There's an interesting article in the Feb 20 issue of New York magazine called Blogs to Riches. They have the low down on A, B and C-listers.

Nina@Sitting Pretty

As a z lister who will never be an a lister (unless I break down and write the lesbian erotica blog I've sometimes pondered in really odd sleepless moments) but someone who does like a couple of visitors because I'm a social being...

I think Scoble's advice and Jeremy's non-advice can be useful. Partly in the way you've just made it useful, Jory. By looking at the advice and figuring out why it doesn't work for you. And also by looking at the list and pondering whether there's a compromise to be had somewhere in there.

Let me tell you my "compromises"....

10 - I'm with you, how many times can you read about the "hot new topic". I held back today's original blogher piece because it was about abortion. When I arrived, there was too much abortion and even though my piece was different, this wasn't the time. Too much of one topic does not make me happy and I don't think it would have made Bloghers all that happy either. But sometimes, I do like to jump into the hot button topics. Actually, I'd like to do this more often than I currently do it but I don't have time. My perspective is quite often different from the "popular people's". I hope to improve on my "timely posting" issues over the next year.

8- I have namedropped but not really namedropped. I have mentioned Scoble and I have mentioned Dooce and I have mentioned Winer. Not often and only tongue in cheek except when I had something I really wanted to say about Scoble's son and his podcasting problems (that probably falls into #9). I am really troubled by people who name drop with every other post. It makes no sense to me and I will NOT do it. But if it fits my subject - then heck yea, namedropping is good.

6. Blog. A lot. I can't do 4-5 times a day and I won't beat myself up for that. I can, however, pledge to blog once a day on at least one of my blogs. More than that and people would kill me (my family mostly) but readers too. Daily Dose of Denise is fine but 4xs daily is overkill.

4. This is like #10 to me. Sometimes, it's a good idea to do this. To avoid the hot topic just because it is hot doesn't make sense. Your "community" wants to hear what you think about topics that are important or in the news. It gives them a chance to get to know more about you and ummm disagree with you. ;-)

3. I like lists. I don't want a blog that is completely lists but once in awhile, it's good. Quick. Easy. Often amusing. And lists are something I do pretty well. And lists are something a lot of people do pretty well or do really badly - both find them interesting, but for different reasons.

And I just exceeded some comment rule by writing a huge comment, didn't I? I suppose I should have blogged this list instead. ;-)

~Denise

Funny thing, now that I use Bloglines I find myself reading people who post less, more. Does that make sense?

You know, I don't click on someone's blog for a few days, and I see that (12) next to their blog, and I just think, oh, I just can't keep up with that. Except for Cute Overload. They can just keep on bringing it on!!!

PLUS, I am really into slightly longer, well-written blog posts. Hell, they're still actually short; it's not a magazine feature article! I enjoy the occasionally quicky as much as the next girl, but if that's all there is, multiple times a day - personally, that's just not what I'm looking for. :)

As for Technorati, it's interesting and I definitely use it, but I'm not sure if what they're measuring is actually uberrelevant. It's a strange thing to measure links from other sites instead of actual traffic. And dude, who the hell is linking to Boing Boing??? It's just so outside my personal blogosphere.

And the funny thing is, how does 20,000 links even mean so much??? It's a really small number when compared to the population of readers. I always get the sense that something's being fudged in our perceptions.

Can we get a Site Meter driven top 100 list? I wonder if it would be different and how.

Jor: I do find it just a tad ironic that you link to A-Listers (recovering or not) Jeremy and Robert (and Susan too) in this post while comparing A-List name-dropping to whoring.

Or is it just me? ;)

Actually sometimes A-Listers are A-Listers because they write interesting stuff that people feel like commenting on (whether in long-ass comments or in blog posts) and it shouldn't make us feel dirty if they do, and we do.

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

True that. :)

hilarious, and pointed. personally i always cringe when people begin speaking in alphabetic list-isms; i for one have no desire to categorize myself in that manner. there's something flat-out unseemly about it, and in my gut i sense that positioning oneself or others in such a way lends support to the generation and maintenance of a social pecking order of the sort i thought i'd happily abandoned with high school.

as for technorati, i'm increasingly disenchanted. my stats haven't changed AT ALL (up or down) in over two months, though i'm aware of a fair number of links to my site having been created in that time. for the numbers to remain wholly static for that length of time tells me something is wrong with their system; had my numbers actually GONE DOWN i'd have more faith in their tallying, to be honest.

anyway, great post. lots to chew on here.

xo trace
++++++++++
sweetney.com
email me

There's definitely a little part of me that relishes the thought that the mommies at the playground are pointing and whispering about me not because they see my tattoo peaking out from underneath my shirt sleeve but because they realize that there's a WORLD FAMOUS MOMMYBLOGGER in their midst.

I love your long, well-thought-out, and well-written posts, Jory. This one and the one about working your passion in particular.

Also, I reserve all right to name drop or not, make up funny lists or not, compulsively check my stats, ranking, and adsense account, and go blond(er) while still agreeing with everything you're saying.

Mary
Mom Writes

mary, you're cracking my shit up.

and i'm sure all of the women at the playground are in awe of you for many, many reasons.

xo trace
++++++++++
sweetney.com
email me

Technorati? Don't get me started...

The longer I blog, and the more blogs I read, the more I become convinced that a simple mantra fits so many aspects - "your blog, your rules". Do it your way (whoever you are) and I suspect that the audience you desire (in composition and number) and exposure you feel comfortable with will follow.

When people start to consciously (and obviously) game the process by adopting obvious tactics, I can't help but smile, and think, "now what?" Which is where I possibly incur Elisa's wrath by raining on the whole Carnival thing. Want to take an immediate hike up the Technorati tree? Host a hot carnival, include a bajillion links to other blogs in it (the more the merrier), and sit back and watch as a bajillion bloggers write a post on *their* blog and say, "ooh, lookie, I got mentioned in the latest Carnival of Self-Aggrandisement!" Net result - pick up a few hundred linking sites in Technorati. So easy to do - and, in my opinion, so pointless. There's a particular carnival I'm aware of, where I conduct the following experiment - check the Technorati stats for the host a week beforehand - check them a week after - the effect as above, like clockwork.

Me? I'll write what I want, when I want, in as many or as few words as I want. If people read it, or link to it, maybe I'm doing something right. If they don't, maybe I'm doing something "wrong". But, who's to say? It is, after all, "my blog, my rules". I don't care if I have a readership of one - as long as that one person has benefitted, in the tiniest degree, from what they've read.

Blog: Multidimensional.Me

Oh hell - I'm really not communicating very well today. To clarify even further - I have submitted *one of my own posts* to a Carnival exactly once - I've submitted other peoples posts to Carnivals quite frequently.

It's like the profusion of blog award sites that seem to crop up every other week - if they allow people to nominate their own blogs, well, I shake my head.

Blog: Multidimensional.Me

I love this topic, Jory. I was just writing last week about the manner in which I blog and questioning [rhetorically] whether I should just give up altogether. I don't post many times a day, I don't link very much, sometimes my titles are inexplicable -- but I blog for self-expression, not to make money, and not to top the traffic charts.

I think this is definitely another case of deciding whether to play by "Their" rules or one's own. Though it may affect my bottom line in terms of hits, I'll continue to blog my own way, for better or for worse, and keep the satisfaction. So much of A-list blogging or blogging "how-to" assumes that every blogger has the same goal: power, money, fame -- and though most people agree those would be good perks, it's not what drives all of us.

I guess blogging, just like everything else, has it's tendency towards social darwinism, for better or worse.

But when I see the lists or articles telling us non-A listers how to get more traffic, I can't help but think those general recipes are a tad insincere and superficial.

Most of us blog because we have something we want to say and most of us hope that day after day, we are not simply talking to ourselves alone. But I think that the idea that there is some simple recipe for getting tons of traffic, is naive and a bit superficial. But that's just my take.

I myself have joined some of those big blog directories to get my little blogs name out there and have dutifully put the cute little button in my sidebar but at the end of the day, I figure that if I write something people want to read, hopefully my traffic will pick up a bit. But I am not going to follow advice like "make top ten lists" if I don't really feel like making a top ten list, if you get my meaning. Basically, I am going to do my own thing.

I have come to like the idea of having regular readers who return time and time again as opposed to just tons of hits from people who get to my blog sometimes accidentally and who will never again return for one reason or another.

I will say that as a non-A lister I am sometimes amazed at some of the sites who are considered A list. I think at a certain point some of the bigger blogs get a bit lazy and take their readership for granted and it seems that fame and/or notoriety has caused some of them to focus on sheer quantity of posts over substance and quality- I am just thinking of one or two of the big political blogs I keep an eye on- I really can't speak for other subject blogs (like food, business, or tech) because I tend to focus almost exclusively on political and legal blogs.

And going back to the social darwinism thing, I have noticed a bit of A list snobbery, but I guess that is to be expected as you find that in almost every medium. But generally, when I think of the blogosphere, I think of us all being in "it" together, regardless of technorati ranking.

OK, I read it here and over at PFAdvice, so I have to ask, what IS a "carnival"?

...started out as a way for folks blogging about a shared topic to provide exposure to their blogging segment. The idea was that everyone blogging about, say business, would submit a relevant post, and each week a different business blogger would "host" the carnival (called such because they travel from blog to blog.) Here's a description at BlogCarnival.com.

The carnival host actually has to do quite a bit of work to organize submissions, often exhibiting really admirable creativity, and is rewarded with a bump in traffic. Each submitter also hopes that they've submitted a post that grabs people's imaginations, and that they too get a bump. And of course one hopes one retains some percentage of those new visitors because they'll look around your blog and realize how insightful and brilliant you are :)

Assigning some kind of morality to carnivals (or to self-promotion in general) is where Koan and I might diverge :)

Frankly, I don't see Carnivals as all that different from BlogHer...we are trying to promote women bloggers and help expose them to the world. As long as they're regularly blogging, not a spam blog, and meet our basic guidelines, we will list their blogs. We're not claiming to be arbiters of quality...it is after all subjective. You and I might find very different blogs interesting and worth reading.

I prefer carnivals that give me freedom of choice. :)

Long winded answer, huh?

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz