I have noticed over the last 4 years that several people on xanga have decided they want to take the big leap and start their own websites.  The people starting their own websites are often very popular on xanga but struggle to translate that into popularity on their own website.

Many of you have watched the process.  Popular blogger decides he/she is too big for xanga.  Popular blogger steps out into the internet.  Popular blogger sets up his/her site.  Popular blogger spends days and even weeks designing their site.  Popular blogger picks out catchy website name.  Popular blogger links to their new site from their xanga site.  Popular blogger does this for about four days to one month.  Popular blogger comes back to xanga talking about how you just can’t beat the community feel of xanga.

Where did the blogger go wrong?  Why did the popular blogger fail to succeed on his/her own site in the same way they succeeded on xanga?

It is pretty simple and predictable.  Traffic transfers slowly to another site.  Have you ever watched a site get featured and get 100 comments and then looked at the very next post and see 3 comments?  Why does that happen?  Traffic transfers slowly to another site.

The reality is that most of the people going out on their own don’t realize that having a handful of friends linking them from xanga is going to have very little impact on their traffic.  It will give them a sudden rush of excitement of having a few thousand hits only to cause depression to set in 5 days later as they realize they are all alone.  As they develop their new site, they pay attention to the layout and the content but have learned very little about how to drive traffic to a website.

How does a person gain traffic on xanga?  They comment which leaves a link for a person to come back and comment.  They plugz their site.  They may even get featured or make top blogs.  Perhaps they get a bunch of recommends.

What should we call all of these traffic gaining strategies?  We will call them links.  A comment left on another site is a link to your site.  A comment on a popular site is a great link to your site.  A featured post is an awesome link to your site.

So Mr. or Mrs. popular blogger takes a journey out into the Internet with no real strategy for growth other than to link the site from their popular xanga site.

This is a stupid strategy.

The key to gaining traffic to your website is simple.  You must get people to come to your site and you must retain the people that come to your site.

This appears obvious but it is the point of failure for most sites.  There is no real plan to gain traffic to their new site.

So let me walk you through what I would do if I was going to start my own website off xanga. 

First, you need traffic (or links).  Let me tell you one way to get traffic.  The best way to get traffic is to get email addresses.  This is pretty easy because people will give you their email addresses.  Recently I wanted to see if I could get 2000 email addresses in 20 minutes.  I wanted them to be real email addresses that people use.  I enlisted the help of five helpers.  We set up 100 email accounts.  (We only needed 20 to pull this experiment off).

We posted ads on craigslist.  We posted several ads in different sections all at one time.  We received a few thousand responses to our ads in 20 minutes.  I have to estimate because I did not count all of the responses but based on the ones I did count I am certain we received well over 2000 responses.  If I responded back to any of the emails, I received a response back.  Most of the responses were from non bot sites.  In other words, they were real people.

So in 20 minutes I was able to gain 2000 emails.  I am pretty confident that if I did this alone, I could gain 20,000 emails in one day.  Would that be a ton of work?  Yes.  It would be one huge effort.  But I believe it would work.  Now you would need to respond to those emails and invite the people to your site.  Is this spamming?  Not in my opinion.  You would simply be responding to someone who emailed you first.  How is that spamming?

You would need to hit this effort for some time working at it every day.  But the effort would pay off.  Craigslist is just one example of a website that can be used for this purpose.

The problem with most people that start their own websites is that they are unprepared for the effort that it takes to market their new site.

                                        

Here is another post that I posted before on protected:

I was on xanga for the longest time before I started to use IM.  One day, a woman who was 21 asked me if we could IM.  I had always wanted to IM but had never set it up.  The girl told me how to set up AIM on my site.  I tried to set it up but struggled so she ended up being the second person I IMed.

She helped me with a few xanga projects but she flirted with me like crazy.  I just sort of brushed it off and moved on.  She told me she was coming to my area and wanted to meet me.  I told her I couldn’t do that but I was flattered.

The second time I posted my photos on xanga she was seeing them for the first time.  I thought she had seen the photos the first time I posted them but I was wrong.  She IMed me and acted surprised and even thought the photos were a joke.

She thought I looked like my profile pic that I used at the time.



The young woman was not attracted to me.  She was attracted to C.S. Lewis.

                                        
                                  

I interrupt this xanga break to bring to you this very important issue.  (I would like to thank Sha Possimpible for bringing this to my attention).

Look carefully at the following photo:

Is the photo an elbow, butt or cleavage?

                                                                 

The man came home to his wife and saw she was completely drained from watching the screaming baby all day.  The baby had a bad case of diarrhea and the mother alternated between watching him and doing laundry.  The wife was also sick and coughed up phlegm.  She had a runny nose and her eyes were blood shot red.  Her nose was plugged with the toilet paper she had shoved up there to stop it from running.

He knew tonight would be the night.

Just when they eased into bed he heard her give out another cough and he made his move.  He rubbed her body and told her, “Tonight will be your night.”  She let out a sigh and said, “Ok.  Hop on.”  After two minutes of passion, she asked, “Are you done?”  He replies, “Yes, and kisses her forehead.”  He heads to the shower and she doses off.

I wanted to share the story of the first time I had oral sex.  (This is from a protected post).

I wanted to title the story “Two dumb questions and two dumb statements”  I waited until marriage to have sex if you let me use the Bill Clinton definition of sex. 

Here is the story:

I was about 16-17. I was just friends with the girl and had never thought about dating her. We would just hang out together. So one day she was over at my house and we were just sitting on the couch talking.    She asked me out of the blue if I wanted her to perform oral sex on me.  I was actually kind of surprised and I remember the only word I could push out was “yes.” She told me she wanted to see what facial expressions I made while she was doing it.

I didn’t move my body even an inch. I remember thinking to myself, “Don’t say anything or do anything to mess this moment up.” So she undid my pants and pulled my pants and underwear down and she began to perform oral sex on me.

The funny thing is my first oral sex experience was the best oral sex experience I would have for years. I was surprised at how good it felt. I remember thinking “She must do this a lot.”  She was really kind of passionate about it.

Then she came up and asked me if I wanted to orgasm. (That is the second stupid question. The first one was did I want her to perform oral sex). I said “yes” and she went back down and finished me off. 

After she was done, I looked at her and made my two stupid comments. I told her that she could make good money doing this. I wasn’t thinking at the time but I had just had oral sex and my immediate thought was if other people knew about this they would pay to get it.  I didn’t think of how that would make her feel.  Then I made my second stupid comment, “I said if all the guys at school knew you could do this you would be super popular.”

The girl gave me oral sex and I basically suggested she become a prostitute and I would ruin her reputation.

                                                    

Recently Vanedave ran a debate called Xanga Debate Tournament on his site.  I asked him if I could jump into the debate.  I proposed that we should have a team debate after the finals. Dave and the winner of the tournament (CallmeQuell) vs. Me and SecretNeverTold.

Dave’s response to my proposoal:

“Bring it on b****!” (edited)

So here now is our special team debate. The topic: “Do you think the typical blogger on xanga blogs for him/herself or for their audience?”

After you read through vote for which team you think argued their point most effectively. Remember you are not voting on who you like more or which side you agree with. You are voting for who supported their opinion the best.

Team A  Thetheologianscafe and Secretnevertold

Although most people blog both for themselves and for an audience that can provide feedback, the typical person on Xanga joins precisely to gain an audience.

Our reasons for concluding this are as follows:

First, the thing that sets blogging apart from keeping a private journal is its public nature; the thing that sets Xanga apart from other blogging outlets is that it is geared toward the community and networking potential in the blogosphere. Xanga is unique in this respect. When bloggers could choose to register with WordPress or Blogspot, they choose Xanga, because of the almost instant audience its features can provide for nearly any blogger.

Second, Xanga’s tagline is “the blogging community.” The word “community,” associated so closely with Xanga, denotes communication (same root word), sharing and participation. This means bloggers on Xanga expect and even hope for an audience and feedback for their posts.

Third, of the estimated 40 million Xangans worldwide, the vast majority of those have at least a portion of their site publicly viewable, which on Xanga is an open invitation for feedback — an implicit approval of and wish for an audience, no matter how small it might be.

If Xangans did not at least subconsciously wish to have an audience, they would either keep their thoughts in a written journal, in Word documents, they would make their posts private, and/or they would turn off their comments feature.
Most do not make their posts private; many of those who do, mix them with public posts.
It is extraordinarily rare to run across a Xanga site that has disabled comments.

Fourth, the vast majority of Xanga features are audience-oriented, by which we mean they are designed to better meet bloggers’ needs and requests by helping them gain, track and respond to audience/reader feedback. Examples of such features include Plugz, Featured Weblogs, Top Blogs, Groups, Feedback Logs and the automatic “Add as Friend/Subscribe To” button that pops up when commenting on another site.

Finally, the frequent virtual caterwauling among Xangans about who got featured for what and why their post should have been recognized instead of so-and-so’s clearly indicates an acute hunger among many Xangans for blogging audiences.

These five points demonstrate pretty clearly that the typical Xangan, by his or her very affiliation with the community, deliberately blogs for an audience.

Team B  VaneDave and Callmequell

It’s hard for me not to argue that this question is one of semantics, because I could easily make the point that even blogging for an audience is blogging for one’s self. The only people I can think of who truly blog for others instead of themselves are those who are either marketers (so, actually BLOGGING FOR OTHERS), or who have a blog solely to disseminate information, whether about tech trends or what events are coming up in a youth group or who only blog what their audience tells them to.

Though it may appear at first glance that most of Xanga blogs for an audience, it is important to consider this: you are part of the audience; thus, you are more likely to encounter those bloggers who actively blog for an audience. However, the truth is that the majority of Xanga is composed of those who have a blog for themselves, those who don’t have a mass following, or perhaps even any at all. Some of them may discuss important topics, some of them may talk about their day, some of them may combine the two, but all are posting for themselves. The vast majority of Xangans use it because blogging is a primarily self-involved activity, as it is meant to be. You find something YOU want to discuss, and YOU yourself discuss it. In fact, even some Top Bloggers can be considered bloggers for themselves instead of for an audience. When you look together at the vast mass of Xangans who maintain a blog purely for their own eyes and those for their own expression, you will find that the true number of those who blog for an audience, while perhaps a loud and well-seen bunch, is actually a small percentage of who Xanga is as a whole.

Team A Rebuttal  Thetheologianscafe and SecretNeverTold

Sure, blogging may be a self-involved activity to some extent, but it is certainly not purely that, for almost anyone. An example of an absolutely self-involved activity would be journaling in a book nobody ever sees or knows exists. Some might make the argument that it’s quicker to type than to write, and that this is why people blog; that argument holds no water, however, because they could just as easily (MORE easily, in fact) type their thoughts into Word. In other words, unadulterated self-involvement and public blogging are mutually exclusive concepts; you have one or the other — not both.

To say, therefore, that there is a “vast mass of Xangans who maintain a blog purely for their own eyes” misses the point entirely, because the idea of a “private blog” is directly contrary to the public, sharing nature of the Internet and the blogosphere. Such an argument ignores and marginalizes those people who may have relatively few followers and a small audience. They, however, just as legitimately as the Top Bloggers, seek affirmation through audience, participation, and/or through the belief at least that they may find they are not alone and their thoughts are not trapped in the vacuum of their own heads. They hope, by posting their thoughts and work on Xanga, that other eyes will find it. Because you are right, we are all part of the audience. Few people are more aware of this than the typical Xangan.

To further support our assertion that Xanga is geared toward bloggers who want an audience, Pete Cashmore, a writer for Mashable, said even as early as 2006 that Xanga has unique blogging atmosphere. “Unlike bloggers on the open web, Xangans have a ready-made audience for their writing,” he said.

The reason most Xangans put their thoughts in this public forum, accessible from anywhere in the world, is they are seeking that ready-made audience. Many may have no idea what kind of audience they want or will attract, but most hope to find like-minded readers or viewers. They hope for dialogue and encouragement. They may not proactively market themselves on Xanga, but their very existence in the Xanga blogging community betrays at least part of their motive is to garner an audience.

That said, it would be dishonest to say any blogger with a public site blogs solely for him- or herself. The typical Xangan always takes an audience, real or potential, into account when posting.

To reinforce our earlier observations:
First: Bloggers as a group post publicly specifically for an audience, real or imagined. If it were not for the audience potential, these Xangans would keep Word documents filled with their thoughts and stories and it would have the same self-fulfilling effect. The fact is, that activity does not satisfy Xangans, and that is why they are here.

Second: Bloggers join Xanga specifically for the audience it provides, and Cashmore’s statement provides outside support for the “ready-made audience” for which Xanga is so popular. The community is what makes Xanga unique, and what draws many people in and keeps them. They don’t leave, because Xanga provides them with much-sought-after feedback and encouragement.

Third: We have shown through empirical evidence that the vast majority of Xangans leave their sites public and leave their comments features on, in hopes an audience, no matter how small, will find them.

Fourth: Xanga’s own policies and features such as Blogrings, Featured Weblogs, automatic “Friending” and the like, cater to the audience-driven needs of its bloggers.

Finally: Many active Xangans talk excitedly about who gets recognized on Top Blogs and Featured Weblogs, as if it were some great achievement to earn “Xangalebrity.” And in a sense, they are right. It is an achievement that most bloggers would feel honored to receive.
But don’t marginalize the unknown bloggers in this wildly public community, for they also have an audience. And as Dr. Seuss might say, were he still alive, “an audience is an audience, no matter how small.”

This is why we stand firmly resolved that the typical Xangan blogs for an audience.

Team B Rebuttal:  VaneDave and CallMeQuell

At first glance it would appear that this question is a no-brainer. Most xangans do yearn for feedback. Most do hope to connect with others no matter if its 1 person or 1,000. Who really wants to be alone here?

Here’s the thing. Just because someone craves feedback does not necessarily mean they are blogging for an audience. Everyone wants someone to connect with them. When most xangans put their writing out for others to read they are trying to fulfill a need for themselves, not for their audience. Just because someone doesn’t do something in private doesn’t mean it’s not strictly for them.

For example, if I go to a support group, I am sitting with a group of people and sharing my experiences with them. The support group could be considered my “audience” in this scenario. I might be very interested to get their feedback and to hear that others in the group went through similar experiences. Does this mean I attended the support group for my “audience”?

If most xangans write for their audience, then they do a terrible job at it. Most do not write regularly, most do not promote themselves, most do not give a second thought to what their demographic is. There are only a small percentage of delusional bloggers (like vanedave for instance) who might cultivate their writing for an audience. The typical xangan just writes what they feel like writing when they feel like writing it.

There is a very gray line between blogging for yourself and blogging for an audience. Ask yourself this; When you sit down at your computer to write a new blog are you doing this for yourself, or are you doing this to please your audience? While some may answer for an audience, the majority of xangans will undoubtedly answer that they do it for themselves. The fact that their audience may enjoy what they wrote or connect with it only makes the experience all the better for them.

Which side made the better argument, Team A or Team B?

                                 

Earlier this week, there was a little controversy on xanga when John from the Xanga Team wrote a post saying he was taking a post down from featured content that xanga had determined was critical of me.  Here is his post:  Link

(The guy who wrote the original post and I have been in contact and everything is good between us.  We have kissed and made up and are expecting our first child together in 9 months).

After John posted that post, he was attacked by some people on xanga accusing him of showing favoritism toward me. 

A post was written by Antisoccermom and I want to address that post.  Here is the post that she wrote:  Link

I do want to say that I like Antisoccermom and we talk on IM frequently.  I do think there were things in her post that I would like to see clarified by her.

In her post, Antisoccermom wrote:

“Anyone can say anything they want to say about me, as often and for as long as they want to. Anyone, regardless of the level of medication they are on. When I am attacked it is free speech. But when someone says that Dan “isn’t a writer” or some other nonsense that was A: not offensive if taken in the correct context and B: an opinion that was neither hateful nor said with bad intentions, the post gets removed from being featured and John himself issues a formal apology?

Let me say first this isnt about Dan. Dan is a good person a solid xangan and an excellent mentor. He brought me from a baby blog with no readers into the blog you see today. (or saw yesterday I suppose) Dan deserves respect. But so does everyone else on this site, and xanga doesnt see that. You are not as important as he is. Neither am I.”

I want to focus in on one part of this post.  It is her statement that “Dan deserves respect.  But so does everyone else on this site, and xanga doesn’t see that.  You are not as important as he is.  Neither am I.”

What Antisoccermom has communicated is that xanga has respect for me but not everyone else on the site.  She has communicated that you are not as important as I am.

Now Antisoccermom tries to prove that point in her post.  She wrote:

“Let me see if I have this right. You don’t care what anyone says about anyone else, unless it is Dan?
You have featured posts several times with slander against yours-truly but when someone says that they don’t exactly care for his style of writing, he gets apologized to? REALLY Xanga?”

Antisoccermom communicated that xanga does not care what anyone says about anyone on xanga except if it is in relationship to me. 

Antisoccermom then goes on to prove her point with the words “You have featured posts several times with slander against yours-truly but whn someone says that they don’t exactly care for his style of writing, he gets apologized to?  REALLY Xanga?”

So Antisoccermom is making a claim that I want you to focus on.  She is saying that Xanga has “featured posts several times with slander against” her. 

Now this is what I want to focus on.  Antisoccermom is claiming that I am favored in a way that no one else on xanga is favored.  She points to the idea that xanga has featured “several posts with slander against” her.

So I talked to Antisoccermom on IM and asked her if this was true.  I asked her if xanga featured posts that slandered her.  She said “Yes” and said it happened several times.  She repeated what she said in her post.

So my statement to Antisoccermom is this:  Show us the links for the posts that xanga featured that slandered you.  I want to see the links.  You said there were “several posts.”  I want to see all the links. 

Here is the problem that is lost in all of this.  John made a post.  Antisoccermom made statements saying I was favored.  She supported those statements with specific statements saying that xanga had featured “several posts” that slandered her. 

Anyone having the problem that I am having?  When have you ever seen a post that was featured that slandered Antisoccermom?  I just want to see the links.  If “several posts” have been written about Antisoccermom that xanga featured, then I want to see those links so I can be mad too.

So I asked Antisoccermom to show me the links.  She responded with something like:  “Believe me, they exist.” 

Here is the thing.  I want to see them.  I want to see the links of the posts that xanga has featured that were slander of her.  I want to take them to John and demand that he apologize to Antisoccermom.

Here is the problem.  Antisoccermom will not share the links.  She will not even produce one of the “several posts” that slandered her. 

Antisoccermom also wrote a mock apology from the xanga team and said,

“We are really sorry for featuring those posts with the not so thinly veiled threats on you, they just used your real name it wasnt like they attacked your screen name. . .”

So Antisoccermom is claiming that xanga featured posts with “thinly veiled threats on” her.  She also said they used her “real name” instead of her screen name.

So once again I ask Antisoccermom, Show me the links of the featured posts with thinly veiled threats on you.  Show me posts that xanga featured with your real name used in that post.

Notice she has written as if this has happened several times.  Does anyone remember a post that xanga featured that had a “thinly veiled” threat or used Antisoccermom’s real name?

I don’t either.  But the next day I did see people saying stuff like “If what Antisoccermom is saying is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then this is an outrage.”

I guess the people on xanga are not smart enough to just ask Antisoccermom to show them the links.  There are several of them.  I want them sent to me.  I will post them and demand an apology from John and the xanga team.

Now I think we all know the difference between Top Blogs and Featured Content.  Top Blogs is not edited by xanga (except for porn).  Featured Content is edited by xanga.  They hand select the posts to be featured on their front page. 

You have all read posts that were critical of me on Top Blogs.  I have recommended half of them that make it to Top Blogs.  So that part is unedited by xanga.  So if you see a post on Top Blogs that is critical of you, me or Antisoccermom, realize that you are being treated the same as me.

Realize also that I have had people post on their site my home address.  I have had people create multiple sites to harrass me.  I had one lady create 70 sites and spam my site with thousands of comments a day every day for two weeks.  (Many of you can remember that lady).  I had another lady create 20 sites in my honor and then went on to leave me multiple creepy messages.  She told me what my home address was and the name of my wife and the name of my three children.  She also told me she was standing outside my house.  What could xanga do about that?  There is really nothing xanga can do about that.  If someone is stalking you or harassing you, you should call the police.  What can xanga do?  Nothing.  Can they shut down their site?  Yes.  I don’t ask xanga to do that because in my experience there is nothing worse than a troll that has just had his site shut down.  That will make them angry.  (Footnote:  In general, avoid making negative remarks about fat women in posts.  Apparently some of the most passionate trolls of all time are fat women).

See the reality is that it is pretty easy to start a new site.  Xanga can not do anything when someone is willing to create 20 sites to harass you.  You should call the police if you think they are a threat to you.  If the police can’t do anything, why would xanga be able to do anything?  It has been suggested that xanga should set up IP blockers.  This is brilliant.  My son knew how to change proxy addresses when he was 9. 

But lets move back to the central issue.  I don’t want to start drama but I want to return to the issue at hand.  Antisoccermom said “Dan deserves respect. But so does everyone else on this site, and xanga doesnt see that. You are not as important as he is. Neither am I.”

Antisoccermom indicated that you and her were treated differently than me.  She said that the evidence of this was “You have featured posts several times with slander against yours-truly but when someone says that they don’t exactly care for his style of writing, he gets apologized to? REALLY Xanga?”

I want Antisoccermom to produce those links to those sites that slandered her and the post was featured.  Now xanga has featured people who have been critical of me.  In fact, I recommended a post for xanga’s featured content after a woman told everyone that she had unsubscribed to me.  So she spoke against me and I turned around and told xanga she wrote a good post.  So xanga will feature people that have been critical of me and even them. 

But that is not what Antisoccermom is claiming.  She is claiming the “several posts” that contained slander were featured by xanga.  We all know that Antisoccermom knows the difference between Top Blogs and Featured Content.  She complains that she is not featured enough.  She talks about Top Blogs all the time.

But Antisoccermom is claiming that she is treated differently than me because xanga featured “several posts” that “slandered her.”

So this is what you need to do.  If you are friends with Antisoccermom, feel free to bring this up on her site.  If she posts, don’t comment on the issue.  Ask her directly in the comment section to show the “several posts” that xanga featured that “slandered her.”  Then when she answers you, give them to me so I can demand an apology from the xanga team.

If the links are not produced, we must ask ourselves why.

To make this true Antisoccermom style:

Please rec this for your friends.