View from the Mountain

Is free content worth the effort?

I am among the bloggers who make some money for their efforts.  For fifteen months I have been writing Crystal Coast Living for Bluewater GMAC Real Estate where I also work as a Realtor®. 

I receive a modest sum which certainly is not enough to let me support my family on writing alone.  I also do a lot of photography.  At one time I sold my prints and made a few dollars.  I could not get to the scale that I needed to in order to really make money so now I give away my images. Most people think my photos are very good.  They might be better than my writing for all that I know.

The only thing that I do different for the blogs where I am paid for the content is I have my wife proof read them.  She catches a few errors that I miss.

She long ago gave up reading my free blogs.  I actually have a lot of readers across all my blogs.  I suspect that I easily ring up 25,000 blog visits over the course of a month. If I got ten cents for each visit, I could come close to supporting myself with writing if I add that to what I am already receiving.

And if I could get something for hundreds of thousands of monthly hits on my  main websites, I could retire, but that is not going to happen either.

I have learned how to build traffic, but I have yet to figure out how to really get paid for those efforts or found anyone who really understands how strategic these skills are.

Fortunately all those web efforts have brought me some real estate clients who have bought property in a really tough market so not all the efforts are for nothing.

I have tried Kindle Publishing, but my material does not really fit well there at this point.  So I either need to create some material that does work well on Kindle, find someone else that would like to pay me for a blog, or go back to working on my book.

It is really a tough choice because I love writing, but I also need to support my family since the economy has not been particularly nice to real estate agents.

Blogging has been very good to me.  I have learned a tremendous amount.  The Crystal Coast Living blog that I started last year has become a real success, but anything supporting real estate sales these days might be on life support at any moment.

My own website, the Southern Outer Banks, has also benefited greatly from my blogging efforts.  The Crystal Coast social networking site that I have been helping to build has seen tremendous growth and much of it comes from the content that I post on my blog at the site.

I think we certainly are at a point where sites that depend on free content are going to find some challenges. There are fewer writers out there than one might imagine.  I have tried to train some more, and I have found it hard to motivate people to write.

I plan to keep churning out posts on View from the Mountain, Applepeels, and my other sites as long as I have the energy and creative spark to provide good content for free.

We will see how things evolve over the next few months.  Maybe the real estate market will recover, and we all will be surprised.

Relief from the heat and hard heads

Recently there has been no place to escape the heat on the east coast unless you could find some cool ocean water like this at Emerald Isle, NC.

Consistent temperature in the nineties without the temperatures falling to sixties at night can fray the fragile fabric that lets us get along with one another.

One evening I was warm after working in the yard, I walked over and jumped in our neighborhood pool.  It was so warm that I went back and got a thermometer.

The temperature was almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit.  I came back in the morning, and the water had only cooled to 84 degrees.  Fortunately the ocean water has been staying in the upper seventies so it is a great alternative if the pool gets hot.

Recently I have also found people a little more on edge, I suspect it is more than the heat.  The economy isn't great and certainly the real estate business is miserable.  Then there are the twin demons of high energy costs and high food costs.

I think the tougher things get the more unreasonable some people get.  However, it doesn't have to be that way.  Sometimes it helps to realize that others before us have faced much more difficult times.

I believe in the resiliency of people.  While we are going through tough times, this is not the first time, and likely it will not be the last.

As this is father's day, perhaps it is time for a thought from my father.  He once told me that he was proud that he made enough money to pay taxes.

When I was young that puzzled me, but in a year when few real estate agents are making money, my dad's advice has some wisdom to it.

None of us like to pay taxes or high energy costs.  These new higher costs are forcing us to make changes which perhaps we should have made years ago.

We will adjust, and hopefully there will be some help for those whose budget cannot cover the cost of adjustment.

While it is easy to see the glass as half empty, I choose to see it as half full.  If the day is so hot that it is hard to find a way to cool off, I see it as an opportunity to go for a free dip in the ocean.  Fortunately the six or seven miles to the beach doesn't take a lot of gasoline.

We will cut back in the meals that we eat out and work harder to adjust for the higher costs.  We are not going to quit enjoying life because gasoline costs over $4 per gallon.

Sometimes the free things, like the dip in the ocean, are the most enjoyable ones anyway.

The high energy costs are going to create some opportunities. I am willing to bet that in ten years we will have figured out how to do more with less oil.

If that is the case, this energy pain might be worth it.

Resisting the red cape

I should know better.  I have been doing blogs for three and one half years.

Long ago I learned that there are some people who make comments that you should just leave alone.

You certainly should not respond to their comments.

Actually you should not even publish their comments, because they can lead to a battle that you will never win.

Having said that, everyone makes mistakes.  Sometimes you wake up and read something, and it hits you the wrong way.

You almost have to respond to get it off your chest.

However, I have decided to start using the same yardstick that I used to suggest for my employees.  If you have a "hot" email or one that gets under your skin, sleep on it.  Read it again after you have had time to let better judgment prevail.

When I first started blogging I would try to engage in an off line discussion with people whose comments might start a battle.  The success ratio in that was fairly marginal so I gave it up.

I do not mind being told that I have made a mistake.  I just got told that yesterday and changed a post because of it.  I get a lot of people who will catch an error and send me a private note.  I always appreciate that since I am the only eyes available to proof something before publishing.

Some of these folks who get under your skin can be very persistent. 

There was one recently who seemed to be sure that I would chase him down to his blog and make nasty comments.

He had already made four or five comments, and I had mistakenly responded to a couple of them.  His comments were enough to guarantee that the only way that I would ever find his blog is if I stumbled upon it by accident.

The most amazing thing is that at least two or three of these folks have had the same signature final comment, "Have a nice life."

It is as if they cannot imagine anyone having a good life without their input.

My thought is that I was having a good life before these folks wandered into my life, and it will be fine once they are gone.

I have commented on a whole lot of blogs, but I always try to remember that I am a guest, and if I don't have something worthwhile to say, I try not to stir up trouble.

The Internet is a wonderful place, full of lots of information, but that does not mean that everyone out there is reasonable.  There is room for everyone and their opinions, even the unreasonable ones.  They just don't have to be on my blog where if necessary, I will have the last word.

I have only had a couple of comments that I have had to pull from View from the Mountain over the years, and maybe a couple of dozen from Applepeels where you do run into people who think Apple can do no wrong.  Some of the Apple fans are a little different.

Considering how many thousands of comments I have had that is not bad.  I hope I do not run into anymore like this last guy, they take the fun out of blogging.

I would much rather enjoy the blue sky we had this morning and these early spring daffodils.  Actually I would rather stand out in the rain we are going to have tonight than fight over opinions on computers.

Life is too short for that.

The end of "Dad spam"

We have been a connected family for many years.  I cannot even remember when my kids did not have email accounts.

Long ago, my son orchestrated the gift of my first domain, Sobotta.org.  Of course it came with email accounts.

These kids are now young adults with one over thirty among the three.  While I often instant message with my son.  Usually email is what works with the ladies.

I have always read a lot.  I rarely "watch" television.

I might sit with my wife and read a magazine while she watches a show, but that is usually the extent of my television watching. 

That extensive reading has always turned up articles that I want to share with different family members.

With the coming of ubiquitous computers and the "kids" spreading out across the southeast, email became the easiest way to get those articles in front of the them.

Sometimes we would discuss an article so I know at least a few of them were read.  Still I did suggest that my technology savvy son had a special Gmail account acting as a "Dad spam" filter.

That did not stop me from sending an article or two a week and sometime many more depending on what I found and how much time I had to send the articles.

Often I would email the url but most often I chose to send the article.  Sometimes I would even quote the most important part of the article so it would not be missed.

I always hoped that RSS might be part of the solution.  Unfortunately RSS is not exactly the most understood technology.

It was only when my very technologically literate friend Stephen sent me a note the other day that I should try Google reader that the pieces begin to fall into place for the death of "Dad Spam."

I have used other readers, but nothing seemed to offer me what I wanted.  Webmail.us, now MailTrust, had RSS built into their email client back in the fall of 2005, but it did little with it beyond making RSS feeds accessible from your web based email client.

Google Reader goes way beyond that.  Stephen and I are hooked up on our Gmail accounts as friends.  Without any effort, I can see what Stephen has read and decided to share.  He can do the same with me.

But none of my kids or my wife are "friends" on Gmail.   Getting them to be friends would require more education and cajoling than I can muster.

However, it turns out that my shared items are available automatically as a web page.  Anyone can access a web page, so now it is painfully simple to "share" something that I have found.  It is automatically posted.  There remains the hope that with a simple bookmark, the kids might drop by once in a while.

I can also edit the page and add other links to my many web outposts.  I don't know that Google Reader will get any more of my articles read, but at least they are all in one place and easily accessible through a simple browser.

My hats off to Google on this one and to Stephen for alerting me.  It's a great use of technology.

Connecting

The other day we were fortunate enough to see a gorgeous sunrise in Roanoke and an equally stellar one as we slipped into North Carolina's coastal counties.

I feet connected to Virginia's Reston area, the Roanoke-Blacksburg area and to Emerald Isle and Carteret County on the North Carolina coast.

I also still feel a real connection the Surry, Yadkin, and Forsyth Counties in North Carolina. 

In all of these areas, I have lived, met people and been part of everyday life.

Then there is my online life. Which continues to amaze me.  As I was helping a childhood friend to make a decision about buying a Macintosh, I got a note from someone in New Zealand asking me for advice on their Macintosh purchase.

It has to be an embarrassing measure of Apple's inability to sell their own products that someone like myself, who was shown the door at Apple, is sought out for advice on buying Macs.

Part of me wants to tell people that Apple doesn't really care about computers anymore, but the Apple community including me doesn't want to believe that.

I am still happy to part of that Apple community.  I usually have between 1,500 and 2,000 subscribers to Applepeels so it is a significant part of my online life.

I also feel connected to some folks in the Roanoke blogging community.  Fred of Fragments from Floyd and I exchange emails once in a while.  Sean of Sean's Horse Farm and Family Blog usually catch up by instant message when our busy schedules allow.

I also still hear from Sonia in Brazil once in while, and I take the time to visit her blog, Leaves of Grass.  Recently I met Mary, a wonderful artist, who writes Beaufort, NC-The Town and Why It's Unique.

John West, the author of Only Trait of a Leader, and I still communicate.  We met five years ago during a briefing on super computing in Apple's brief flirtation with that world.

These connections enrich my life and make it much easier to take the day's events.  I know that in spite of some of the daily frustration that there are people out there who care about some of the same things that I do.

Over the last few months, I have added a new person, Dave, to that list of folks with common interests.  He has just gotten started with a new blog, Piedmont Visions.  Dave lives in the Roanoke area, is a cancer survivor, and an ex-Cobol programmer.  I think you will find his posts well worth your time.

I have also brought up a new blog, Once a Reston Resident, which is focused on my thoughts about Northern Virginia and the many years I spent working there.  It is hooked into the Reston Back Fence Community where I have just placed my very first online ad.

I would love to see the Roanoke-Blacksburg area get a Back Fence Community Site.  It would be a lot more meaningful than "Technology Corridor" signs. If I had the bandwidth to push for things that would help the Roanoke area, Back Fence would be a good one to investigate.

I think I might just have enough online irons in the fire at this point.  My own online Realtor®   efforts have gotten me hooked into a significant online world of real estate agents at ActiveRain.

Well it is time to log into instant messaging and to check on Russ, my friend up in Happy Valley, the home of Penn State.