Hi folks,
I have been writing this blog for almost one year, and for the last six months traffic levels have been essentially static, and I have so far failed in my initial objective. This objective was to find other (or at least another) endurance athletes with an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) stent graft. I just wanted to talk to someone in my situation. The closest person to this goal that I have found so far is an endurance athlete in Canada, Pauline, who has yet to receive a stent graft or other form of therapy. This is a watch and wait situation. My initial goal can now be pursued via the AAA Awareness Facebook site, to which I was kindly introduced by Pauline. You can read some pretty interesting and hair raising AAA stories there.
My blog has slowly morphed into a place where I write tips and tales about endurance training, with my target audience being older people in need of safe training approaches. I suspect that I am so far failing to reach this group, but I am working on it through Twitter and other avenues. I plan to continue blogging here for the foreseeable future, largely about thoughts on safe and effective training methods, whilst I simultaneously develop my downloadable training manual for ‘monetary gain,’ combined with a sense of value. I watch many people making the same mistakes that I did, so I think that there is a niche for this product. I will now modify this site, based upon a recent conversation with a fellow blogger, Tim Soulo of Blogger Jet.
The standard and classic economic development mantra is: “Okay that is the product what is the market and how do you intend to reach that market?”
Franklin said “make the perfect mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door. Franklin was totally WRONG.
You need to be known. Yours is a very small stall in a laberinthine mall (the web). It needs lighting up, music and nice things…
Hit the pundit trail. Get media interviews, they are free, advertising is not. You may be unique, trade on it… Contribute to Tele and radio. Get to be KNOWN by the wider world. Do something promotional. Hawk yourself about…
Your market is not just athletes with stents. That is small. It is athletes who want not to need a stent. That is large.
Shout about your perfect mouse trap.
As for writing skills you will not be challenged by that there are plenty of good creative writing tutors. Just unlearn all the stuff needed for learned journals so readers, listeners or viewers do not get bored and nodd off.
This you can do.
Loved this one, so I tweeted it out as ‘from my brother.’
“Your market is not just athletes with stents. That is small. It is athletes who want not to need a stent. That is large.”
My writing course is going well, and yes, they are saying the same stuff. Let go of your left brain logic circuits and forget about being a scientist. Forty years of publishing in science is designed to beat the happy writing out of you. But I am coming back, and learning to dance (just like Socrates at 70).
-k @FitOldDog
PS Yep! Finish product, and start marketing. This should be fun. This you will find at http://olddogsintraining.com
Ah, I went dancing with Heather Whiting when I was 14. I had my secrets. I am still a mediocre dancer but that does not stop me from enjoying it.
That has been my problem, trying to work out why people enjoy it. I see a glimmer of hope on that front. -k
Oh dear. Let me try to explain. Heather was female. Dancing gave me tactile contact with a female… For some reason I prefer the scent of females. She was also good humoured… She had moved away when I came home on my first leave. So I went dancing with other females. I have never dance with a man.
Consult biology texts for rest…
I am learning to enjoy dancing alone in order to earn my sword.
So you dance to be close to women, not because you actually like to dance? I like the latter, of course, but the former is achievable, and will thus heighten the enjoyment of the latter.
I find this whole dancing thing intellectually fascinating and challenging. Getting to be close to females is generally not a problem because fortunately many of them like being close to us, but I don’t like to dance with that objective in mind as there are other approaches whereby I have fun and achieve that goal. Furthermore, if I do something to be with a woman, she will expect me to continue doing it whether I like it or not, and then the strategy is exposed.
Thanks to Continuum studies I am sensing that there is pleasure to be had from dance in the absence of other humans. I cannot imagine wanting to dance with guys, but I wish those well who do – the extended phenotype lives on, thank goodness.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress in dance (enjoyed it last night).
-k @FitOldDog
My mantra is every article must do one of the following “inform, educate or entertain” for any of my sites, I also enlisted hiring writers to keep up a moment of 2-3 posts publishing a day since it is a magazine type of site with so many topics covered.
I did start blogging 3 years ago and had only done technical documents for work or poetry prior to that, no experience with formal writing but I write like I speak. I have seen other blogs start around the same time and skyrocket to more success, but I have also known other blogs started at same time where my traffic reports are double to triple what they achieved in 3 years.
I actually only blog part time, never more than 20-25 hours per week, I hardly do any link building, commenting on other sites, and very little SEO research except for occasional keyword or topic trend lookups. I just cover what I like and see what comes back, the difference is I am not interested in making blogging in any form my full time job, I am just doing it as a hobby and one that I tell people makes me money instead of a hobby that you sink money into.
BTW, why is the donation button on the right for my poetry donations? Did you mean to have people donate to my poetry, or were you trying to set your own pledgie button?
Hi Justin,
The button is there to support you, as I liked your poetry as best a philistine can.
I am using blogging for two reasons, (a) to reach out to other people with aortic aneurysms, or any other scary stuff, that they wish to overcome and thus continue with their sport, and (b) to build network presence to help my nascent business, which was necessitated by my voluntary escape from a successful 40-year science career (time for a change) combined with a longterm prediction of a need for money in order to have fun, and thus my entry into e-commerce (http://olddogsintraining.com) that I wish to use to generate revenue in order to help older guys workout with minimal risks, based on my experience in sports.
I wish I could have your name on the button – it’s not for me, it’s to support The Arts and those creatures I love, Dragons (what the hell happened to that fourth book of the Eregon series?).
-k @FitOldDog
I spent a good 1/2 hour on Pledgie last night and there is no way to change the button, if you use the image I sent, when they click on the image or button it will take them to a page that explains what the donation is for, but yeah I wish it was customizable.
Ironically I haven’t read the Eragon series, barely have time to read novels the last one I finished was Dune: House Corrino during the summer. My love of dragons started when my father bought me an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook when I was like 9 years old and I became a huge D&D geek since. Dragonlance novels and of course Smaug were classic dragons and read at the time as well.
Then of course is my Dragon Tattoo and my DragonBlogger identity and website. It is easy to see how mankind believed in dragons from the bones of dinosaurs being discovered way back in the day.
Hi Dragonman,
I highly recommend the Eregon series IFFFFF he writes the last one, and it is not lame. It is due out soon, so I’ll read it and let you know. Some series are spoilt by a poor finish – e.g. Other Land. There must be some way to tweak that button. Keep on trucking.
-k @FitOldDog
I agree with Tim. I am amazed how you can do it daily. I think that is hard to do.
Hi Sue, Tim? Riding this weekend? -k @FitOldDog