I found writing yesterday’s post updating the blog page a touch depressing. Not because of the blogs that I listed, but because of the small number I had.
Whenever I find a potential blog to add (via comments, emails, blogrolls, etc) I bookmark it and keep an eye on it. My criteria for inclusion is pretty simple. It has to be something I want to read. It has to make an effort to spell and punctuate correctly. It has to be updated occasionally. Nothing more than that. Yet so many fail, and almost always on the third criteria. I had around a dozen or so blogs to look at, and when I came to update my page most had either been deleted or become dormant. It’s the same story when I look at people’s blogrolls. Most blogrolls are full of blogs that have ceased to be, are bereft of life and rest in peace. Clearly even the blogroll owners aren’t even looking at them.
There are plenty of articles giving advice on how to write a successful blog, and I’m not going to repeat them here. However, I will make two points that seem particularly relevant to kink blogs, as there’s a couple of pitfalls I regularly see kinky bloggers stumble into.
Firstly, if you want a long lived blog, don’t begin by writing enormously long posts. Every blogging guide suggests posting frequently, and long posts are anathema to that. I think most kinky people get so few chances to express themselves openly that starting a blog triggers a rush of writing. They’re very excited to be sharing a secret part of themselves and want to get all these important hidden thoughts out to the world. Unfortunately a huge wall of text is not great for attracting readers. More importantly, it associates a high cost to writing posts. Once that initial thrill has faded, the thought of continuing to update at that same level of posting is very off-putting. Rather than switch to a more manageable post style, a lot of bloggers simply give up.
Secondly, come up with a variety of post styles that you can switch between. Writing very personal posts about your experiences and relationships is great. And if your life is a continuous whirl of crazy people doing extreme things in unusual places then that’s probably all you need. But for most of us, even those with kinky personal lives, it’s tough to continuously sustain a personal storyline that’s blog-worthy. Great writers can make any situation interesting, the rest of us need a little help from the subject matter. Personally I have a grab bag of post styles I pick from, which I mentally categorize as: Pretty picture, mainstream idiocy, interesting article, my kinky play, BDSM politics, thought for the day, etc. Having those existing mental templates for posts makes regular blogging much easier. There’s no reason anyone should follow my mix of post topics, but blogs that stick purely to ‘my kinky play’ as their subject matter do seem to have the shortest lives.
I’ll finish with a picture of a typical femdom blogger in action. I’m sure all the best posts are written this way. Don’t burst my bubble and tell me otherwise.
I found this image on the Her Butler tumblr. I think it’s a particularly apt one to use, as I’m pretty certain the blogger in question is Ms Marie. For a time she wrote a really excellent femdom blog which featured a lot of shots from her personal life. Sadly, as is often the way of blogs, one day it just vanished with no explanation. The images of her and her husband still pop up on tumblrs from time to time, and they always make me smile. Whatever she’s doing now, I hope all is going well for her.
I’ve covered the new UK laws in previous posts here and here. You can read more articles on the protest (along with more photographs) here, here and here.
