The Mark Dykeman Web Niche

My NaNoWriMo project is not going anywhere. I’ve been focusing on other writing projects. I really, really, really do need to (expletive deleted) or get off the pot, if you know what I mean. But if I don’t actually pursue it, no big sweat.

Funny thing about my Socyberty article on detecting manipulators… apparently it’s gotten over 5000 hits. Of course, 3000 of those hits are just me checking to see how many hits there were….

In all seriousness, I’ve been obsessing a lot over comments, hits, and all of that jazz. It’s kind of silly to worry about that stuff, but I do want to grow my readership as a stepping stone to world domination infamy other creative endeavors.

The annoying thing is that it seems to be very hard to determine exactly how many readers one has at any given point in time. I’m using a couple of different stats services, plus I have the stats from WordPress.com, and they all say different things. Naturally. However, things do seem to be trending upward, which is encouraging.

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I was reading a good post at Problogger.net about commenting on blogs and I posted a comment because I was impressed by the article, and Problogger.net in general. I’m ticked off because I had written the uber-comment, the one that would redefine this art of blog comments. And then I lost it somehow when I tried to post it to his blog. Argh.

So this is what I wound up writing instead:

I just wrote the world’s most humorous, satirical post in response to this post. Now it’s lost in the ether. Darn.

I’ll just throw in my final phrase from that comment, although the original, full comment was funnier:

“I’m just worried about the possibility of a new generation of blogs about blog commenting optimization.”

Dear reader, this comment was paltry compared to the original. And I’m the only one who knows how damned brilliant the original was. It was full of satire, clever wit, and unabashed plugs, all in one. Damn it, it was my TICKET TO STARDOM!

Yeah, whatever. But it wasn’t bad and I’m still disappointed that it got lost. But not so disappointed that I tried madly to recreate it. It was just a comment, after all.

But really, it was awesome!

Wow, this is the 150th 111th post of The Uncanny Broadcasting Brain Blog.  Or maybe it’s just post 150 and some crap posts got deleted.  Whatever.  It seems like a lot to me.

EDIT:  I guess I can’t read the bloody stats correctly yet.  This was actually my 111th post.  Sorry for the mess-up.

I’m still struggling to define what this blog is actually about (”nothing” is not an option!)  So far, I’m leaning on my slogan “catch the brainwaves”, which is basically a generic category that gives me the freedom to post about anything at all.

I’m looking for a bit of feedback to find out what readers do or don’t like about this blog.  I’ll just put it out in a series of questions in a very unscientific manner and see who bites (the questions, I mean, not me).

So far I’ve written posts about:

- Pop culture

- Blog reviews (e.g.  Featured on Fridays)

- Writing/blogging

- Workplace

- Ideas/concepts

- Links to articles and other stuff that I’ve written

- Current events

- The occasional rant

Just wondering if any of the above are liked, disliked, etc.  Are there any things that anyone might like to see as the subject of a post?

I can’t promise that I’m going to make any changes based on your feedback, but I’ll certainly appreciate getting your feedback AND I’ll read it.