The Jungle Book

I’m not claiming we work all the time, but as a ProBlogger I can assure you: Our working hours are really weird. Worse, our work days never fit other people’s.

Here in Brazil we only have 100 or 200 holidays every year, and people get really eager in anticipation. Problem is: If you work at home, make your own schedule, can leave anytime for a beer, can say “screw you guys, I’m going home” or simply watch monkey porn the whole day, the very idea of a holiday makes no sense.

It’s like coming to Jenna Jameson with a friendly line “Hey’s, guess what! I’m getting laid tonight, isn’t it great?”

I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I miss the whole “Next Friday is labour’s day! Thursday we drink until morning!” thing.

Guess I need 5 minutes of a 9-to-5 office environment, then I’ll stop my girlie complaining.

Last week my AdSense earnings skyrocketed, my server dropped on its knees before I activated the WP-Cache plugin. What I did?

Simple answer: I leaded a trend.

Ronaldo’s ex-girlfriend, Daniela Cicarelli, showed up on a Spanish TV gossip show, her very own sex tape. Sure, far more classy than Paris Hilton’s one, but still a sex tape.

Making it short, she was filmed making out with her boyfriend at a beach, it gets hot and they both go to the water, where they finished what they started, 3rd (underwater) base and all.

Tons of blogs and news sites are harvesting hits, republishing the same story. Is it a valid strategy? Or are we deceiving our visitors? Should a blog jump in that wagon?

I’d say yes.

If you reblog a meme, you’re just creating noise, but if you write about the meme, it’s another whole story. It’s a showcase, a bunch of new readers will find your blog, read your ideas and sample your content.

They’re focused about the subject, if you’re good enough, they’ll acknowledge it. I received a lot of compliments about my articles on the Cicarelli affair. Including a 50% bounce rate, it means only half of visitors coming from Google went away after reaching the article. The other half choosed to stay and explore a little.

Even the most focused bloggers now and then write about irrelevant subjects, and if you can indulge yourself once or twice, why not do that for a noble cause, a huge amount of new visitors, fortune and glory Thru Google AdSense?

A good writer can write about anything, and if everybody is writing about something, you’ve a lot of research material; you can gather the common sense, work your text around it and be truly original.

Your new audience will love it.

Technorati : adsense, cicarelli, meme, video

There’s a small little secret about learning another language: Don’t overthink it.

The more you translate, the less you get it. A word-by-word translation WILL lead to a major misunderstanding, sooner or later.

I’m watching an episode of American Dad right now. The main character is complaining about his co-workers at the CIA. “I’m telling the President on you”.

That’s a hard call. If you think in your native language, i.e. Portuguese, the phrase makes no sense. If you translate it word-by-word, makes sense but not enough sense. The secret is:

You understand the context and the meaning of the expression. It does not translate exactly but you KNOW the meaning. Lots of common words work this way. “mastermind” has no direct translation, but anyone with basic English skills knows WHAT it means.

People don’t take it easy, they think one must translate EVERY word and then, by magic, you are understanding another language. Of course the result is a patchwork of words that don’t sound right. With a single look at a single line of those words, one can say if the words were written by an English-born speaker or not.

Obvious? Sure, but you will not believe how gullible people are. A friend of mine, a professional translator, could not realize that the text of a so-called U.S. School book about Amazon was clearly a fake. Her anti-Americanism blinded her. Actually the story was on headlines a few years ago, and even Brazil’s top military organizations didn’t got it as the fake it was.

Check it if you think I’m making it out.

I had a friend that after 5 years of a very intensive English course couldn’t speak himself out of a Starbucks. Oh yes, he had no idea about what the hell a Starbucks was.

Wanna learn another language? A few hints: grammar, syntax, are the beginning, not the end. If you want to speak more (but never exactly) like a native, you must understand the culture, the slang, the daily gossip.

If you think you know English and don’t understand expressions like “third base”, “mooning”, “corn dog” or “one of these days… Right in the kisser”, I’m sorry to say but you never got it. You can speak like a well-trained robot translator but you’ll never, ever pick up a girl at a party.

Am I being harsh? Maybe, but there’s no other way. Most of the local English schools train people to translate words, not ideas.

It results in people with English degrees demanding for subtitles, and not exercising their English skills unless it’s absolutely necessary. If with related western cultures it leads to a LOT of misunderstandings, I can’t even start to realize how hard Chinese translation can be.

Multilanguage bloggers must check their real language skills. There’s a thin red line between a cute foreign speaking the language and a plain useless rant from someone who doesn’t have a clue about writing in another idiom.

If you want to check someone’s skills, try the simple phrase, from another American Dad’s episode:

“want me to Irish that coffee for you?”

If your test subject can’t explain the meaning of “Irish”, ditch him.

Technorati : foreign languages, multilanguage blog

It’s a no-win situation, every blog in its childhood has as major viewers spiders and bots from search engines and -oh boy- spammers. Some bloggers get frustrated because nobody answers or comments their witty posts. Face it, folks, nobody answers because nobody is reading.

What can we do about it?

Well, basically nothing. You can spam around, and get banished from every meaningful blog in the Universe, you can preach your friends but they’ll visit your blog once or twice, as a courtesy and then forget it, or you can post lots of meaningless content.

The last alternative is worse than spamming, because it fills up the net with trash and does nothing to increase your blog’s awareness. If you don’t have meaningful content you will not be indexed. Live with that.

But don’t kill yourself just yet. The best way of being indexed is to create new and meaningful content, make use of trackback and post meaningful comments on meaningful blogs.

Doesn’t matter if nobody’s reading your blogs now. Take it as a freebie; you can post whatever you want, with no consequences. I can even say that I’d love to do Bruna’s sister and nothing happens, but make no mistake, it will matter, soon.

Make your first posts as timeless as possible, because sooner or later, when the Googlebot finds you, they’ll be indexed, and found by willing visitors. One of my first real posts, teaching about Bit Torrent is still a daily champion on my visit stats.

Write once, profit forever. See? Is not that you’re writing for spiders and bots, you’re writing for humans, in the future. It’s just a matter of temporal perspective.

Technorati : bots, earlyblogging, googlebot, loneliness, spider

One can’t think of everything, and the creator of the pingback thing certainly didn’t. I noticed it first with this Lorelle’s post. Then, a few days ago, I received a pingback from another blog, with the same unusual set of characteristics.

It’s a valid pingback but the post is in the future. The Undiscovered Country. What makes?

Well, it’s simple, mcFly: The pingback thing sends a ping when the post is published, if the release date is set into the future, doesn’t matter, the ping will be sent during the publishing process, not during the first public release.

It explains a few well-crafted answers I’ve seen around, based on the excerpt and the title the author writes a counter-post and publishes it as soon as the original post is published. It’s a wild guess, but works most of the time. I did it myself once or twice.

The problem is: It’s Inside Information. You’re reading things you’re not supposed to read for a few hours, even days.

An evil blogger can tip some evil friend or use an evil nom-de-blog and write a post about the same subject, publish it before the original blog and claim plagiarism.

Sounds mean? I’ve seen worse.

Technorati : pingbacks, timetravel

Problem is, I don’t plan very often. I too look and feel human, and like the Cylons I do have a plan, but mine is a recent one.

I’ve been writing personal sites since 1996 or something, but I never imagined a website as my main source of income. Big mistake. Should’ve done it a long time ago.

My personal site turned Generic-blog, www.carloscardoso.com, exists since 1996, but it never took off, even during a time when it was running PHPNuke and franticly updated many times a day.

Why? Because it was closed in itself. No community sense, I never visited other sites and never left comments on other blogs, either.

When I started my World Conquer Plan, it was imperative to be aware of my past failures. I understood that good content is not enough, one needs networking. Not in a bad sense, but real networking, making others aware of your existence. Don’t need to beg for links, they’ll happen.

My plan involved commenting on lots of blogs, always posting wise and reasonable comments. It worked.

Of course that was only the beginning. There’s more, much more.

For now Bluehost is great and fulfills all my hosting needs, but I’ll sooner or later need a dedicated server. As a good planner I already know a few places to order one and how much it’ll cost.

I do plan for future growth too. I know I’ll reach a point where updated will be mandatory, and I can’t take care of a website with a few dozen thousand users / day AND provide content at the same time.

It’s simply not possible; the user-related work will overgrow the content-creation work.

So, in a foreseeable future I’ll hire a Sysadmin. On a perfect world I would hire Simon, the Bastard Operator from Hell.

Part of the BOFH’s functions will be:

• Keep all the softwares updated
• Check and update all Wordpress’ plugins
• Perform and download daily backups
• Find and technically evaluate new plugins
• Update the templates to reflect new plugins and/or solicited canges.
• Test the blog on 5 or 6 browsers and resolutions, identify problems and.. Solve them.

If I don’t plan ahead, I’ll find myself buried in paperwork, and that’s exactly what I don’t want to. If you think your blog is too small for planning that far, and that you’ll never have such expenses as Sysadmins or dedicated servers, you’re probably right. Small thinking always lead to small achievements.

Technorati : Ateam, BOFH, planning

It’s a fact of life. You WILL deal with fanboys, sooner or later. A really interesting article WILL attract fanboys, because they can’t watch their beloved whatever disassembled or criticised in any way.

If you’re new to blogging, you’ll not see the first attacks, they’ll strike you like eagles, like Luftwaffe Stukas. An innocent post, a minor observation will summon the fanboys like an ancient devil.

I’ve seen bloggers actually apologising for being right, changing their conclusions or simply raising a boycott on “delicate” subjects.

I see it as plain censorship. I’ve a post about Clémence Poésy, the actress who played Fleur Delacoeur in the last Harry Potter, naked. I state that I never watched a HP movie, and don’t like the character because it’s a plain copy of Neil Gaiman’s Tim Hunter, from the graphic novel Books of Magic.

LOTS of Harry Potter fans reach my post and leave their hate. Some ask for bans, some make threats to my health…

What can you do?
Well, if you’re wrong, apologise and research better next time. If you’re right, stay true to your ideas. Don’t let those fracking bastards bully you. Show your arguments, use plenty of examples and don’t let the fanboys take control of your blog.

If you know your post will attract enemy fire, get ready for it. Learn to sing Men of Harlech, divert all energy to deflector shields, keep them raised and don’t stick your head out of the foxhole.

Sustain your arguments with FACTS, unless it’s a personal opinion. Those you argue if you want to, or simply answer with a STFU, DIAF or another cute acronym.

If someone trackbacks your post complaining, follow the link and post ONE polite answer. Don’t you ever dare to lower your standards and start swearing like the fanboys.

You’re better than they, because you can argue using facts, not propaganda. Stick to it as a fundie sticks to his bible.

Just remember, unlike the bible, facts can evolve, so get ready to be proved wrong once or twice. I did a post a while ago about Iran’s Presidential blog, the folks at BoingBoing started a nice lead showing it could be a fake. While I was posting the story, an update showed the blog was, in fact, true.

That’s life.

Technorati : fanboys

For a while I tried to use the many lists I subscribed to increase my visitor counter. Guess what: Does not worth it.

Mailing lists are fun, here and there, but most of them are too small or too crowded. The signal/noise ratio is usually bad and with luck 5% of the visitors will click your link.

15% will complain about your “spam”, even if it’s something deeply related to the list’s subject.

2% will actually copy your content and post it to the list, without your permission (of course).

In a list with +4000 users my record was 120 clicks in a 24 Hours period. And I was a member for 5 years.

Some lists offer a better ratio, but usually they’re very small, and most of the members already sign to your feeds anyway.

I used to subscribe to dozens of lists, but now I don’t read more than 4 or 5. Blogs are funnier, and my visits increased, after I stop losing my time writing to lists and started to write posts in my blogs.

Technorati : blog promotion, lists

Nothing says “go to hell” like a message “Pleaseplease visit my blog”. ProBloggers don’t have time to waste; most of them simply delete such messages.

There are two things that ProBloggers read for sure:

1. 1. 1 - The blogs they like
      2 - Their comments.

If you’re #1 stop reading here. If you’re not, use #2 to reach your blog-heroes:

The best (and only 100% guaranteed) way of making a ProBlogger to click your link and read your writing is prove your text is worth of his/her time.

Start to COMMENT on your favorite blogs. Sign your real name, fill the blanks. Nobody likes Anonymous Cowards. Make yourself a smart presence on someone’s comments, sooner or later curiosity will prevail and he’ll click to find out what else such smart commenter writes about.

No AdWords campaign, no “read my blog or the dog dies” blackmail, no magic tricks.

Of course, the strategy above only works if you’re smart, know how to write a good comment and your blog doesn’t suck.

If you know of a trick to make ProBloggers read crappy blogs please mail me at once.

Technorati : adwords, comments, promotion

Some bloogers tell you to focus; others tell you to create as many blogs as you can. They all alert about blogs without focus as something evil, or, at least, not profitable.

Fine, but if my Blog focus on toothbrushes for carving mooses, and I want to talk about movies I watch, what do I do?

There are two possibilities:

1. Loose the focus and add the off-topic post

2. Create a new Blog

The first one is not a sin, if it happens once in a while, but if it becomes a habit, you’re doomed, your loyal readers will be upset about so many “useless” posts.

The second one only works if you’re willing to take care of another Blog and can generate enough content to make it stand by itself. Otherwise, forget the whole thing, and don’t post the off-topic at all.

People like me, who crave ADHS as a mutant power and call Ritalin “Kryptonite”, usually can’t live with a single Blog. I have my personal one, as generic as it can get a professional one with focus on ProBlogging and two English-language ones, Jungle Book itself and the Galactic Waste of Time, about humor ad sci-fi.

The last one is a bit undervisited (and underupdated), I confess, but it depends a lot of my mood. The others are more professionally run.

Can everyone do it? I doubt. There’s not enough time. I’m not even near my limit, but I have mutant superpowers, you know

My advice is: Find the absolute maximum of blogs you can post/manage and spread the subjects you crave among them. Try not to loose focus. Create a generic one so you don’t pollute the others and STOP when you reach your limit. A post in a generic Blog is better than a post in a Blog updated once a year, that NOBODY visits.

And NO, I was NOT bit by a radioactive blogger. I was born this way.

Technorati : ADHS, dispersive, felllowship