I was reading the recent controversy created by BG’s response to a post about blogs (BG’s post seems to have since been removed) and I thought I would throw out a few comments on a topic so near and dear to my heart.
First off, I agree with a great deal of BG’s thoughts. I didn’t start my blog to make money. I do accept advertising and I’m pleasantly surprised at what a nice little side income it has begun to generate but it certainly wasn’t my goal. I’m not even sure if I had a goal when I started my poker blog. If I did have one it was primarily to communicate with other players and to solicit feedback on my game.
I think it did accomplish the goal of introducing me to a group of interesting and fun people who share a similar passion. I’ve received tons of advice on my game in comments to my posts and privately in emails so I think I scored on that goal as well. So, I’ve achieved everything I set out to with this blog which is what makes it so damn difficult to figure out where it should go next.
What I do know is that my blog is a somewhat creative outlet for me. You won’t often see me posting about my personal life or my deepest darkest dreams but you’ll constantly get a steady supply of “Hmmm, you know what would be fun to write about . . .” I do give kudos to those who are talented enough to write about their personal life with the degree of honesty necessary to make it interesting but I just don’t posses that skill. I can’t bring those emotions across in text so I spare my readers the pain of reading it.
I think BG’s post points out my real problem with blogging and the blogging community though. Right now, blogging is like the dotcom bubble. Everyone wants to be the next Yahoo but nobody cares about offering value. There was a private email exchange the other day with some other bloggers about the obnoxious nature of some link requests we receive. These people have no desire to be a part of the community except for the benefit they think they can derive by slapping a WPBT banner on their site and getting hundreds of other bloggers to link to them.
Like BG, I don’t believe in this concept of worth being defined by what other people think. I’ve posted several posts on this blog about the Webby Awards and how insular that entire process is. If a popular Blogger A likes Blogger B then all the people who think Blogger A is cool start saying that Blogger B is cool. Even if Blogger A’s audience is only one tenth of one percent of the internet mainstream, if a few of those people sheepishly start calling Blogger B cool on their blogs eventually they’ll reach a point of saturation where the clueless journalist researching the topic concludes that Blogger B must be cool because there’s literally hundreds of mentions of him being cool.
All this really demonstrates is the concept of a fad. And if the idea of boosting your blog traffic using the fad model interests you, you’re likely only playing this game because it has become somewhat of a fad. As soon as something newer and shinier comes along you’ll be off to the next fad. And that, my friends, is the reason you have no traffic to your blog in the first place.
Personally, I feel that as the universe of poker blogs has increased the number of blogs worth reading has decreased. My RSS feed of poker blogs has gotten smaller over time and I continuously kick myself for not pruning it back even further. That’s not to say that I haven’t added new people to my list. I have. I just do so more cautiously and usually I boot someone else who has been on riding my personal threshold of worthiness for too long.
In Jordan’s post he talks about A, B, and C list blogs and I think he’s dead wrong. I think even worrying about your ranking in the poker blogging community is a sin. The people who have large readerships have those readerships because they have something interesting to say and can say it in a way that connects with people. There are poker bloggers who have been posting longer than I have who I can’t stand to read and based on their Bloglines numbers I’m not the only one who feels that way. Worse, in many cases, the longer they post the more their traffic trails off. Being first doesn’t put you into the A ranks. If you write quality content that people want to read they will find you. Sure, getting linked to from Pauly or Iggy or ?? can give you a boost but if you can’t retain that traffic by having interesting or insightful things to say then it’s a complete waste.
All of this brings me to the bigger issue for me which is the disappointment I have had recently with the poker blogging community. Whether it be the 600th charity tournament this week to help someone’s sister’s, boyfriend’s, uncle’s good friend with a hangnail or some asshat who decides to lash out because he’s been posting for two weeks and people haven’t broken down his door to embrace him into the community, the concept of what this community is has morphed from a group of people who shared a passion and became friends into something where people use the community as a form of validation.
Image borrowed from Flickr user MadJoker
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
dammit, amen. i took my post down because it didn’t say what i wanted it to say, and i screwed it up. but you took the salient points and i agree with all of the above…
Well spoken. Common sense reigns.
“…people use the community as a form of validation.” This comment right here is definetly the feeling I get to some degree on many of the posts I see out there. Validation in the form of comments when something I’ve posted resonates with folks is always nice but I made peace a long time ago that at the least it was my journal for my benefit and if no one commented (which is the norm for me) that’s ok.
Damn Bill, you’ve just made me completely rethink how I want my blog to be viewed. I thought I wanted it to just be a running blog of my poker activities, but I want it to be read, and you’ve made me realize I need to be more insightful and thoughtful in my approach. Thanks for the nudge. I’ve been reading you for a while and this is one of the best posts you’ve made.
I liked this post. Yet, I think that one thing was missed via the importance of blogs…friendship, man. Serious, I love playing cards with Bill until 5am when he has to put on a tournament at 8am the next morning. Walking with Maudie around the MGM and just chatting. You know, these things can’t have a $$ value. Shit, i didn’t even know people were making money off their blog…i figured that if you played 20/40 15/30 30/60 such as yourself that the few bucks you make on the blog would be nice, but no big thing…figure you win a lot more playing cards than you do via sponsorship. But that is my narrow minded opinion…
Right on, brother man. I’d add that there’s room on the internet for both kinds of blogs – the power-law types who are maximizing their monetizations, and the Roosters and Fat Guys who just like chewing the fat about cards and booze and cigars.
Hmmm… I was so in agreement with you until this:
“Whether it be the 600th charity tournament this week to help someone’s sister’s, boyfriend’s, uncle’s good friend with a hangnail… the concept of what this community is has morphed from a group of people who shared a passion and became friends into something where people use the community as a form of validation.”
Are you saying that using this community to raise money for great causes is a bad thing?
I think that’s one of the BEST things about this community!!! We never would have raised the money for Charlie Tuttle… or the money for cancer… or the money for Bobby B… without this community we created.
I don’t think we need to have them every week, but I don’t feel like we’ve been inundated with them either.
CJ,
No. Not all charity events are bad. The problem is when it becomes a fad to hold charity tournaments. There was one point several months back where people I had never even heard of were going around begging blogs to post something about their charity tournament.
It’s one thing if a long-time member of the community has a charity tournament. It’s a completely different thing when some guy who has had his poker blog for 2 months wants people to help someone five places removed.
And recently it has cooled off a bit but there was a period where they were a little too often and from people a little too new to the group. I think my statement on too many charity tournaments is perfectly congruent with the rest of my post. I played in the Charlie one and in several others but since then I’ve become a little more selective over time as I think some people have abused it.
Bill
(-EV game + -EV state of drunkness = +EV)
Personal, non-canned posting like this should be a reason to link/read blogs not artifical crap that can be read in a book or 2+2 forum.
Keep up the great postings Bill, and make sure you flag me down next time you’re playing Craps/Blackjack while hammered :)
Fair enough, Bill.
I would agree that there was a bad stretch of charity events, but I think it’s because when one was successful, everyone wanted a piece of the action.
I’ve played in very few and really haven’t felt much of a push to promote many more.
Just a small point to quibble in a good post.
I was going to bring up the same thing CJ did, but he has already done so, and you’ve done a good job of following up in the comments.
Bill, you’ve got a great thing here…keep it up.
Billy Legend wins again! Thought it’s not about winning. Is it? I dunno.
What I meant to say before going a schizo there is Well Said, Sir.
Personal, non-canned posting like this should be a reason to link/read blogs not artifical crap that can be read in a book or 2+2 forum.
Keep up the great postings Bill, and make sure you flag me down next time you’re playing Craps/Blackjack while hammered :)