Editing The Pen Addict 84/transcript (section)

== Quality Over Quantity ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Definitely. Another thing I wrote down in my notes was that I'm kind of a firm believer in quality over quantity.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah. There's no doubt.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Take, take your time, plan it out, get, get like a format or a loose format and just spend the time on doing one quality post. Like personally, I'd rather read through a pen review or an ink review that like, you can really tell the person's taken some time to plan this out. It's not just like, let me throw some ink at the page, get a photograph real quick. And I have a post volume of like, you know, 10 a week. Like I'd rather personally take the time and read through three reviews that you can tell they were carefully done. Not like, here you go. Like I'm cranking these things out. But if you happen to be working very fast and you're just the greatest blogger in the world and you can get everything done fast, by all means. But really, I think if you're just, if you're starting out or thinking of starting out, definitely go the quality route over the quantity route.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah, I agree with that. Totally. I would rather see that. I actually don't, you know, we're all time constrained these days. I would actually have a preference to see like one solid, well thought out post a week than three posts a day that I'm just going to glaze over. You know, I'm just going to end up going blind by the end of the week. You know, just not being able to handle it anymore. I mean, that's a personal thing with me, you know, just in how much time I have to spend to read other blogs and things like that. But that's kind of how I would put it, you know, with the quality over quantity thing. Now, this is one topic I want to, I might have more to say than you because I do it, I tend to do it a little bit more than you. But giveaways on your blog, what's your thought around doing giveaways and do you have any concerns about doing giveaways? Anything you've done in the past that hasn't worked? Anything you're going to change in the future? Or tell me just kind of your general thoughts about doing giveaways on your blog.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm for it. It's great when a company will give you something to give away or if there's something in your personal collection that's in relatively good shape that you just don't want anymore. It's a great way to draw traffic. There's a lot of blogs that do, you know, giveaway roundup posts. And even, you know, just the fact that you're giving something away brings in so many people. And it gets them to interact. You know, you can do the you have to comment to enter thing, which is great because now it's getting people familiar with your site. And then they're going to keep checking back to see when you announced a winner. And overall, I think it's a great way to get some traffic going. And it is scary, though, because this is something that you're offering for free. And, you know, people might feel like, you know, hey, why won't you do international? I get kind of sketched out by that personally because I I just don't want to deal with international shipping and tracking because I've heard, you know, horror stories. Even, you know, on eBay, just buying things for myself where it's coming from overseas. And like it's like just throwing something blindly into the dark. That's how I feel. You know. I just get a little sketched out by international giveaways. But, you know, it is very possible. And I really think it is a good way to get your stuff out there.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah, I actually I almost wish I could do more just because I like giving back to the community that's kind of, you know, helped, you know, that keeps coming and visiting my site. You know, I would like to do more. I just don't want to overlook. I'm wary about overdoing anything, not just giveaways, but overdoing any particular thing. But I think it is a great way to draw traffic. Like it's a good way to to kind of get that exposure because, like you said, you're usually getting, you know, people come back multiple times. And, you know, if you start giving cool stuff away or working with other vendors, you know, that that's a great way to do it. And in the beginning, you know, I didn't have that many. And, you know, sometimes I just I just pony up for myself because I just wanted to give back because I don't I don't run. And it kind of I think you're generally the same way. I don't run necessarily a for profit blog. I mean, oh, no, I'm not close. Yeah. You know, I'm not I'm I'm out. The reason I do my blog is just is to one because it's fun and to to share information. And, you know, I'm not going to run like all kinds of crazy ads and, you know, just, you know, cover up the page with ads and links to ads and all that stuff. I mean, sure, some of it, you know, is is fine in small doses. But, you know, most of it, you know, I'm putting right back into any anything I get. I'm putting right back into the site. And, you know, I want to give that back to to the people, too. So the giveaways, I do I try to keep them really simple. You know, I don't want to put the read the reader through making making, you know, jump through hoops to to enter a giveaway or things like that. I think one of the I think, you know, very rarely do I have a giveaway like I did today where I will ask the reader to do something additional than just leave a comment. You know, I I don't want them to like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, come back here, you know, post it, you know, post that you did all these things, you know, stand on one foot, pat your head, rub your belly, chew gum at the same time, you know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I try to make it. You know, just drive to me to pick it up and verify they're a real person.

'''Ed Jelley:''' And that's right. Right. And actually, if and actually a vendors want me to do all that stuff, I'll turn them down just because I don't want to put that burden on the readers. You know, like I said, you know, I do have a one today. I think, you know, in small doses, it's fine. But every giveaway or something, I'm not going to ask them to do all these crazy things like today. You know, I'm working with Huckberry and I've I've worked with them for years and they're a great company and I enjoy them. So in this case, you know, I feel it's fair to ask. You know, I do ask the readers to enter this giveaway. They have to sign up with Huckberry. But, you know, next week, I'm not going to ask them to do something again. And next week, I'm not going to ask them to do something different and jump through all these hoops. You know, I think you kind of build up these credits over time with readers, you know, providing them information and hopefully a good learning experience and a good reading experience at your blog. And every time you ask them to do something, you're kind of spending those credits. Well, I don't want to spend, you know, I try not to spend the reader's time and to do wasteful things like doing all that, doing all these extraneous things for giveaways and things like that. So that's just kind of my philosophy on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I definitely agree with you there, too. Like, I'm just looking back. Like, I just searched giveaway on my site because I kind of forgot. Like, I did a few ink sample packages, like something fun. Like, here's a small Rodia notebook and like 10 vials of ink or six vials of ink or something. And it was just like a, you know, whatever. It's fun. It's not at a huge cost to me. And it's something where, you know, people are interested and it gets them involved.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah. And the thing is, you know, this whole pen blogging thing, I think one of the reasons why it's such a fun thing to do and a lot of people do it because it's actually a pretty low barrier to entry for products to review, right? You can, I mean, all of us have a $2 pen sitting on our desk and a pad of paper, you know. And if you're kind of a pen junkie like us, you have more than that stuff laying around. And, you know, just pick up those things. Start writing about it if you think you have something interesting to say and go for it. I mean, I don't think anyone should hesitate to start a blog. You know, hopefully there's, you know, we have a, hopefully they've gleaned a little bit of information just from kind of how we do things through this conversation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And, of course, like I've had people email me for advice or questions. Like, I'm always open to, you know, if anybody has a question, just go to the contact page on my site. And I'll help you out. You know, there's nothing stopping me, you know, there's nothing stopping you from emailing me. And I'd be glad to help. It's one of those things where, you know, I have no problem giving back. I'm happy to do it. And reach out. That's just big, you know. Just write an email. I don't know what I'm doing. Can you check this out? Can you give me some pointers? Gladly. You know, like nobody's scary, you know.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah, that's the greatest thing about this community. It's not. It's very open and helpful. And everyone wants to kind of help each other out type of situation. So it's anyone who's writing a pen blog, I imagine, is similar to us. And they'll be glad to help you out. I know I certainly will. And you will. And, Myke, how's your pen blog coming? Did you start one while we were having this conversation?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think I might. Sounds like fun.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah. Do you have any questions? Anything come up in this conversation, Myke, that you wanted to point out or have any comment on or write any notes on? Or you're all good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' When it comes to things like maybe the more technical things that you need to ask your readership, how do you think about doing that? Like if you want to tell people to subscribe by RSS or whatever, do you think about those things differently? Or do you think maybe I'll just make an email newsletter or something like that, something that's more – the barrier to entry is a little bit lower?

'''Ed Jelley:''' Oh, I think the barrier – I try to make the barrier to entry even lower than that. I mean, I just try to make it as super simple as possible. Like when I changed – when I moved to Squarespace, I don't know, a year and a half ago. I don't even know how long. It's been a while. And changed the RSS feed. I had several posts saying, here's how you change. The RSS feed's changing. Here's what you need to do. I guess it was when I was moving away from FeedBurner. I made several blog posts just detailing, trying to help the readers out, saying, look, this is going away. This is why it's going away. Here's how you can change so you can continue getting the RSS feed.

'''Ed Jelley:''' And I just try to make it super simple. I don't know if that's answering your question or not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I just wonder if maybe you need to consider that more than if you wrote a tech news blog.

'''Ed Jelley:''' Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I see your point. Yeah, because I actually get emails about how do I sign up or how can I get your feed or things like that. So every now and then – I haven't done one recently. And gosh, I forget the name of the title of the post. I would do a post called howtoyusepenaddict.com. And then I would go through things like that just as a reminder to people. Here's how you subscribe to the RSS feed. And different – here's my account on Twitter. Here's how you can contact me. So once in a blue moon, I will put those posts on just on the main page for readers because, yeah, they're not as technical as someone that's reading a tech blog or something like that. So, yeah, that's a good point. And one comment that I'll make. I'm a stickler about RSS feeds.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know where this is going. I am guilty of getting an email from Brad about this.