Saturday, March 06, 2004

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Arthur Silber is an intelligent individual.  His writing is clear, at times concise, and his interests are varied.  I recall when he first launched his blog, The Light of Reason, as I was one of the first individuals to link to him, and I also exhanged some interesting emails with Arthur.  The only complaint I have in regards to Arthur’s blogging is overly sensitive response to his readership or non-readership, as the case may be.  Arthur, your value, and the value of your contributions to the online world, are not tallied by your readers, unless you allow them to be your judges based on their responses, either in writing or contributions.  I titled this “Should I Stay or Should I Go” for based on the following.

Posted by Arthur on March 3rd, 2004.

"See you sometime. Whenever the spirit moves me again.

And this time, I will do my very best to make certain that it’s not any time in the near future. The disappointment hurts too much. Far, far too much. I don’t choose to experience it any longer."

Posted by Arthur on March 5th, 2004.

"In thinking about my great disappointment at the lack of response to my current series on “The Roots of Horror,” a reaction which I discussed briefly the other day, I remembered something I said to a few friends. On a couple of occasions, I remarked that I would feel very differently about continuing with this series, and with the blog, if I had a larger readership (say, on the order of 2,000 visitors a day), or if I were being paid for it.

I don’t see a substantial increase in readership happening too quickly—my ideas are far enough out of any “mainstream” you can think of to be a significant impediment to that goal—but it might be possible for me to make a bit of money at this. So, because I am an advocate of capitalism, I’ve decided to let the market decide."

I admire Arthur’s decision to let the market decide.  If indeed Arthur wants this to be his determining factor, the market, then I would paste ads all over the site and run a couple times of year cash raising athon ala Andrew Sullivan style.  If this does not support you, monetarily, let it go and pursue something else that is more profitable.

You are adding value Arthur.  Don’t rely too heavily on others praise, contributions or responses to realize this fact.  Though blogging can, at times, appear to be a popularity contest, you don’t have to participate in the contest to gain personal satisfaction, and popularity isn’t necessarily a good barometer of worth.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/06 at 05:45 AM
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