sarafina said:
Telling somebody to not create a blog because you've read 10 that we're 'bad' (out of millions, i'm sure) is as logical as telling somebody not to eat apples because you've tasted a few that were bad.
There are not millions of aggregate t-shirt blogs. I seriously doubt there are even twenty (and if there are even that many, they're doing a really really bad job of propogating themselves).
I didn't say all 10 were bad, I said 7 were (this allows all ten to think they're part of the good three
).
I didn't make the comment based on some silly deductive logic. 70% of t-shirt blogs are bad, therefore any t-shirt blog is 70% likely to be bad? Err... no. I'm not stupid. Your apple simile is about as logical as something that isn't very logical at all. So
there!
The only good blogs I've seen (and I would submit the only good blogs at all) are written by people who felt a drive to write. If you need to be pushed in that direction and view it as a cynical business exercise, you will fail.
That is why I suggested it was a bad idea. Anyone who needs to be told to write a blog, shouldn't write a blog.
sarafina said:
Business is about taking risks. You forgot to mention the positive's that can be attained if blogging is done correctly (besides SEO optimization). It's silly to suggest not to do something because you *may* fail.
I didn't forget to do anything. I didn't mention the positives, because if you are doing it solely as a revenue raiser there are none as far as I'm concerned. Nor is it my job to point out the silver lining in every cloud.
Business may well be about taking (calculated) risks, but blogs are not about business - they're about personal expression.
This is not about risk and failure. I'm not suggesting people don't blog because they might fail. I'm suggesting they don't do it because when they fail they might make other human victims watch them fail. It's the readers I'm worried about (and specifically what little signal is out there getting even more lost in the all too abundant noise), not the hapless potential blogger.
Blogging is no different to any other writing. If you think "what an a**hole, that doesn't apply to me" - it probably doesn't. Writing is for those with a drive to write. Shrug off the shackles of the critic and be free.
Blogs have become the latest trend with certain herd-following marketers - that doesn't mean they are a good idea. They were meant for personal expression, and wrestling that into a commercial enterprise is a difficult and unfulfilling process. It can work if you have people willing to follow you there (hence the success of blogs like Cool Hunting), but the motivation behind those successes isn't self-promotion - it's the celebration of consumerism.
sarafina said:
Perhaps you should comment on specifics of what made those blogs bad and what people should do to improve. I think that would be more productive than telling people to not blog altogether.
It's not my job to tell people how to polish a turd.
If people insist on running a purely commercial blog, I'd suggest they steer clear of the t-shirt blog and instead opt for something interesting about their own business.
Most t-shirt blogs are written by transparent self-serving people pretending to promote other sites whilst really trying to achieve their own ends (there are, obviously, notable exceptions). They're also not updated even close to often enough. Readers aren't stupid - we see through it, and it's annoying.
Sometimes writing openly and honestly about your business can be interesting, but general blogs are a saturated market. A good example of an open blog would be
the blog of
Wavelength Clothing. The writer talks about starting a business, some of his practical concerns, how the business has affected his life and vice versa. It's interesting because there's actually a point, and because it's not about making sales. It's not about business so much as blogging a specific aspect of his life that happens to be commercial.
I wouldn't dissuade someone from writing a personal blog, so much as pretending to be something you're not (a portal site for example).
It's unlikely anyone could offer the readers anything new in the general t-shirt blog field. Obviously if someone is confident they can they should try, but that's about being driven by the kind of passion no amount of nay-sayers will dissuade you from.
