We(e) little fish

There was a session at BlogHer ’10 on Saturday that I am kicking myself for not going to.  It was called “Little Fish in a Big Pond – Understanding and Loving Your Small Blog.”  I wound up not going partly because of time mismanagement (again. That plagued me all weekend.  Not like I have clock on my cell phone or anything), and partly because I felt  I didn’t need help understanding or loving my small blog. 

But now after reading this post about the session I’m really wishing I attended, and not only because one of the people running it was Celeste, whose blog I read and comment on and who comments here once in a while.  Found her blog through NaBloPoMo a couple years back, met her in person for the first time at the People’s Party on Thursday night. 

Luckily BlogHer has transcripts of the sessions, and after a quick search I found the one for “Little Fish…”.  I started skimming through it and berated myself for not keeping better track of time, and for deciding not to show up late to the session even though lateness appears to have been totally acceptable.  There was a lot of stuff in here that I guess I needed to hear.  I’m having a lot of “me too” reactions for things like:

• Why I don’t have a counter. Numbers don’t interest me. If I go by the people who’ve commented on a regular basis, I think I have an audience of about ten, give or take.  And I’m happy with that.  If I somehow managed to attract a readership as large as Maggie Mason’s or Jenny Lawson’s or Eden Kennedy’s, I think I’d be paralyzed by stage fright.
• Why I don’t want to “monetize” this.  Turning this into a paying gig would suck all the joy out of it.  Sponsors would have expectations.  The only reason I’d ever contemplate allowing advertisements is if the site that serves my blog started to charge me for the space I use.  Even then I might not.  There are worse things to spend my money on.
• Why I’m ambivalent about the whole “giveaway” thing.  I occasionally toy with the idea of giveaways, but not to generate traffic.  I just wanna be able to give my friends free stuff.  I realize there’s probably a trade-off, there.  One can’t give away things like KitchenAid appliances or Nooks or whatever else people hand out without there being some sort of business arrangement in the background.  It would depend upon the arrangement, I guess.
• Who I write for.  I write for me.  If other people like it, great!  So far no one’s left me a comment that reads, “You suck!” (oop!  Tempting fate there) so I assume I’m entertaining.  But really?  I’m happy just talking to myself.  Sometimes I write posts just to jot down things I need to remember—like the one on fixing my faucet.  When I finally need to do that again, I’ll find the post that says I need key grease and which direction the cartridge has to go, ‘cause I’m sure I’ll forget by then.

Well, now I’m going to go back and read the transcript in-depth.  I guess things I need to add to the “do” and “don’t” list for next year’s conference are: “Do keep track of time. Don’t worry about walking into a session late.”