Hello, and welcome to version 3 of thewunderbar.net. You probably don’t know that this is version 3, because the first two times I started blogging, no one read it and I just stopped doing it. Why try a third time? There are many reasons why.
The first 2 times I actually posted to this site, I got discouraged because I felt I needed to make the site stand out, and if I couldn't’ really do that, I lost the desire to keep going. I first started thinking about what to do with my domain and hosting early in the new year, trying to figure out what to do with it. I toyed with the idea of starting to use the site again, and was again trying to make it stand out amongst the internet crowd. I finally just stopped and had to come to the realization that I can’t really make it stand out. Sure, I could try, and in a lot of ways what I intend to do will be just a bit different, but I’m not going to try to make the site stand out anymore. I’m going to post to it simply because I want to. I figure that if I make the content compelling enough, the people will come. Not everyone will be drawn to every post, but there should hopefully be enough variety for the people that visit. If no one actually visits, oh well. I’m going to keep posting anyway.
Speaking of posting, another thing about when I tried this site before, was that I felt like I had to post something almost every day. Now, my full time job is not to write random things on the internet, so I’ve had to tell myself that it’s okay not to post every day. I’ll try to post on a regular basis, but regular might end up being once every 10 days or so(or more!). Basically I’ll post when I have some worthy content, instead of posting for the sake of it.
I’ve talked about the frequency of content, now it’s about the type of content. I mentioned that I wouldn’t post unless I have something worth posting. It’s the question I’ve struggled with the most during the time I’ve been working on creating this site. Part of the reason why I let my previous attempts with this website die is because I felt like I didn’t do anything to make it stand out. I’ve been thinking about ways to strike a balance. I know that I probably can’t make this site stand out, but I do still want to put content up that people will actually want to take in. I follow people like Leo Laporte, who makes a living off of making Podcasts, and being in the public eye, and iJustine, who has leveraged video on the internet probably better than anyone. I also look at the Tom Merritt’s and Veronica Belmont’s of the world and see that they very much embrace being in the public eye. I then also look at some of the other bloggers on the internet, from those that are local to me, like Mack D. Male, who runs www.mastermaq.ca. I look at various news sites, which now have blogs of their own. I’ve looked at successful blogs, and blogs that are less that successful. The biggest successes seem to be the people who strike the perfect balance between a few key ideas, those being:
- personality – The best blogs are from Authors who are not afraid to inject their own personality in, without getting too opinionated on said content. It’s fine to criticize, but doing so in a constructive manner.
- Type of content – Unless you are trying to be a tech news website, posting nothing but tech news will not get an audience.
- Variety – I’m not a fan of blogs that are just all walls of text, or just blogs of pictures, or just blogs with links to YouTube videos. Blogs that only aggregate other content can also get annoying.
What will this blog be about?
Now that’s the big question isn’t it? To tell you the truth, even after thinking about it, and writing this wall of text, I’m not 100% sure myself. My last ill fated attempt had the tagline “the blog about everything I care about.” This will likely be similar, but more refined. I want to let the world, or whatever part of the world reads this site, know what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, and my opinion on things. It is absolutely a personal blog, but I hope that I’ll also be posting content the reader wants to take in, not just the “hey, read about me” content. I will be doing this through several mediums.
- Writing
- You’ll find posts like this one, although hopefully not as long, While I do plan to put out a variety of different types of content, sometimes the easiest way to get my thoughts out is to simply write them down.
- News Stories + more
- I don’t plan to do this often, but when a news story breaks that I really want to talk about, I’ll post a summary of the story, with a link, and then give my perspective. I wont’ be doing this often, as if I wrote comments on even half the news stories I read every day, I’d never sleep, much less do anything else.
- Photos
- I enjoy taking photos. I want to take more photos. I will post photos to this website. I’m going to try to avoid making posts that are just pictures, but I do hope they will become a bigger component of this site. I hope that it will help give people my perspective in the world, to see what I am seeing.
- Video
- This is something that will not happen at launch. I have recently purchased a Flip Mino HD, and I intend to start using it, along with the webcam on my PC, to create video content. Some of this content will be me dictating what I would otherwise be writing as a typed post, other times I will be posting video of some of my experiences, like I will with photos. I want to really play with the Mino HD and learn how to use it really well before I start doing this type of content, but I will look at putting this kind of content in by the end of April.
How will I make this content? Well that’s simple. I will be hosting the blog, and some of the content through my hosting service. Many of the pictures I use will come from flickr, and the majority of the video will be through YouTube. I basically will be working to leverage existing web 2.0 technologies, instead of trying to do my own thing. I see no need to re-invent the wheel.
This post has ballooned into something much larger than I thought it would be, but I wanted to make a good explanation from the start. It will be the first post of what I hope turns into many.
See you on the intertubes!
Tyler Hardeman
a.k.a. wunderbar.