Technique No 1: use other people’s stuff
Hope you enjoyed that last post. No it wasn’t paid for (if you’re interested) but I have been feeling guilty, because posting a free article only takes about 2 seconds. I’m only happy if I’ve sweated blood over each entry, and carefully crafted every word and phrase myself.
I don’t plan to do it (‘it’ being post other peoples stuff) very often because google, bless their cotton socks, check everything new that appears on the internet, and see if it’s already on the internet somewhere else.
If it is, they conclude that I’ve got nothing better to do than beg borrow and steal other people’s musings, rather than create my own. And they therefore conclude that my site should never appear in their seach results again.
Which is reasonable if I have begged borrowed or stolen it, perhaps less so if I am just trying to present an opinion to a new audience. Whatever, you can be sure it will be a long time before it happens a second time.
Technique No 2: say something controversial
Apparently the best way to attract loads of people to a website is to be a bit controversial, and use a suitably catchy headline. So from now on you’ll get no more ‘what a lovely day I had’ and a lot more ’97 ways to live in France forever without any money’ or ‘How to learn French in 25 minutes while you are asleep and without spending a cent’ type titles. Or indeed the title of this blog – ‘shock horror expose of underhand blog techniques’.
Incidentally, that’s why people write newspaper articles like ‘stay at home mothers should be paid £35,000′. Not because the writer actually thinks that it is true – of course they don’t, they have to work so why shouldn’t everyone else – but because every stay at home mother in the world will read it, tell their friends about it, and buy the newspaper.
Anyway, starting from now my blog headlines are going to be much more dramatic, even if the content will take a while to catch up.
Technique No 3: write the years entries in January then put your feet up
I have discovered that there is a feature in this blog software that means I can write a few entries at a time, if inspiration should ever strike me in such a way, and then preset the times that they will be published. So you will think I’m sat here working, while really I’m sat on the beach with a pina colada and a bottle of factor 50 sun cream. Now that’s the kind of life a blogger should aim for. Do you think sand (or even better, snow) would stop a portable PC working?
I have read about bloggers becoming rich from just blogging, but perhaps that also is just an attention grabbing headline without foundation or truth.
But it’s kind of a nice idea so I’ll be trying out some more dodgy blogging techniques shortly.
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