Beginning with the entries at Furry4Life: July 2009. I opened “Telling: Like it Is” in September ‘09 by reposting some of my pieces from the earlier effort.My blog is a combination of personal opinion and factual research, mostly (but not always) about being an avatar in Second Life and related virtual worlds. It attempts, not always successfully, to talk about issues that affect all of us whose lives extend into virtuality. It is also (by way of the Comments, and links to other bloggers) a conversation with others on the topics I raise.
Unfortunately, my career is connected with the construction trades and professions; at the moment, I do nothing “for a living”. This blog, however, would exist even if I had less free time; it’s not merely a hobby, it’s a compulsion.
I originally began blogging in a social network (ning.com) for those in the ‘furry’ fandom, to give those who were not in Second Life a taste of what it was like there. I also began reading other blogs about Second Life, about that same time, and it wasn’t long before I realized my topics might deserve a wider audience — so I took mine “public”.
Beginning with the entries at Furry4Life: July 2009. I opened “Telling: Like it Is” in September ‘09 by reposting some of my pieces from the earlier effort.
According to SiteMeter, the average is 20 visits and 34 page views per day. Since my entries are usually posted every 7 -10 days, the actual activity is more cyclical. I seem to get the most hits on the day after posting, which is an artifact of the time it takes word to spread, and that many of my readers live in Europe and Australia.
I have no desire to “monetize” what is, after all, my personal opinion.
Someone who has: a basic familiarity with Second Life and how it works, and how the policies and actions of its owners (Linden Lab) could affect their life within SL. Also, someone who is philosophically curious about “real vs virtual” identity, not just in Second Life but in cyberspace as a whole.
As I said above, it usually takes me a week to come up with a topic. Sometimes I’ll spend most of a day writing and editing one; research sometimes takes even longer. Others can take no more than a couple of hours.
If you are interested in the kinds of issues I discuss, you should subscribe not only to my blog, but the others I have listed on the blogroll.
[1] Be sure of why you want to blog at all, and of what you want to say in each post.
[2] Be yourself — and the opposite side of that coin is: Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. Use whatever style fits what you think and feel about your topic, but let your personality come out. Don’t be afraid of “I”. Readers will follow you as much for how you say something as what you say.
[3] Don’t worry about how often you publish. Quality beats quantity every time.
[4] If you are writing about fact, do your homework. *Read* the articles you link to; follow the links in them and read those, too. If you’re writing about current trends, make sure that your sources are current, too. Things change very rapidly in cyberspace.
[5] Don’t just spell-check; proofread. More than that: read it over to yourself when you think you’re done — out-loud if you want — to make sure it says what you wanted it to say, and that it sounds like you.
This blog can be visited at http://lalotelling.blogspot.com
