On The Blog – Making a comedy website

By The Duntmeister

After 30 years down the Information Technology pit at the data face, I decided to throw the towel in. After throwing the towel, I then left the job, turning my back on the grey world of IT forever and breathed in the fresh clean air of . . . . well . . . . what exactly?

In a fit of peak, I had left my safe and secure job behind and was now left looking for other ways to make a living. I’ve always enjoyed writing, I’ve always enjoyed comedy and I’ve always enjoyed satire. Is it possible I could make money through writing?!

So I Googled it.

“Easy peasy”, said Google (it’s amazing how they’re getting all the colloquialisms right these days isn’t it), “loads of people do it.”

“Great. Where do I sign up?”, I typed.

“Ah”, replied Google, “you don’t sign up, first you need a blog. Anyone who wants to write for a living needs a blog! To showcase your work”.

Oh right! A blog. OK.

“Great. Where do I sign up?”, I typed.

“Ah” said Google, “we’ve done our bit, we’re just a search engine, the rest is up to you”.

Oh right. Er, thanks a lot.

I think.

Right then, I need to find out how to set up a blog. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of companies out there only too willing to help you but which one to choose? I mean there’s so many, like WordPress or Blogger or Tumblr or Weebly or Medium or Wix or Squarespace or Penzu or Svbtle and that’s just for starters!

Ignoring the fact that I felt like I was just reading a list of nonsense words, I used my strategy coin and picked Wix. No other reason. And it’s free, unless you want to host the site with your own domain name, which I did, eventually, but it meant that I could play about and see what was what before spending any money. And anyway, wasn’t the money supposed to be coming in rather than out?

The Wix site seemed easy to use and they had lots of templates to choose from and after about an hour I had a site up and running. I was well on my way to earning a fortune.

Next thing, what to blog about?! Mmm. I know. Blogging. I can blog about blogging. Hang on wait a minute, do your research, there’s loads of people out there doing that already! Alright, what about blogging about blogging about blogging?! Oops, found a couple of them already too. What about . . . no forget blogging. Try something else. What about the news? Yeah. Plenty of new material every day. I could write acerbic, witty comment on the latest stories providing an antidote to the constant barrage of negativity we get every day. News it is then.

OK. What about branding? Do I do this as me? Or do I use a persona? Does it matter?

Well, it matters to me. I plumped for using a persona – The Duntmeister. Why the name? What does it mean? Well, to be honest, it’s what my kids call me. That’s it. I could make something up, but hey, people want straight these days, so I’m giving it straight. It also gives me my domain name – www.duntmeister.com – not a lot of confusion there. Search for Duntmeister on Google and you’ll see loads of stuff. All mine I tells ya. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

The other thing that I like about using a persona is that it allows me to stand back a bit and be his friend on Facebook. I might write to him and he might reply (he doesn’t always though). He’s quite lefty in his views (a bit like me) but he’s more outspoken than I am. It allows me to disagree with him as well if I want to (I haven’t yet, but I’m tempted 😊 ).

Alright, so that’s the easy bit done, next thing is how to attract an audience. Mmm. More Googling please.

Well there’s no shortage of advice out there that’s for sure. In fact, there’s whole industries built up around how to market your blog! In addition to the plethora of apps to support you, the companies who will happily promote you who (for a fee of course), the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) rules to learn, networking to be done, connections to be made. Nobody told me about all this?!

With the benefit of hindsight, the marketing is the hard bit. Getting followers. You have to stick at it and find like-minded people out there who will appreciate what you are saying. Just clicking on Facebook friend suggestions doesn’t cut it (and can even breed resentment if you’re not careful). The best thing I have found to date is to pick a meme, write the blog, then root out those people/sites who you think will be receptive to it and share it with them. It would be easy to do it the other way round i.e. pick a popular meme, write about it, then share but that would be compromising my principles. I pick the story based on my own set of values.

But it’s working. Slowly. I am starting to get messages and comments from people who have seen my site but are not friends or followers and a steady trickle of people are now coming to me rather than me going to them.

Another thing to do is guest-blogging (hey look, I’m doing it now). Sharing your views across different platforms. If people like the cut of your jib, they’ll be tempted to have a poke around. If not, they won’t.

So what have I learned.

Well, I think the main thing that I have learned is that it doesn’t matter how good your blog is if no-one is reading it. This is a pitfall that I and others have fallen into. I started off spending more time on the writing than I did on the marketing and while I got a lot of personal satisfaction out of it, I might as well have been writing letters to Father Christmas and leaving them by the chimney. So it’s the other way round now. And it’s better.

So what about the money bit?

Mmm alright, well I can’t say that I have earned enough to make a living from it.

Yet.

But now that I’m doing the right things, it’s growing in the right direction!

Watch this space.