Hi it’s Jerry…

Or Malcolm, Jose, Peter, Mary, Tiny, Tricia… The list goes on and on.

Everyday, I get dozens of emails headed ‘Hi it’s…’ and each time, my brain jumps into rolodex mode. Do I know anybody called ‘Feliciano’? Have I a friend called ‘Carlos the Jackal’? It doesn’t matter than I don’t know that many people and that the few I do know are not international terrorists. My brain has some social networking function that I can’t disable under the options menu. I wouldn’t mind but the disappointment is tangible each and every time I realise that I am reading yet another email trying to sell me shares in a Mexican bean factory. You’d think that, by now, there would be enough investors in Mexican beans to leave me the hell alone…

A report yesterday suggested that something like nine in ever ten emails sent are supposedly spam. Nine in every ten sounds terribly low but if it’s right, then judging from the amount of junk mail I get, there must be some lucky soul in the world that lives a spam free life. Every piece of mail must be a real gem: the winning ticket to a competition, the letter from a publisher accepting their novel, the email from the long lost friend… I, on the other hand, must get 1000 spam emails for every one that’s real. Some of my email accounts have become unusable since they’ve become dark holes filled with prescription drugs, free TVs, stock market quotes, and more erectile products quotes than you could shake a… well, let’s just say that there are a lot of them.

There goes the ‘whoop-whoop’ of the email again. I should go and check it… You never know. There’s a one in a thousand chance that a real opportunity has come my way.

I don’t update this blog as regularly as I should. At times, it seems like I only think to come here to complain about whatever I can’t/won’t complain about over at The Spine. But the Fark thing has really taught me something about web traffic: it’s the little links that really matter. Huge traffic would be wonderful but only if it is meaningful traffic. If I can help it, I don’t want to get front paged on Fawk again.

Over the course of twenty four hours, I had about 5000 extra visitors hit my site because of Fawk, but three days later, the figures had dropped back to where they were at the beginning. I didn’t get any extra backlinks, get listed on any extra blogs, or even (I guess) attract any extra readers. Instead, I had a corrupt database, not many clicks on my ads, and a feeling of futility after reading one of the comments over on the Fawk board. But a bit of reflection made me realise that this is just the nature of Fawk and so many of these sites that collect the flotsam of the web. If I plastered my blog with pictures of naked supermodels doing things in grease, I would probably double my hits within a week. Who knows, more Fawk traffic might come by and have a look. And wouldn’t I feel proud of myself?

There is a difference between good traffic and poor quality traffic. Somebody who looks, reads, understands one of my silly stories is work a thousand of those that flit by. These brief visitors take without question, leave nothing of value, and move on to the next poor fool to incur their interest. It’s like a swarm of locusts that come and strip your land to nothing.

Blogging here in the UK can feel pretty pointless at the best of times. A small fraction of the total UK blogs offer real wit, intelligence, righteous anger, insider knowledge, or even influence in the wider world. It’s hard to get noticed in the crowd, and appealing to a US audience is even more futile. My experience with BlogMad led me to understand how being listed with US blogs only leads to your work being marginalised, criticised, and degraded by people who don’t understand it, won’t understand it, and (worse of all) cannot even acknowledge why this is so. I constantly felt that my blog was being criticised for something that wasn’t really in my power: simply because I am English and write about British topics.
I spent too much time each day thinking about a story but until Fawk visited, I never understood how much I really only blog for myself. Each visitor is a small miracle and I should say a small thank you for every one.