I find it incredibly odd that anyone asks me for blogging tips. Certainly I’ve been blogging a long time, that much is not debatable, but my first blog was a sarcastic anti-blog used primarily to elicit as much horror out of the readers (who were our friends) as we possibly could. If you think I’m profane now, you should’ve seen me back then.

(this is me, in front of a fucking tree, assholes)

 

(this is me with CATS with frickin’ LASER BEAMS under a tree, assholes)

Anyway, here’s my yearly list of ways to be a better blogger. (see also: Blogging for Dummies)(Blogging For Dummies Deux) and (Blogging For Dummies Part Number C)

Feel free to ignore them all.

1) Forget about the numbers. I know how tempting it is to obsess over your stats, painstakingly calculating your unique visitors every day, closely following your subscriber count and The Twitter followers. I’m not a numbers person (just like I’m not a geography person) so to me, ignoring them is Easy-Peasy, but I know others are. Every other Tweet in my stream seems to be begging for more followers.

But here’s the down-low on blog statistics: they’re only a guess. And? They change dramatically depending upon which blog statistics tracking program you use.

I happen to use some geeky program The Daver installed which allows me to occasionally track the odd search terms that bring people here (sweater kittens and boring things always at the top of the list). For awhile, I hosted my blog with some crappy company that ALSO gave me blog statistics. And? The two were COMPLETELY different numbers. It’s likely that if I started looking at blog stats with ALL the programs I could find, I could average them out and MAYBE THEN get a better picture.

But that sounds like a shit-ton of work. Work = bullshit.

2) Don’t get all hot and bothered if you get lumped into a group of people. If you have a vagina and a blog, you’re probably going to be called a “Mommy Blogger” whether or NOT you have crotch parasites gnawing on your legs.

When I first started Mommy Wants Vodka, I was infuriated that I’d been called a “Mommy Blogger!” How DARE they! I thought furiously to myself as I blogged, occasionally telling stories about my kids, occasionally not. Fuck that, I thought as I clacked out a post about my vagina, how DARE they insinuate I am nothing without my children! I am more than my children! I am a PERSON!

It took awhile, but I realized that people will always slap a label on you – sometimes good, sometimes bad – and my anger was unfounded and, quite frankly, kinda dumb. I can let my blog, not the label, speak for itself.

Which brought me to Number Three:

3) Don’t take everything so fucking seriously. Take your blogging seriously and write the shit out of whatever it is you’re going to write about, but stop making every little thing into an outrageously Big Fucking Deal.

Why?

It adds stress and will eventually alienate readers. It’s one thing to be mad some of the time; but outrage! at! everything! gets old.

Life’s not always such serious business. Relax and enjoy it.

4) Blogging is important. It’s really easy to minimize what you do with your blog. Hell, I’ve done it time and again. But at the end of the day, your words all matter. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday, people will stumble across your words and find whatever it is they are looking for in them.

In the past two years, I’ve met at least four families who have received the diagnosis of “encephalocele” (generally, prenatally) and have stumbled here to read about my daughter. Those words I hastily pecked out while writing Amelia’s Grace have provided a light in the darkness for them.

I can’t place a value on that.

So even if you’re writing a blog about knitting or cooking; know that what you do matters. All of it.

5) Blog because you enjoy it, not because you think it’s going to make you rich and famous. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing for an audience of 5 or 5,000, enjoy the time you spend blogging. I spend many, many, many hours every day writing, blogging, and working on my sites, and I couldn’t be happier.

Do I make a lot of money? Absolutely not. Thanks to my profane (whore) mouth, I scare off potential advertisers. But you know what? I’d rather write as Your Aunt Motherfucking Becky than as Aunt Becky Trying To Be A Famous Money-Making Blogger. I do a little freelancing, sell shirts and and ads on this blog in order to pay for servers and other boring things on my other blogs, one of which, Band Back Together, I intend to turn Non-Profit. Mostly, I run them at a loss. Which is fine with me.

Bloggers who do make it “big” are an unusual flash in the pan, not something that happens to everyone who gets a kicky URL and a great idea.

6) Be careful who you get into bed with. Your name, your blog, your unique voice and your audience all mean a lot. Be wary of those who want to take advantage of it.

You don’t have to be all distrustful or anything, just make sure to read the fine print.

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What are your suggestions for being a better blogger, Pranksters?

Whenever I sit down to write about blogging, I have to be physically restrained from getting up and banging my head against the wall. It’s just not my thing. But, I get asked about increasing website traffic frequently enough that it appears that enough of you want to rifle through my mostly vacant brain cavity for blogging tips. Now you can see just how little I know about the blogging phenomenon.

(I do know that almost all of the articles about how to increase website traffic aren’t written by bloggers, which seems like bullshit)

1) Good content is probably the most important thing to running a successful blog. The blogging world used to have like 5 blogs in it, but now every time Dooce goes on Oprah, 6 million people decide that they’re going to make a million dollars by being a blogger like Dooce. To stand out from the rest of the people who start to blog (and then abandon it when they realize it actually IS work), you must have good quality content to keep your readers coming back.

It’s the simple law of supply and demand. Be an interesting blogger and stop being afraid of being yourself. The world is full of boring beige blogs or worse, blogs that are trying to be just like someone else. Be authentic. Be yourself.

2) SEO (as we learned in the pulling a John C. Mayer experiment), for personal blogs, may not be as effective as it is for business blogs. If I stuffed a post full of “vodka,” for example, and got to #1 on Google Search, everyone who finds my blog is going to be mighty annoyed that I am not selling vodka.

Plus, stuffing your blog full of keywords makes your stories read stilted and awkward. Right John C. Mayer?

I don’t use SEO on my blog. I know other bloggers do. I don’t.

3) Make friends. Comment. Connect with other people. Friends will be your loyal readers.

4) Offer your readers as many ways as possible as to subscribe to and read your blog.

• Get a Twitter account to hook up with your blog and use it to tweet as well as occasionally announcing when you’ve written a new post. If you only post links, many people won’t follow you because they will think you are a spam account.

• If you’re not afraid of hooking your blog up with your Facebook profile, syndicate your feed through Facebook.

• Post a clearly visible RSS button at the top of your blog so that people can easily subscribe to your blog.

5) Be wary of constant self-promotion as a means of driving readers to your blog. It’s one thing to post your links on Facebook and Twitter, but it’s another thing to constantly barrage your readers with requests to promote you. Once in awhile, asking for some promotion is a good thing, because often people don’t think of advertising this awesome blog that they read. But I caution you that you will quickly lose readers if you are constantly emailing your readers asking for links, re-tweets (a Twitter thing), and promotion.

I had someone I didn’t even know on Twitter say something to the effect of, “Wow, didn’t realize you were a big deal on Twitter. Can you promote my blog?”

I’m sure that kind of thing works sometimes, but I find it tacky. I’ll help out my Pranksters, sure, but come the fuck on.

6) Keep an up-to-date blogroll*. Everyone likes to be on a blogroll, and I know it’s probably SO 2006, but I still use blogrolls to find new blogs.

7) Submit posts to StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, and any of the other bookmarking sites that I don’t know about because I am lazy and often forget to do this. I need to do this more.

8) The Internet loooooves The Dramaz. You’ll get some more traffic when you have drama. But, like the SEO stuff, when the drama dies down, the traffic does, too.

*which reminds me that I need to update mine. If you have a blog that is NOT on my blogroll because I am a lazy sack of poo, send an email to aunt.becky.sucks@gmail.com with BLOGROLL in the subject line. Please, email me about it, don’t leave the information in a comment, or I may become even more confused than normal and my head might explode.

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So, Pranksters, what do you know about blogging that I’ve left off of my pathetically small list?

Aunt Becky’s Family Reunion: Knotty By Nature takes to the high seas on March 7, 2011 for a four day cruise of the Bahamas out of Port Canaveral, Florida.

This is a mobile mischief, tomfoolery, drinking and merry-making trip where you can learn all about how to properly swear, blog, and lazily lounge about the bright blue ocean. There’s nothing not full of the awesome about this.

ALL ARE WELCOME. Let me repeat that for you in case you didn’t believe me: ALL ARE WELCOME. That means YOU, Prankster, who is lurking out there, reading this and wondering if I mean it. Oh yes, I do. We’re calling it a FAMILY REUNION, after all, because when you’re here, you’re family. SORRY.

You can bring your family, your friends, your kids, your spouse, your lover, your mistress, your master, but probably not your pet. I mean, unless it’s a pet rock. Because I don’t think that’s up to health code, not because I have a problem with pets. But that’s between you and the cruise ship.

If you have a vagina, you can come*.

If you have a penis, you can come*.

Frankly, if you have both, you can come*.

I have a feeling it’ll be a mix of both sexes because who doesn’t want to see THIS HOT ASS in a bathing suit? *smacks ass*

You don’t have to be a blogger or even like blogs because frankly, The Internet costs 6 bazillion dollars when you’re wearing your flipping floppy’s on the Lido deck, and while we may talk some shop, you won’t be out of place BECAUSE YOU’RE ON A BOAT.

So shut your whore mouth, quit your worrying, and GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR, PRANKSTERS!

Are you IN?

Slap the official badge (code OVER THERE in the sidebar —>) up on your blog to let the world know you’re gonna be ON A MUTHER TRUCKIN BOAT.

We’ll have the t-shirts to match that you’ll pretty much want all over your chesticles up and ready to buy in the next few weeks. For now, Mr Linky yourself here when you’ve paid your deposit.

Itinerary

Monday, March 7th – Port Canaveral, Florida, Depart 4:30 PM
Tuesday, March 8th – CocoCay, Bahamas 8:00 AM-5:00 PM
Wednesday, March 9th – Nassau, Bahamas 7:00 AM-11:59 PM
Thursday, March 10th – At Sea (DRINKING)
Friday, March 11th – Port Canaveral, Florida 7:00 AM Arrive BACK TO REALITY

We wrangled the services of a group cruise agent to help us out (another Prankster, Amber) so if you want to be a part of this, which, you do, because obviously, you want to go through her (details below).

Cruise Rates

Rates are as follows (and may be subject to a fuel surcharge that will be no more than $10/guest/day):

Category H Oceanview Cabins: $426.34/person which includes all taxes, port charges AND gratuities.
Category N Inside Cabins: $381.34/person, which also includes all taxes, port charges AND gratuities.
(download this PDF flyer for more detailed information)

Here’s where it gets awesome. Deposit is $200 per cabin (or $100 per person), but the rest of the amount can be paid with payment plans up until December 1st. I mean, it would be MORE awesome if it were free, but hey, PAYMENT PLANS. Just like a vacation layaway plan.

Our cruise agent, Amber, will work with each of you individually to work out payment plans.

All deposits are fully refundable until December 1st, so if something comes up, you can pull out. Nothing will come up.

If Royal Caribbean drops fares, we’ll get the reduced fares. *score!*

We can also book other categories of rooms and still be a part of the group.

Booking Information

We convinced you, didn’t we? The promise of floating in a large ship on an Internet Family Reunion with Your Aunt Becky and Angie was too good to pass up. FLOATING BLOGGING CONFERENCE, yo. Want MORE information? Download this brochure.

So this is what you do. I don’t want to deal with money because I’d spend it or lose it and it’s not my thing.

If you are a US citizen, you DO NOT NEED A PASSPORT. It’s highly suggested, but you don’t need one. If you have one and it’s expired, no problemo – it’s still accepted. If you don’t have a US passport, then a certified copy of your birth certificate and driver’s license is all you need. If you’re not a US citizen, well, duh. Yeah. You need a passport to get into the country. doof.

Contact Amber, our group cruise booking agent. She’ll talk you through everything you need to know about a cruise, including passport information, travel insurance, the best things to wear for formal night, and whether or not I am actually insane.

amber@cruiseresource.com
Cruise One
4195 S. Lewiston Cir., Aurora, CO 80013
p: 303-690-8997 | f: 303-690-8986
TOLL FREE: 888-SAIL-123 (888-724-5123)
http://www.cruiseresource.com

Ship Details

I tried to get the ship named the S.S. Pranksters, but sadly, they insisted that the name was actually the Monarch of the Seas which has a sort of stately ring that made me happy in the pants. I accepted it THIS time, Royal Caribbean, but I WILL be back. *shakes fists.*

Port Canaveral, Florida

I don’t live in Florida, I live in Chicago, so I’m commuting in, which, I’m guessing, a bunch of you will be, too. The ship leaves out of a big ass dock in the port, but the area is RIGHT BY Orlando, Florida. And in Orlando is…DISNEY WORLD. It’s a pretty sweet set-up, yo.

Florida is also ASS HOT, so get used to it, those of you who will be coming from cold places, like me. In fact, I’ll probably be almost as white as a larva coming from Chicago in the dead of winter (March = winter in Chicago). In March, however, Florida is the land of tres awesome weather. Meaning, really, it’s nice. Nice as in high in the 70s, nice.

Angie lives in Orlando, but really only has room for 10-15 people to cram their asses on the floor, so unless you want to sleep 69-style on the floor in her Messy House, it’s suggested you either fly/drive in on Monday morning or find yo’self a hotel near the Orlando airport for Sunday night. Questions? Just ask Angie.

Additional Information

We’ll be adding more information as needed, so we’ll let you know when and what you need to to make this a crazy-awesome vacay.

Questions? Leave a comment on the cruise info page (DON’T ASK CRUISE QUESTIONS ON THIS POST, only “yippee! i’m going! squeeee! comments here, please) and we’ll answer them cruise info page for everyone to see. Ask a question someone else has already asked in the comments? Lose a finger.

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*that’s what she said