Whenever I write one of these posts people always assume something has annoyed me or that I'm whining or being ungrateful or something. I'm not doing any of these things. I just think it's a useful service to provide now and then.
1) My blog doesn't exist to promote your business, your pet cause, your blog, etc... and I'm under no obligation to do so. Having said that I'm always open to hearing about cool and interesting things.
2) If you want to my attention or that of other bloggers the worst way to do it is to send an email which says "please check out my blog" or "please blogroll me." The best way to do it is to send a link to a particular post and include the content of the post in the email. I'm much more likely to read it then.
3) While I read a lot of blogs I don't, as some imagine, have the entire blogosphere jacked into my head. There's lots of good stuff out there that I'm not aware of. I can't read everything.
4) If you're thinking about starting a blog to make money, don't. If you start a blog and manage to make money, great.
5) If you're upset that your blog "only" gets 2000 hits per day you have a strange expectations. You Command An Audience of Two Thousand People Every Day. Holy shit! That's a lot. Nothing wrong with wanting more, but it's still pretty incredible. On 9/11, a record day for him then, Instapundit got about 5000 hits.
6) To have a very high traffic blog a necessary condition is that you post consistently a lot. It means that great writers who take a lot of time to craft their prose are unlikely to have a high traffic blog. That is not unfair or wrong or anything, that's just not how you generate consistently high traffic. If you are a tremendous writer who spends lots of time crafting your prose, blogging is perhaps not the best medium for you except as a useful tool for self promotion if your goal is high daily readership.
7) It's quite possible that you have a wonderfully interesting blog to other people that doesn't actually interest me much. I have my own idiosyncratic interests and preferences. Maybe the layout bothers me. Maybe I have a hard time reading it for some reason. Maybe there's something about your writing that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe your focus just doesn't interest me. There's no reason I need to be a fan.
8) Presumably bloggers with less traffic get slightly less email than bloggers with more traffic. It may be easier to get their attention with something good. That should not be interpreted to mean that I'm discouraging people from emailing me, just that I can't always process all of the email I get.
9) If all of the "elite" bloggers and the DLC have conspired to opppress the True Progressive Voices of the Internets then no one has let me in on the plan, and certainly no one has given me a lot of money to help make it happen.
