Can’t resist the temptation to reflect.

Tomorrow marks a special occasion for me – one month since I began this blog - and therefore 23:59 today will give me my month’s stats. The Glenfiddich is at the ready [my beloved single malt can’t be bought over here] and now I’ll attempt neither to be embarrassing nor unethical:

1…First up - why blog? To put it another way, into which categories do bloggers fall? Seems to me there are five sorts:

i…those who need a blog because they are either journos, pollies or a combination of both, who have regular column inches or minutes of airtime and their hits are stratospheric. Good luck to them because they work hard at it.

ii…those selling something, e.g. Apple.ru are about to open a forum/blog and many other firms do the same. Then there are the specialist music blogs with info on what’s on and where.

iii…those who are highly respected in their fields e.g. economists, who have worked long and hard for their readerships and good luck to these as well.

iv…those who are clearly good writers but come from outside the blogosphere and occupy a position somewhere around the periphery. The main problem for these is how to thematize [thematicize?] and to differentiate; also where to pitch their blog. Are they trying to publish some work or are they commenting on some field they are credible in?

v…those who just want to open a blog because it’s a good idea and these folk produce post after post after post which no one reads.

If we list these five groups down one side of the table and then divide the table into three columns, we can label these columns:

a] those who are helpful to poor beginners like me, who answer e-mails when they can and who offer advice. You can always tell these people by this sort of comment: ‘Keep at it, don’t get discouraged; if you’re consistent, the results will come.’

b] those who are in a blog club with certain other bloggers and though they sometimes visit you, they are really a bit busy, don’t you know.

c] those for whom the least said the better. You can always tell them by their skiting about their visitor numbers, the accolades they prominently display about themselves and their complete disdain for the novice, whom they perceive as ‘no threat – the guy gets no hits at all’.

So, back to my month’s stats.

2…Country share: I set out to write with Britain, Australia and Canada in mind but soon had to consider the Americans. Who knows what they saw in the blog but it was then necessary to adjust it and I watch carefully what they read and try to do more on those topics. At one point, the visitors were 42% American and at another point 66% British. Currently the leader is me, myself, I, with 30%, which I don’t like.

The French, thank goodness, are starting to trickle in now and about time – I’ve been running things in French since the start. The Australians only seem to come in when I do ‘love and relationships’. What does that say? The Canadians are fairly consistent, though thin on the ground.

3…Why continue? It’s a hell of a lot of work and the September to December rush is about to start on the official work front; so who knows how to find the time to run a blog then? Yet it’s necessary.

Any plans? Currently I’m negotiating with a couple of people to set up a syndicated blog with specific targets, which will be publicized mid-September. It will include a commercial orientation as well.

4…Which brings us to the question of specialization. I quite like Chris Dillow’s site because he writes on a refreshing variety of topics [ditto Tim Worstall and Clive Davis – well Norm too – well quite a few, really] but he writes, amusingly to me, always from an economist’s perspective. I’d love to see a religious piece from him, based on statistics.

5…Plagiarism, attribution and beat-ups. Every writer is tempted but the rule, perhaps, is this:

If it’s a quote – attribute. If it’s someone else’s reportage, either don’t use it and keep only the facts and statistics to work into your own article OR run the other guy’s piece and attribute. This is a critical area.

When to link to another site from where the material originally came? This is a grey area. For example, one piece on nuclear energy came from The Age, who got it from the Asia Times, who got it from Reuters, who co-wrote it with AP and it appeared in the Guardian. So, who owns the rights?

6…Whither nourishing obscurity? Though the visitors are few, they do return and that’s encouraging. There are currently seven most popular posts and they’re on diverse topics; so that’s clearly the way to go.

I personally like anomalous little stories on any topic and from any era. For example, how could Anne Boleyn keep Henry on the leash for seven years and at her age? Was Richard III wronged? See Josephine Tey for this. Could giant calamari explain the demise of the crew of the Mary Celeste? If so, why was there no discernible damage? Why was the Titanic insured for loss just prior to her voyage? And so on.

Plus all the current affairs but it’s always the anomalies, rather than the reportage, which I find interesting.