What Do You Think About Porn? May 30, 2008

Photo: JJ and Special K

Note: This photo is the opposite of what I am talking about here…

I’ve been wondering about the value of porn lately, especially after finding out about RedTube.com, which I am not going to link to here, because it is so very, very NSFW, and I don’t want to be responsible for any headlines in someone’s local paper.

Anyway, I was looking at that site, which is like a porno YouTube, and I realized that I could create my very own adult site just by typing in a fetish and then embedding the videos that come up with their convenient embedding code. There are thousands of videos on there, and they are all completely free to look at. Some of them are 20 minutes long. No, I did not look at ALL of them. And no, I will not be creating my own adult site. Just in case you’re wondering.

So porn is free to look at and free to share. What does this mean for the people making the porn sites? Less money? I would think so. Who would pay for “new pics” and video when this is available?

What does it mean for the actors in the videos? I’m quite sure they get paid little to nothing. Which leads me to the question of WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND put their nibbles and bits (and their face) on the internet for everyone to see? I mean, talk about a career killer. Also, personally, I would really hate to be in the local grocery store and find out that people were talking about how I style my pubic hair. People think that the Internet is totally anonymous, but it doesn’t always turn out that way, does it?

I think we can agree that porn itself has become devalued. By my logic, this means that participating in porn devalues people more than it did before. At least before, you could rationalize that people did it for the money. If someone is doing it for free, they are either doing it for the kicks (and those are some mighty risky thrills there) or they don’t care who sees them doing what with who. This bugs me. Don’t the thrill seekers realize that this is a little more high stakes than the Mile High Club?

Of course, if the person’s face is not showing, it is not as risky. If you look at who’s face shows, it is more often than not the woman’s. Why is this? What does it say about the respect that woman has for herself?

Of course, the really big issue I have with this new era of online porn is that it is so darn accessible. I wish online communities would police themselves better. Even requiring a credit card charge of one cent would keep out lots of underage folks.

Photo: Paulo Fehlauer

I have a story that I am ashamed to tell.

My computer is located in the family room, and my nine year old is always supervised on it. He is only allowed to go to specific sites that have been preapproved. Anyway, one morning, he woke me up and asked if he could play on the computer. I mumbled “yes” and turned over and went back to sleep for an hour.

The next week, I realized that the Google search bar had been used to search for “naked girls”. My son was eight at the time. Believe me, naked girls aren’t what they used to be. I was appalled, and I wanted to hit myself upside the head for letting him on it for even a moment unsupervised. I hadn’t thought that at age eight, I needed to worry about my son being curious about these things. Even worse, it turns out that a friend of his had told him how to find the pictures.

Net nanny software is not a cure-all, and it is fantasy to think that most children are supervised on the computer. They aren’t. I can say that my child won’t be unsupervised again, but that’s not the point. What do we do about kid’s ideas about sex becoming warped at such a young age? Personally, I want the government out of my computer, but it certainly doesn’t seem like self-policing on the part of parents or Internet porn sites is taking place. So what to do? It’s a problem I don’t see going away.

I hate that some of my students, who have problems seeing the beauty that the future could hold for them, may be the people in free porn videos someday.

I dunno. This one has me stumped.

Hit the Water, Not the Hooch May 30, 2008

I don’t know about you guys, but now that summer’s here, I’m about to head down to the coast with my kiddo for a couple of days. Summertime in Texas is hot, hot, hot, although not quite as hot as when I lived in Arizona.
Arizona boating and swimming are popular too, believe it or not. Lake Havasu is a mighty big lake out there in the desert! My first thought is to escape it, and water is the best way to do that. I’m sure lots of other people feel the same way, so be safe when you hit the water this summer!

Boating Operating Under the Influence is a no-no! And watch out for those who are. 50% of all boating fatalities in Arizona were alcohol related. For more information, you can find plenty of
Boating Education Online.

Have a safe summer!

A Very Long List of Ways to Get Blog Traffic May 26, 2008

Photo: splorp

I, for one, wish I could just sit back writing my words of questionable wisdom and have the blog traffic come my way. Shortly thereafter, of course, a New York Times editor would see my brilliance and offer me a column. Okay, let me set my crack pipe aside for a moment and get real about what it takes to get blog traffic. This is something I know about. As far as that column in the Times? I have no idea, so good luck.

Caveat: Much of this advice assumes that you neither have a job or much of a life outside of blogging. Good luck getting tons of traffic unless you are a professional blogger.

Social networking is what’s hoppin’ in the online world right now. Get an account at these sites ASAP!

1. Twitter Just don’t use it to broadcast that you wrote on your blog every time you tweet. Oh, and if you’d like to follow me, here I am.
2. Kirtsy A reincarnation of Sk*rt. This one in particular is a great way to promote a crafty biz.
3. Digg Tech stuff and stories of doom.
4. Reddit Excellent for funny photos and more stories about doom.
5. MyBlogLog I liked this better before Yahoo took it over. It got this blog going.
6. Blog Catalog There’s a good community over here. You can blatantly promote your blog on the bulletin board without censure.
7. Bumpzee. This one seems like a clone of the previous two.
8. StumbleUpon My absolute favorite. I get steady traffic from here, and have found some really awesome sites.
9. Facebook If you don’t mind losing all online privacy.
10. MySpace Perhaps not for everyone.
11. Linked In This one has done nothing for me personally.
12. Flickr This one is nice if you actually know how to take pictures.
13. Entrecard I love this. If you want, you can just put a card up and check your account every few days. You’ll get traffic regardless of how much you involve yourself, though of course, the more time you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. Kinda like marriage.

14. Comment. Forget about the fact you ever enjoyed actually reading blogs. Comment, comment, comment. With all the commenting you’ll be doing, you’ll give the impression of being a caring reader. Yes, you’ll be a fraud.

15. Bonus fraud points for only commenting on Do Follow blogs, a list of over 200 can be found here.

16. By this token, you can disable the No Follow tag in your comments as well, thus earning a link on the above list and attracting people who are only interested in promoting their blog. On the other hand, you never know. Someone may become smitten with your content.

17. Leaving a signature line that links to your blog in forums. You can also link to your blog posts. Don’t be a spammer, though! Here is how to do it. You also might want to try some of these forums, since a lot of these folks are interested site design, etc.

18. Yahoo Answers! If the answer’s in your blog, don’t hesitate to link! For example, if you have a tech blog, lurk around the tech section and answer questions. You’ll get article ideas while you’re at it.

19. Put your blog’s link in your outgoing email. Be careful with this one. If you’re like me, there are some people you’d rather not let on to what you’re up to.

20. SEO your blog. I’ve found that my blogs comes up in tons of search engine results for the phrases “how to masturbate” and “how to make hooch”. It doesn’t matter that I am only an expert on one of these things. The keywords work.

21. Get links from other blogs. I’ve found that I am still getting traffic from links that people put on their blogs ten months ago. So how do you do this? Link to others. I’ve been really terrible about doing this lately. If you don’t like linking to others, you’d better write some damn good content.

22. Write damn good content.

23. Hand out business cards with your blog’s name on it. This works well if you have a local blog that you are trying to promote (and get advertising for). I don’t recommend doing this if you write about things like your cat vomiting on the carpet. It makes you look a bit desperate.

24. Host a contest on a regular basis. Unless you are giving away something big, make it simple to enter. People will come back just to see what you’re up to. I really enjoyed doing my page view contest. A good place to promote your contest is over at Contest Blogger

25. If you’re up to it, promote your blog on YouTube by making a silly or informative video that links back to your blog. I keep filming my animals, but all they ever do is lie around.

26. Put lots of images in your posts. Google image search sends me quite a bit of traffic. DO NOT name your photos things like may1208.123. Try something like “blog money” or whatever you’re optimizing your blog for. I have one (somewhat neglected) blog that uses cats to draw readers.

27. Make a page on Squidoo about your topic.

28. This is a no-brainer, but if you have other blogs, link back to the blog you’re trying to drive traffic to. You can set up an entire spider’s web of blog links this way if you have several.

29. Make a something to give away. Plug-ins are a great way to drive people to your site. Don’t do an ebook unless you are sure there is demand for it and you are an awesome writer. It could potentially be a huge waste of time.

30. Make a template. If you do this, put a link to your blog at the bottom of the template. If the template’s really good, you’ll get traffic. If not, at least you’ll get a bunch of links and rank higher in the search engines. Shoot, you could end up making a business of this doing paid work, and then you could quit your job!

31. Make a button. Encourage people to take it by requiring it for a contest, giving it out as a prize or whatever else you can come up with.

32. Write a guest post for a blog that has GOOD TRAFFIC. Of course you’ll include a link to your blog.

33. Submit an article to a site like Article Dashboard. Other people get to take your article and use it for their own blogs, but they are supposed to leave the links you put in the article linking back to your blog. This is great for SEO as well, since some of those article sites themselves have high PR.

34. Advertise. You can put ads on other blogs, places like Entrecard and StumbleUpon, and through more expensive venues like Google Adwords.

35. Use PayPerPost. You can get other bloggers to write about your blog and include any links you’d like for a fee of about $10 per 100 words for PR1 to PR 3 blogs.

36. Start a weekly activity, like this one for writers.

37. Post regular nude pics of yourself, like this really cool chick. Just don’t do this if you’re a teacher…

38. Write really mean stuff, like Violent Acres so that people will come back despite themselves.

39. Make a tutorial. Anything beginning with the words “how to” is search engine gold. U-Handblog is my favorite example of monetizing a site with tutorials. Of course she gets zillions of readers too, from all over the world, it appears.

40. Become part of a Blog Carnival. Before you bother though, make sure that the carnivals get decent traffic.

41. Enter the writing lotto by joining BlogBurst. It is possible that your writing could be picked up and put on a major news site. Hello, USA Today!

42. Try the BlogUpp widget. It’s on my sidebar. It hasn’t worked for me, but it has worked for the people who’s blogs I’ve clicked on…at least a little bit!

43. If you have time to burn, here are 55 Active RSS Feed Directories. I think I wasted my time on this one. Perhaps it works better for blogs that are a bit more “niche” than Bloggrrl.

45. And if you get tired of doing numbers 14-43, you can always do some more social networking. Actually, these sites can be pretty specific, and therefore may be more helpful than some of the more popular sites.

46. Lose a whole hell of a lot of weight. Be sure to include pictures or it didn’t happen.

47. Unless you’re the secretive type, let your friends and family know about your blog. You’ll be astounded at how little they care, but your younger niece will be delighted.

48. Do something outrageous in real life so that people will want to get ALL of the juicy stuff. They’ll head straight for your blog, and if you’ve done something like sleep with your state’s governor, they’ll read it all, even the comments. You may even get blurbs in the news along with your blog’s URL.

49. Sign every blog post with a famous person’s name. I haven’t tried this, but it sounds good for SEO. Perhaps I’ll be posting as Jessica Simpson from now on.