Some Knowledge

In many ways a blog is like an online record of your life.  You post things you are thinking about and that interest you.  There are any number of things you can record in a blog.  The important thing is to be honest and write about what matters.  If other people find your blog and enjoy reading about your life, that’s fine.  If it is just a journal for you to keep a record of your thoughts for future reference, that’s fine too.

One of these days I have to go back and read some of the stuff I’ve posted here.  After more than a year, this stuff adds up.  I have a very long book if I were to bind all these posts together on paper.  It’s interesting to see the things that people actually read.  Mostly, it’s articles about some subject.  These rambling observations get very few page views.

I find that over the last year I have enjoyed writing in my blog.  I think it has improved my writing ability.  I write in shorter sentences and think I am easier to understand than when I started out.  I have read through a few books on blogging in the last year.  I have read a lot of books about business.  One of these days I am going to turn my blogging into a paying operation.  Until then, I will use this medium to save my thoughts and to share what I think about with the rest of the world, if they are interested.

There are some people who make money with their blogs.  There are millions of people blogging.  If you relied on the odds of making money with a blog, you might as well just buy a lottery ticket.  The bottom line is that you will need some reason for people to come to your blog.  The reason anyone goes to a blog is to find something out.  I know that nobody reads my observations on life or the weather.  People don’t use the net to find out random things about the lives of people they do not know, usually.  People only read blogs to get information.  They do not read a blog to get enjoyment from following a fictional story, and very rarely read some random person’s poems.  People read blogs to learn stuff.

Look at some of the most popular blogs.  They are about new technology, politics, entertainment, or how to make money.  These are all things that give people some benefit.  There are a lot of blogs about how to make money blogging.  For some reason, this is a popular topic.  Some people make a decent living writing about how to use the net to make money.

If you want to actually make money with a blog, you will need an angle.  You need to have some information that people want to read.  They will have to be able to find your blog in the search engines.  This means you will have to do some promotion.  You can do some promotion just by writing articles about things that people are looking for online.  Check some of the search engine sites like Google Trends for what people are interested in reading about.  There are any number of things to write about online at any given time.  You are only limited by your imagination.

So far, I have made zero money blogging.  I have read tons of stuff about this subject online and in paper books.  Who knows, maybe some day I will figure it all out and make a decent living.  Until then, I am going to read about the people who are making it with blogs, and maybe I will learn something useful in my quest for wealth.

There are a lot of books in the world.  Some authors seem to think the point of writing a book is to see how many words they can use to state a simple fact.  Lately, I have been learning to read for content.

I read a lot of nonfiction books.  The important thing about nonfiction is the facts it contains.  If you don’t have some interesting or important facts there’s no point writing a book.  You can get a lot of information from the table of contents.  This section should give you a good idea about what is in the book.

I generally read the introduction to a book, because it tends to sum up what the book is about.  It is a waste of time to read acknowledgements and dedications.  Some books are set up for skimming.  They have bold section headings that convey the important points covered inside.  These can lead you to information that is of interest to you.

Many books are written for people who have no clue about the subject.  For instance, most books about blogging are filled with a lot of useless information on how to set up a blog.  Seriously, you can find all this out by visiting the blogging website.  This material makes the books longer and more boring for people who already know this stuff.  Seriously, if the author is saying something you already know, skip ahead.

Sometimes you find parts of a book more interesting than others.  This is a sign that there is new material here.  If the author says the same thing over and over again, you are not getting your money’s worth out of that book.  Go to a library and look around.  All the books on the same topic are stored together.  Skim through the book and find one that is useful.  Forget about the rest.  Nobody lives long enough to read all the books.

Of course, this method doesn’t work for fiction.  You will want to read the whole novel to enjoy the story.  This can take a while.  If you read books on how to do stuff, the skimming method works fine.  You can get through a few books in a day just reading the parts that interest you.  Books with pictures are good as well.  Sometimes a picture says things text never could.  Get what you need out of your reading and move on.  There is no point reading something that’s dull or boring.  Scan for words that interest you and slow down to find out what you need.  Of course, there are books that are good all the way through, but they are rare.  Use the abilities of your mind to get what you need from a book and you will be putting that information to work for your benefit that much sooner.

Yaro Starak sent me a free ebook this morning about how I can make thousands of dollars if I just set up a membership website.  I read the first chapter.  It is filled with a lot of hype about how all I have to do is just set up a site and get people to pay me monthly fees.  I guess this is interesting.

Of course, chances of setting up a membership site are pretty slim for me.  I have no intention to try and sell people information on the subscription model.  I think $97 a month, like Yaro charges, is pretty steep for information he probably finds online for free.  I guess there are people who like to pay for knowledge, but why would you pay when you can get something for free?

I have my own plan for making money.  I set up a blog to promote my art.  Of course, not a lot of people have seen my blog.  Nobody has made any offers on my work yet.  They just do not know the vast income potential in investing in new art.  I like my plan better than Yaro’s.  I sell some actual thing that can be resold for a profit.  Once you pay your membership fee, all you get is words.  I can get all the words I can ever hope to read at the library.

I might go back and see if I can get anything useful out of this book.  It was free.  If you want a copy, I suppose I could post it, but it would take up almost 2 megs of space.  Just go to Yaro’s website and give him your email if you want a copy.

I have not been doing a lot of blogging lately.  My fingers get sore from typing.  I can’t think of anything interesting to say most days.  I am off now to read free stuff on the web.  Maybe I will browse some blogs and see what other people are writing.  Somebody must have something interesting to say.

Yesterday I set up my art blog here on WordPress.  There is a link to it on the blogroll.  I have been waiting a while to do this, but I think now is the time to set up an online portfolio for my work.

I will continue to add pictures to this new blog on a day by day basis as I have many complete works.  I have found out how to take acceptable pictures of my work, and will write a short paragraph describing each as they are posted.

If I do not post here to this blog as often, it is because I am working on other things.  I have been doing art for many years now and think it is time to show my work to the world.  Of course, I will need to look into doing some promotion for my new blog, but there is endless information about this online.

Once again, my new blog is live and running, and you can get there by clicking on a link to the right in the blogroll.

I am thinking of starting yet another blog to display my art work.  I think I need a blog with a coherent theme.  I would post pictures here, but they really don’t fit in with the general nature of this blog, which is mostly text about various things.

In a lot of ways this blog has changed over the last year.  I used to write things based on how much interest I thought people would have in the topic.  Right now, I am using this blog to post my thoughts and opinions on things.  It is becoming yet another personal blog of no interest to the general population.  I think I need to move on to a new project that has a focus.

I like WordPress for blogging because it has a lot of cool features.  I can track page views without installing any scripts.  It has a directory structure so posts are listed for people to view.  There is a lot of storage space for posting pictures.  The comment structure allows me to get in touch with people directly through their emails.  Overall, WordPress seems to be the best free platform I have used in my years of blogging.

For now, I am going to evaluate other art blogs to see what people are doing.  I do not have to get approval to set up my own online gallery of art, and I do not need to sign any contracts with real galleries.  I think a blog is the way artists will go in the future to promote their work.  As I have just learned how to take decent pictures of my paintings, I think it is time to set up a gallery.  If people are interested, I may be able to make something of this opportunity.

It’s been a while since I posted anything to this blog.  I have not felt like blogging so much lately.  I still get a lot of page views here for stuff I wrote a while ago, but not really a lot.  Compared to my other blogs, this one is the star.

I think I am going to break down and start a writing project this morning.  I have done so much reading about writing that I am sick of it.  I think I have read or looked over half a dozen books on writing in the last month.  Some of them say one thing, some of them say another thing.  I guess you have to find your own way when learning to write.

The weather has been very good for the last few days.  It was very warm again yesterday.  We might get some rain tomorrow, but that is normal for Spring.  Why am I talking about the weather again?

So, I stopped by here to approve a comment and to leave a small piece of a post.  I need to get to work on something I can try to sell.  There is only so much preparation a person can do for a project before they start in on it.  I have been preparing all my life for this moment.  I have the tools and the time.  Now it’s just a question of putting in the effort.

I try to write something every day.  Maybe it is just a blog post.  The point is not to write the great American novel.  The point is to use your mind for something creative.  Writing is a creative act.  You take your thoughts and record them in the code of language.

Schools have been teaching people to write for years.  The problem is they go about it in the wrong way.  They tell people to write about things they don’t care about.  How many essays about the American Revolution does the world need?  Not only is assigned writing boring, it is meaningless.  I suppose they have to get people used to the idea of obeying orders from the boss.  This is not the point of creative writing.  The point of creative writing is to write about things that interest you.

I have been adding to this blog for over a year now.  There are almost 600 posts here.  Some of them are about interesting things I have found online.  Some of them are about things I know about.  A lot of them are about the weather.  It is important to get a lot of practice if you want to become good at something.  All the thinking in the world will not make you a good writer.  You need to get to work and create something that communicates ideas to people.

A blog is a good place to write something every day.  You get to store your words and display them to the world.  Every once in a while people will leave comments on your work.  There is the potential to engage in conversation about things that interest you.  It is not like writing your ideas down in a book and hiding the book in your closet.  A blog is alive.  Take some time every day to write down what you are thinking about and soon you will have a very good collection of your ideas that you can look over from time to time and share with the world.

It was cloudy and cold today.  There were snow flurries.  I spent the day inside reading and doing work around the house.  I am waiting for the summer sun to burn away all this cold.  Maybe tomorrow it will be warm.

I have not come up with any good ideas for a book today.  I have done some blogging and made an entry into my journal.  One of these days I have to get busy and learn some focus and do something that will be profitable.  I have so many blog posts it’s ridiculous.  I just write on and on about nothing.  The things people read, I wrote a long time ago.  Most of these posts in the life category have no readers.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately.  I just finished reading a book today on the unconscious mind.  It was interesting, but wrong in many ways.  Still, it’s good to be exposed to new ideas.  I may go to the library in the next couple days and get another book to read.  If I spent as much time writing as I do reading, I would have a lot of books written.

The thing that keeps me from writing a book is focus.  I can’t seem to stay on one topic for very long.  I have been working on this on my blog in the last few months by trying to write about things in life like the weather and my thoughts on things.  Nobody is paying me to write any of these posts.  I am writing just for the practice.  It seems to be helping me in expressing myself clearly.  It is important to be understood when you write.  Nobody wants to read something they need a code book to understand.

I am off now to waste the evening watching TV and old episodes of Star Trek.  There are more things in life than reading and writing.  Still, if anyone is going to make a hobby pay, it will be me.  I have been practicing writing now for years.  That’s one thing blogs have done for me, given me a place to post my work for people to react to.  All I need to do now is fire up the word processor and get to doing some real work.  It will take some effort and imagination, but anything is possible.  People need entertainment, even in a recession.  Now, I am off to relax for a while.  Take care people.

Things are slowing down on this blog.  I don’t write useful posts any more.  I don’t even check in here every day.  This never was a paying operation.  I just like to write things.  One of these days I may turn this into something useful.  Right now, I don’t really feel like leaving endless blog posts for people to read.

It’s important to have a purpose when you do blogging.  This blog never really had a purpose.  In some ways, I just wanted to write things to see if anyone was reading.  So far over 70,000 people have found this blog.  I guess that’s not so bad.  I would be a busy person if I had to talk to 70,000 people in a year.  Then again, some people talk to this many people at once.  Some people talk to millions at a time in the mass media outlets.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about starting a new writing project.  It’s hard to break into the publishing business.  I like the fact that I can post things on the net without having to sign some contract.  The only contract here is the users agreement you click on when you sign up for a blog.  There’s no money involved.  It doesn’t cost people anything to read my words.  If they are useful, then people get something for only the effort of reading.  Maybe that’s how information should work.

I have spent some time this year exploring the local library.  They have all kinds of useful books and entertaining DVDs to watch.  I am using the library to learn about things.  I also use it as a source of enjoyment.  There is no reason a person can not enjoy themselves reading a book.  I look at my blogging as creating a library of thought.  All my thoughts written out and posted for free on the net.  All I need now is some fame.  Maybe I should write an entertaining book.  I should look up some information on the net about what entertains people.  Anyway, that’s my post on blogging today.  Things are slowing down here, but there is still some traffic.  Someday I will have something more interesting to say.