Blogosis

What do you think about a blogger’s ability to stay absolutely anonymous? You know, I might not really be Justin Dupre. I might be your daughter’s next stalker or something, waiting for someone to give me their personal information so I can find them. Rawr. Is anonymity an issue and do you choose to stay anonymous on your blog? I covered this in an argument with Blogger Noob once, but I’m gonna go over my ideas, again.

I think there is just that much more power to a blogger that retains his anonymity. They can pretend to be something/someone they really aren’t if they are good at it. I’ve done this on a blog of mine to see the results. I’ve had some mistakes which got noticed by a few people, but before that, it was going relatively well. I was able to pretend I was a professional in the niche. People believed me! It was funny how easy it was to trick people.

For those that are honest, and let the world know who they really are, more power to you, too. You didn’t need tricks and gimmicks to put you on your blog. People know you because of you. People appreciate honesty, and will count on you for more information, even if you aren’t a guru on the subject. If you can tell people even a little about what they don’t know already know in a certain niche, you are helping out. It is much more ethical that pushing out a barrel of lies.

Why should you lie? Well, you shouldn’t, but you can. It is always an open option for anyone choosing to make a blog, and especially a successful one. It is difficult though. You can’t go around making claims that you don’t really have evidence to support. You might have to mock up some images, or get someone to help you in your plans. You’ll have to tell a bare minimum of information, as well. I got in over my head which is why my other blog failed. It was an experiment and for a while, a successful one.

I think if you are considering blogging to make money, this may be your best way to start out. Do a ton of research, make a second persona, and pretend you know what you are talking about. Copy what little, tiny starter blogs are saying (Many have awesome info that hasn’t hit the mainstream, yet) and start blogging about it.

For those that don’t mind taking it slow and steady, do it the natural way. Ultimately, it is all down to the content you provide and how many people you can get to read it, no matter how you do it.

For me, I keep it cool for you on this blog.

So, you sent out your interview questions in that email format I was telling you all about in the 1^st and 2^nd posts in this series. Now, have you gotten some responses? No? Well, let’s figure out why this is.

Too Busy

If you are sending out your questions to big bloggers, you can’t always expect them to reply. Some bloggers get a lot of questions and emails every day, and they don’t have the time, or patience to sit down and read them all. Honestly, they skip over a lot of them. This is why you need a unique subject tag. If it’s generic and something like “Hey” or “What’s up, xxx” then they may not respond. Those are things good friends and clients might send to each other, not complete strangers.

Boooooorrrrrringggggg

Did you make that email of yours way to long? I don’t want to read through 500 words to get to your main point. Like I said, make the intro and body short, and get straight to the questions. Make it easy to find the question to. Don’t bury it in a paragraph. Good formatting of your email comes into play.

You Should Already Know This

What questions did you ask? Are you asking questions they’ve answered 100 times on their blog? Avoid these questions that are already blasted on their blog. Read back a few months into their blog. If they’ve been questioned and answered, there is no reason to ask that blogger again. Ask unique and creative questions that they wouldn’t have normally come up with.

That will wrap it up for this series. I’m going to be emailing my interview questions to a few bloggers around the blogosphere and you should see some answers starts to arrive here soon.

Anyone want to see more short series or interview me? Send me an email at justindupre@blogosis.com and let’s get talking!

This will be Blogosis’ first short series of posts I will be doing. I’m doing this, because it is easy on my super busy schedule. I’ve got to make $500 dollars in the next 12 days so I can give out over $100 dollars in the Monthly Blogosis Contest. Hehe. Anyways, this series is about giving and receiving interviews, and is relevant as at the end of the series, I will post interviews I received from other bloggers experimenting with ‘the process of an interview.’

Making that initial contact with an interviewee is the most critical part of whether or not you will be successful in obtaining a proper interview with the blogger of your choice. Following in this series are some steps I have implemented to get more answers from bigger bloggers when attempting to get answers for my questions.

Get Personal

Whether or not you are interviewing 1 or 100 bloggers, you will want to be as personable as possible. This means no massive emailing plans with your interview questions. Don’t send out 100 emails with the others emails hidden in the CC address. None of that “Hello, and To Whom It May Concern” crap. This immediately lets your “interviewee” know that you know absolutely nothing about him/her, or that you weren’t interested enough in them to care to send an individual email.

Instead, send those emails out 1 by 1. Know the blogger you are sending questions to, their background, their age, their recent posts, and other miscellaneous facts. This will help you tune your question to the person you would like to interview. If you are writing to 13 year old Carl Ocab, you obviously wouldn’t write with the same verbatim as you would with some 60+ year old blogger that studies linguistics. Are you writing for a friend, or a very big and busy money blog? Changing your attitude towards different personalities is essential to get a good response.

The more effort you put into getting personal with them, the more likely they are to give you a response. You are generally looking for any kind of response, otherwise you know you are doing something wrong. Even a definite “NO! I will not answer this question,” is better than a “…”, although I think that means you may need a new question. Think of it like this. You see that hot girl/guy across the club floor. You can show interest, but until you get up in their face, you won’t get any answers (I know well how this feels. Haha).

If anyone wants to be a part of my interview, just make sure you have a blog (which you really should if you are here), and post a comment here. I’m sorry if I didn’t send it to you on my own already. I don’t read that many blogs anymore.

I want to that Mr. Polite for writing this title in my last post comments.

Anyways, for my dedicated readers, you probably noticed I wasn’t in the best of moods for the past week. This may have been from a lack of sleep, overworking myself, or just a silly mood swing, but did you enjoy it? General consensus was no.

Even had I been giving advice on how to make your blog better, which Andrew told me I hadn’t been in another post, but I still had a pissy, bitchy attitude, would you have listened to me? Chances are that you wouldn’t.

Do you listen to the guy at the party that talks about everything like he is an expert, and then you say something in denial of his facts, and that person will turn around to just tell you how wrong you are? I wouldn’t listen to that crap, no matter how right he was. I can’t stand people that need to be right, and when they are wrong, they won’t apologize. Don’t do this on your blog, ever. There could be thousands of people out there that have more experience than you in your niche or certain aspects of it. Open up and let them in on a discussion. Allow their ideas to flow in.

Make your blog friendly. Who honestly likes that bitchy, whiny ‘friend’ who will complain about all their problems without listening to yours? No one…

Thanks to my readers and subscribers for reminding me.

As a fairly new blogger, I gain massive amounts of experience every day. I am starting to learn how to use my blog more effectively to make it promote itself as well as me. I am becoming an extraordinary writer while doing it as well. Take a look at my first posts, and compare it to my newer blog entries. The difference is astounding to me. So basically this is a giant learning experience for me.

Unfortunately, I have a lot to learn, not just about blogging, but everything else. Today, I made a crucial mistake that is related to a mistake I made a few days ago when I missed my classes. I was able to make it to my 9 o’ clock class, which is my media production class. Today’s class was a continuation of Tuesday’s. It was mostly about the elements of art, which I mastered in high school, so I didn’t listen anyways. It is hard to listen to a teacher that says “Uhhhhhhh ummm uhhhhh” after every other word (I should give him some leniency though. He is Thai, but that does not make him a stupid person. In fact, he makes a lot of money from media production.)

When we got to the actual production session in the course, we were assigned an element. I was assigned “Line.” Simple enough. I just had to draw images that were made of lines. The kicker was we had to provide art to a specific audience. This reminds me off a post on how selfish your audience is, which I know see is applicable in art. Anyways, I was assigned “Generation X.”

Oh, this is where it goes downhill for me. Remembering those old, old, old Pepsi commercials from 13 years ago (1995) that had the slogan and something about Generation X in it? Well, I was 7 at the time and all I could remember was that phrase. So I thought it was like, a kids thing. You know? Emos, Goths, and Punks. Oh, if you are from this “generation x” you are either laughing your ass off, or unsubscribing from my blog. I hope it is just the first.

It was not until after I had turned in the assignment that I realized that Generation X was made up of hippies. I looked up Pepsi Generation X in Google Image search, and this is what I find:

Britney Spears in a hippie outfit. Generation X is a term coined for those hippies born in the 1960s to the 1970s. Yeah. Whoops. Way to know your audience, Justin. I am hoping my professor is confused as to what the difference are between Generation X in Thailand and that of Americas. Chances are, he is not, and I just failed an assignment. Big oops, but something that should have been completely avoidable.

If you don’t know, do some research. Research is definable by any type of way you can gain information. Had I gotten over my confidence and my other personal issues (I am a bit shy, and I didn’t want to come off as an idiot to the class) I would have done some research and asked the teacher what Generation X is classified. Instead of “Emo hair”, smeared make-up and writing LOVE IS PAIN with a black heart, I would have been drawing flowers and swirls with psychedelic colors, dude. LOVE IS PEACE would have been a more appropriate answer to the subtitle.

This applies even if you do “know.” As shown by my example, you may think you know, but you could be wrong. Look up some facts before you take a wild guess and post them on your blog. Provide your readers with real content, or they will prove you wrong and leave you. Ask for the facts if you can’t find them through traditional sources of research. Had I done this I wouldn’t feel like such a dip-head.

I’ve learned my mistake, and I will be applying this to just about every part of my life, school, work, and of course you will be seeing much more accuracy on this blog. Ever make an embarrassing mistake like this in school, at your job, or on your blog!? Step up and let it out. I sure feel a little better now that I have shared this.

Hints and News: The giveaway winner will be announced in about 12 hours! Also, Blogosis is one of the top 500,000 websites according to Alexa! Yay!

This morning the bus came at 11:55. I had just awoken. Today, my classes started at 9:00. I was peacefully dreaming of my lovely girlfriend (or was is ‘peaceful’… hehehe). Today was a harsh lesson learned in being on time. I have previously skipped classes because I just felt the content was too boring to stimulate me, or I had more fun things to do (Hello, supermodel girlfriend… I think that will be the official inside joke of Blogosis), yet today was the first day I had ever overslept through not one, but two of my courses.

Actually, I slept through one, and was forced to wait for another bus to pick me up halfway through the second course. I arrived at school just as my professor for Formal Logic had walked out of the classroom. I approached like the approach a kid makes to his teacher when he just misses his class. Yeah, good use of a simile.

“Well, I was well awake and kicking during your course, sir. I just had to sit on the only bus 11:55 until now. (Now was around 2:00 pm).”

“You had plenty of time to run here,” he replied jokingly (campus is 25 kilometers from my apartment. That is about 15.5 miles for the Americans) “No worries,” he reassured me, “Just come to class on Thursday. All you missed was a pop-quiz.”

I was prepared for that quiz, too. Quizzes are only 10% of the grade, but 10% is the difference between an A- and a B-. I wasn’t too happy that I missed an important part of a class I actually find mentally stimulating. On top of this class, I missed my Media Production course which I love. It’s a graphic design course with an amazing Thai artist, marketer, and producer. Those are the 3 best things rolled into one tiny guy named “Buddha.” Yes, his name is really Buddha. Awesome, right? I missed that, though.

Now, I could go blame the people that take care of the bus schedule for missing my Formal Logic course that started at 1:30. Who puts a 2 hour break on buses that show up every 45 minutes during the other times of the day? Had a bus come at 1:00 I would have made it to class just on time. I have no reason to complain for missing my first course at 9 am. This is why I really have no reason to complain as far as my mathematics class. This is my fault, and I am to take full responsibility of it.

Had the college not made it known when the buses come, I could have been excused for this. Had I just come to Thailand, and my school had not made an announcement as to when my classes were to start, they could have been put to blame for this. However, I am well aware of the bus schedule, my courses and their times. I was unprepared, slept far too late, and my alarm clock was set just too close to my hand.

What does this have to do with blogging? Like your education, blogging is a job for most. It requires time. Time requires a schedule. You need to blog on a schedule and prepare yourself for shocks to that schedule. I am not saying you need to schedule your blog posts, but you need to provide to your readers, just as I should have showed my presence in class today. Fail to show up and you fail your readers. Fail to show up to class, and you are placed into academic proration.

I have done a few things today to prepare myself if I am stuck in a similar situation like this one, and tomorrow I will finish those preparations.

Set your clock, and when it goes off, wake up!

I will no longer hit the snooze button. When it is time to get up, it is time to get up. When it is time to blog, it is time to blog. If something gets in the way of my school or blogging schedule, I will attempt to fix it by getting to the solution the fastest. To fix my school situation today, I got on the next bus and contacted my teachers with my situation. Luckily, they were sympathetic as they knew getting to school without a car is no easy chore. If you cannot blog now like you planned, put it in the top of your head, write it down, and get to is the next chance you can.

Have a back-up plan

In the case of blogging, I will always have unpublished articles in my ‘Draft’ box. If I can’t publish a new article, then I just sign on and click “publish” on one of my previously stored posts. In the case of school, I will always wake up in time, as I have now purchased a second alarm clock and placed it behind my monitor so I have to struggle to hit it.

Keep visual reminders

I grabbed 5 bus schedules from my university today. I know have one in my main wallet pocket, one in a side pocket, one schedule is tacked to the wall next to my computer, on taped to the top of my laptop, and one taped to my door. I will forever be reminded the last bus to get to my Formal Logic course is at 11:55. As for blogging, I always have the Wordpress CMS opened in my browser so I know I can always add a new post when I feel it is blogging time. I also keep track of my posts in a notebook.

That’s my story and those are my tips, kiddies. (I can say that now that I am 20. Yuck.) You will always have your schedule, but you need to be prepared to work around other peoples’ schedules. Stick to your schedule when you can and change it to fit the others. Usually, you can make it work out to where you bounce right back into your normal schedule.

This was a long article! One-Thousandth word is here.