I’m going to take a break from the familiar rantings I usually do and just sort of talk out loud on how I can focus this blog to a certain niche to build traffic and be able to earn at least some income from it. First off, I need to provide genuine value with every post. I must raise my standards of what a quality blog post is and spend more time tweaking and editing these posts. At some points, I even think I should start over with a whole new blog just to avoid the mistakes and missed opportunities this blog has experienced. I was naive coming into blogging and I cannot say I’ve learned much about how to monetize my blog or even build significant traffic. I guess it just wasn’t high on my priority list. I knew it would be a lot of work and I was not yet committed enough to it. I almost feel ashamed of this blog when it comes to its optimization, coding, and layout. I just don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to those things. I’m just not very web savvy. And that is partly my own fault.
I have never liked programming computers and I don’t think I ever will. From HTML to C++, it has always been an utter bore to me. Hand-coding anything just makes me want to go to sleep. And I’m a math guy, go figure. When I took my first programming class in high school, I was all excited, but quickly became turned off to the whole idea of programming. My mind wasn’t wired like a computer, so I couldn’t think like one. Most of all, I hated the tediousness of it. One small mistake could ruin a whole program. Besides the fact that I’m not exactly pro-technology. That certainly doesn’t help. But that doesn’t change the fact I do want to make a substantial amount of money from this website/blog. I would love to make $50,000 or more a year simply by blogging and optimizing my site to the best of my abilities. If I must learn things, I will resolve to learn them. I just need a BASIC understanding of all of this programming and web utilities (bad pun).
I do not want to sell my content to some outside agency because in my mind that is suboptimal. I would only get paid once for that, when I could potentially get paid millions of times for the same post if I had the traffic. Obviously, I cannot make any money without sufficient traffic. And I will not build traffic unless I keep my posts pretty much consistent when it comes to a certain niche. I just have to look at all the successful blogs out there to find that 99% of them have a common theme running through their whole site. If I were to look at the archives of my blog, it started out humor, then went to self-help, then went to anarcho-primitivist and pro-nature ranting, then whatever it is I’m doing now, which I’m not really sure. I have gotten my share of positive and negative feedback from readers, and I’m just not sure where to go with this. I could keep running on the anarcho-primitivism side, something I know quite a bit about and am passionate about, or I could turn this into another self-help, feel-good website. Or I could combine the two. Or I could write about humor and laughter, which would make this blog into basically a joke site. I guess maybe I have too many interests. Or maybe I just haven’t yet found a way to tie them all together.
When I study a topic, I immerse myself in it. I try to basically become it for the time I am experiencing it. I like to read and write about a variety of topics because I have many interests. I just need a way to relate these interests to a common denominator so that it will be in accordance with this site’s overall message. If you look at a site like StevePavlina.com or Zen Habits, you will see that even though they write about a variety of topics, it always has their main theme running through it. I just need to get clear about what it is I want this blog’s theme to be. To be honest, the majority of my being leads towards anarcho-primitivism, but there is a part of me that likes the personal growth aspect of my previous blog posts. What was it that Abe Lincoln said? “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
That’s not the only problem. I definitely have not spent enough time actively blogging. I blog when I feel like it, and only when there is not anything else for me to do. It is no longer a high priority in my life, but more of a filler. It will get me through one of my days off from work so that I don’t succumb to watching TV or blindly web surfing stupid content. There are times when I am inspired to post, but I often feel that I’m saying the same things over and over, just in a different context or framework. “This civilization is going to crash, it is unsustainable, we need to change, etc.” has been the focal point of the past 1.5 years or more of this blog. While what I am saying is definitely the truth, I’m trying to find a way to put a more positive spin on it. I feel like what I am writing about is a truth people do not want to hear, that people shy away from and are in serious denial about. Some of it can be chalked up to ignorance. I feel like the message that I need to get out is that we need a rapid change in consciousness in order to save the Earth and if the majority of the world’s population does not change, then we are doomed to a severe crash that will kill off most of Earth’s species along with most of us humans (not that a reduction in human populations is a bad thing).
I’ve read tons of articles saying that us humans are what we are and cannot be anything else than a ravenous, gluttonous species. But I think it is a factor of culture. It is our cultural software that has created the world we live in today, not our biological hardware. Humans nearly identical to us 50,000 years ago didn’t live like we do today, and yet we don’t think we could ever go back due to the ego and its self-preserving ways. Going back to the hunter-gatherer way of life is a shot to the ego of our species. We’ve come so far and accomplished so much to be thrown back into what we were. It would be a serious step back, a demotion. Not to mention that people in the first world dread being equals with the rest of the world, just as the rich dread being equal to the poor. What ever happened to all men are created equal? Oh, wait, didn’t the people who wrote that own slaves? And there is the hypocrisy of every civilization. Built on ideals it can’t even sustain itself from the beginning.
See what happened? I broke off into another rant. It seems I can’t help myself. I guess that’s my niche. The back-to-nature, anarcho-primitivist ranter. I feel the more I embrace this role, the more value I will get out of it. The more anti-establishment and anarchist I can get, the better. And if people don’t like it, too bad. I’m sure some will. I want to pursue my passion, not write some fluffy blog about BS that can be found on millions of other blogs. I want to be my own person, not a carbon copy of this blog or that blog. Sure, my writing may be obscure and my viewpoints unpopular, but you know what? At least I’m being honest and putting myself out there. The truth that is most afraid to be spoken is the truth that should be told the loudest. The truth we resist hearing is the one that we truly need to know.
Civilization was a mistake. It is not natural. It is destructive. Is is unsustainable. It is cruel and unusual. It is out of balance. It is headed for a crash. The way we live and have lived for thousands of years is incorrect. It has destroyed much of the beautiful landscape and is responsible for the extinction of millions of species of plants, animals, insects, and even humans. We force this lifestyle down every culture’s throat, demanding total submission or death. In our minds, there is only one way to live and that’s our way. Damn the consequences, we are going to get what we’ve worked so hard for! We don’t care what we are doing to the Earth because we don’t live there anymore. We spend our lives inside sterile buildings with fluorescent lighting. We are conditioned to fear nature, our former home, so we destroy it. Instead of facing our fears, it so much easier to obliterate them. We begin an incestuous relationship with ourselves and only ourselves, becoming more and more dependent on human intervention and less on nature itself. We are dependent on civilization, and therefore fearful of its demise and are willing to preserve it at any cost. We have become pathetic, useless, and fearful when at one time we were strong, courageous, and full of enthusiasm. Our culture needs to change and we need to abandon civilization.
That is the truth I am driving at.
If you found this post insightful, helpful, or thought-provoking, feel free to donate to my site.
