We, the parents of our two beloved, wonderful children, were finally able to get a date night this weekend. A real one, by ourselves, where we had a trusted friend take care of both children while we left the house and did the things that remind us of who we are as individuals. Apparently, we are not just Mama's Milk Factory or Dad's Montessori Child Delivery service, but real, reasonably intelligent and dare I say likable human beings.
Spending an hour at a wine bar and paying a visit to Powell's Books probably sounds excessively pedestrian to most Portland folks, but if you have recently come through the well-worn path of childbirth while simultaneously wrangling a toddler, you know how important this is.
And for us, it is monumental.
Why the word monumental? As in, deserving of a public art installation or a commemorative plate from the Franklin Mint?
Here's the story.
There's a lot of buzzing going on today about whether the RIAA is trying to quash the creation of backup MP3's, the actual act of ripping a CD, for personal use. Unfortunately, this is just increasingly typical blog-o-matic blah-blah-blah. How so? How can I say that? Et tu, Blog-us?
Can the mainstream press please buy a clue from the orange stack of Chance cards and get over the whole "Radiohead - name your price" thing? Brilliant marketing? Yes. Effective? Yes. One time deal? Who cares?
Here's the simple truth: Artists get literally next to nothing on album sales when they are marketed by a major label. That means that they get, if they are lucky, a couple of cents per album, and that is only after every single entity who can get their dirty swollen little fingers into the pot gets paid. Where does the band make their money? Very simple. Touring and Merchandising.
So when a band says to hell with the 500 people in the middle who want to get paid for their work, and they buy some bandwidth and put it up for download, and then offer it for whatever people think its worth, they are going to make money if the music merits it.
Question for you writers of good headlines: Is it better to write a headline that may be slightly misleading (like the one wynand32 points out here just to get readers to read it? Meaning, a double meaning or only a sliver of truth, but a sliver nonetheless?
My gut reaction as a consumer, as I think most folks is, is No, don't do it. Readers get annoyed by this. BUT, I have to admit, as with the one wynand32 points out, I actually did read it. Yes, mildly annoying. But, it got me to the content.
What is your opinion from a marketing perspective?
When lunar events are visible in Portland's night sky, the rarity of those conditions in the Northwest forces you to take advantage of it. With this year's lunar eclipse coinciding with an unusually clear sky, a few photos were a must, even at 3AM.
To see the photos, you'll have to click over to my blog at http://www.metroknow.com (I'd love to post them here, but so far I don't see a way to get photos embedded in articles on Writernia...).
Are you lacking any revenue from Writernia via AdSense?
You might want to check your Writernia AdSense settings. I was poking around my settings here, and I noticed that the instructions say to insert your adsense ID starting with the "pub" portion. For me, my account starts with ca-pub-*. So, when I initially pasted in my ID, I removed the "ca-" part to follow my interpretation of the instructions (start with the "pub" part). But since I've been here, I've seen no clicks on any of my pages, which I just assumed meant I needed to write more.
Earlier, a friend of mine mentioned that he had gotten a good lead on pay-per-post through one of the ads on a page of mine at Writernia - problem is, that click never showed up in my AdSense reports. So I fixed the little problem, and lo and behold, I have a click from someone today.
Anyways, hopefully that helps.
Stephanie, maybe the instructions could be revised a little in case some users make the same mistake that I did?
Mr. Rogers was quite a man. We've all seen stars and media figures read speeches to congress, with little or no result, and you often find yourself wondering if its just another media stunt dreamed up by a PR person.
Not this time.
Mr. Rogers earned $20 million dollars in the span of 6 minutes by simply being passionate about something he believed in. In 1969, his show, as part of the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was on the chopping block before congress - they were preparing to cut the budget in half in favor of dumping more money into a losing proposition: The Vietnam War.
If you do nothing else today, watch this video. At first you may be a little put off by Mr. Rogers' delivery - we live in a world that crushes genuine peaceful communication with violence and aggression, so we're often a little uneasy when someone makes a strong point without yelling.
When you are perusing the headlines here and elsewhere, what makes you click the headline to read the article? I'm trying to make my headlines more focused and engaging, and was wondering if Writernia readers know what it is that causes them to go to certain articles over others.
For example, This week Judith Blakley's Big Brother 8 Game's Integrity In Jeopardy has skyrocketed in days. And I have to say, I read it too (nice work, Judith). But why are we all drawn to that headline? What makes us want to read that story, myself included?
Judith - How do you do it? You are consistently one of the most read writers here - What is your method for writing headlines that get readers to engage? Or is it simply that you are writing about things that people want to know about, and if so, how do you pick those subjects?
Also, looking for constructive criticism here:
This story from KATU2 News in Portland just goes to show that my father was right:
Never use your hand to feed the decapitated head that bites you. Or, er, something like that.
--bedarkened
http://www.metroknow.com
"Think warm and breathable, stylish, but soft to the touch. As a future member of the Bloggers Union, I'd like to propose a Strike. Here's my poster (see picture), which I have already made in Photoshop. What do you think, our fearless labor leaders?"
I like to think that I have some idea of what's going on in the land of free speech and the Internet. I pay attention to both the right and the left in the media (though I still can't bring myself to smoke the smack that Bill O'Reilly is cookin', but I do peruse Fox News online even if only for the entertainment), I am in favor of Net Neutrality, and maybe most importantly, I exercise this right by regularly writing and publishing my opinions.
But this one has got me boggled. Or should I say, Bloggled... (Is that trademarked?)
