Well, it’s time to redesign again. I’ve decided to break up my blogs and launched a few new ones, including:

• Moving Pictures
• I Like Music
• Reading is Fun
• Twin Cities Liver

There’s also the old standbyes, including Spacebar (now with Mazie!), Quotables and ReViews.

I’ve organized everything into a blog network of sorts, so we’ll see how it goes. The one blog I’m not so sure about yet is the Twin Cities one. But we’ll see what I stick with. I still have more things to tweak (especially this blog) and I’m thinking of setting up a catch-all blog where you can read the latest updates from everywhere (I have a psuedo one set up, but it’s not what I’m going for).

Oh yeah. You might notice the iTunes banners. I’m an iTunes affiliate now, which means I make a small percentage on any iTunes purchases you make after clicking on one of my links. It’s yet another free way to support my blog.

A little over a week ago I posted a survey to get some reader feedback. A whopping 24 people have given their input (more than had taken it five days after the survey, but not enough to drastically change the results), which isn’t exactly enough for a scientifically viable survey

Blogging like this is such an odd thing sometimes. Rarely do I realize how many people are reading along. When I look at the numbers it seems like a lot, though I wonder if they’re actually reading every day and just sitting quietly in the shadows, or if it’s a lot of search engine traffic reading something I wrote months or years ago and never coming back. It’s a strange medium.

What’s especially fun is when people tell me they’ve been reading. It’s an odd ego boost, but also exciting. My first thought is wow, they actually read what I have to say. My second thought is oh no, they actually read what I have to say. And later, after my pride has gone up and down, I start to think about the potential. And that’s what I like.

A week or so ago an old high school friend tracked my blog down and posted a comment from Afghanistan. That’s amazing. Reconnecting like that, even if it is the loose connection of e-mail, never would have happened otherwise. It’s a minor and obvious example, but the ability of the net to capitalize on real life relationships is so cool. It makes dreams reality, not in an overnight, sensational way like we expected during the dot com years, but in the slow and steady, surprising way that networks pay off.

My blogging survey has been up for five days and I’m about to shut it down. Let your voice be heard now or just whine in the comments later.

To share some preliminary results:

• Most of my readers come from Minnesota, followed closely by California.
• More than 70% of my readers are between the ages of 23 and 29.
• Gender-wise it’s a nearly 50/50 split.
• You like my personal blog entries. It was the only content type to get a majority of votes.
• Speak is edging out Mazie in the cutie contest, though a majority didn’t want to decide.

These results are hardly scientific, and probably inaccurate considering the small sample. But I like stats. They’re fun.

Vote Quimby! (I mean, go take my survey)

Rob Williams has an interesting post about Christian web sites targeting Christian readers. He has a graphic from the American Marketing Association blog about Democrat and Republican blogs and the incestuous linking. They’re basically two different worlds that rarely cross. Rob wonders if Christian blogs (and then he corrects himself to look at web sites in general) operate in a similar manner. It’s probably true. As a Christian, how much interaction do I have with non-Christians on the web? Probably not as much as I should for as much as I talk about the importance of the evangelistic part of my faith.

And I think blogs are the most obvious case for this. You usually read and interact and link with the blogs that cover what you think about. If you think about faith, well, you get links to Jordon Cooper and Church Marketing Sucks and maybe a random non-Christian like Jason Kottke (though honestly I know nothing about his spiritual beliefs). But for the most part it’s going to be Christian blogs.

I think someone like Darren Rowse is probably doing a better job of it. In an interview he gave he talks about trying to connect in a deeper way with one blogger every day. That’s your basic networking plan right there, but that’s very quickly a ton of folks he’s forming relationships with. I’m not saying he’s an evangelistic dynamo or anything (again, I really have no idea, I’m just rambling), I’m just noting that the circle of sites he reads, links to and interacts with is broader than a few Christian blogs. It helps that he’s a full-time blogger, but you get the idea.

Interesting stuff.

The other day I rambled a whole bunch about changes I’d like to make to my blog, but I doubt most of you got through it all. I’ve put together a survey that covers some of those same issues so you can easily give your feedback.

So please take my 10-question Thoughts Survey and give me your input about the future of my blogging.

It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Thanks for participating. I’ll share the results when the survey’s over.

If anyone has had problems posting comments, I apologize. I added the url “mail.com” to my Blacklist, which inadvertently blocks anybody with “mail.com” in their e-mail address or url or whatever. So anybody using a gmail account may have been blocked. Sorry for the inconvenience. We’re less stupid now.

So there I go, thinking about blogging again. First I admit my schizophrenia, then I cut back, then I admit to being a blogaholic and talk about doing more, then I actually start doing more. Sheesh. Just when I think I have this habit under control, I go and read about six-figure bloggers. I’m hopeless.

But actually, it’s filled me with a lot of hope. I’m just not sure what to do. [this is going to be one of those long rants, so most of you may want to bail now]

Continue reading The Future of Thoughts →

Darren Rowse, the six-figure blogger I linked to the other day, links to a post about other profitable bloggers:

• Instapundit earns $8,000-10,000 per month.
• Andrew Sullivan raised $80,000 in one week (though that was an isolated incident)
• Markos Moulitsas Zuniga made more than $100,000 on his site in 2004.

And there are others, but those are the impressive ones. This is becoming an obsession for me. It’s just so hard to ignore folks making big money from blogging. I want to make big money from blogging. Heck, I’d settle for a little money. Just something to chip away at the college loans.

I think it’s also just encouraging to see that blogging doesn’t have to be the waste of time some people think it is. I know it’s not a waste of time, but for some people it requires a montary value to be worth any time at all. I think the big money bloggers are pretty rare at this point, but what’s not rare are the folks like me who have made a few connections through blogging, which have possibly led to a job or two. That’s justification right there, assuming my countless hours of joy and satisfaction aren’t enough for you.

But I still wouldn’t mind raking in $10,000 per month.

Pro-blogger Darren Rowse expects to earn a six-figure income this year from blogging. Yikes. He writes for 17 different blogs (and you thought I was an addict) on a variety of different topics. (link via Jordon Cooper)