and CNet were started in recessions, he points out.

BTW, it was  Nine Lives’ Workswithu.com blog about Ubuntu Linux web site that drove all that traffic Tuesday to a TDR netbook post.

What’s next for my blog?

I have bought 300Gb of hosting space and will move to WordPress.org which allows plug-ins (WordPress.com which I currently use does not). In other words, my blog, er web site actually, will become more robust. I will be able to add  scripts and choose among the 4,200 and counting applications for WordPress.

I’ll report back again after my sixth anniversary – sixth week, that is.

A F-14 Locking onto a Cop’s Radar Gun

This came via the e-mail joke line. Whether it’s genuine on not doesn’t matter as much as the lesson in the story itself.

Damned F-14!

Damned F-14!

Two California Highway Patrol Officers were conducting speeding enforcement on I-15, just north of the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar . One of the officers was using a hand held radar device to check speeding vehicles approaching the crest of a hill. The officers were suddenly surprised when the radar gun began reading 300 miles per hour. The officer attempted to reset the radar gun, but it would not reset and then turned off. Just then a deafening roar over the treetops revealed that the radar had in fact locked on to a USMC F/A-18 Hornet which was engaged in a low flying exercise near the location. Back at the CHP Headquarters the Patrol Captain fired off a complaint to the USMC Base Commander. The reply came back in true USMC style: ~ ~ ~ Thank you for your letter. We can now complete the file on this incident. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Hornet had detected the presence of, and subsequently locked on to your hostile radar equipment and automatically sent a jamming signal back to it, which is why it shut down. Furthermore, an Air-to-Ground missile aboard the fully armed aircraft had also automatically locked on to your equipment location. Fortunately, the Marine Pilot flying the Hornet recognized the situation for what it was, quickly responded to the missile system alert status and was able to override the automated defense system before the missile was launched to destroy the hostile radar position. The pilot also suggests you cover your mouths when cussing at them, since the video systems on these jets are very high tech. Sergeant Johnson, the officer holding the radar gun, should get his dentist to check his left rear molar. It appears the filling is loose. Also, the snap is broken on his holster. Thank you for your concern. Semper Fi