Blogroll Amnesty Anniversery

Jon Swift notes February 3rd is an important day in the evolution of Blogging, it is the day of the bloggletting, excuse me, bloodletting of A lister blogrolls. Atrios of Eschaton began it by deleting a bunch of blogs, the amnesty apparently was his own as the non-A listers went away. The new trend continued all the way to Daily Kos, those clogged rolls were gone, replaced with A-listers linking A-listers.

Jon's very nearly A-list blog (more readers in an hour than I have in a week) instituted its own Amnesty:

Although as a conservative I am opposed to amnesty when it comes to Vietnam War draft dodgers, illegal immigrants and old people, when it comes to blogrolling I am surprisingly liberal, as you can see from the Blogroll Policy I have posted on my sidebar. "I will add anyone to my blogroll who adds me to theirs, whether conservative, liberal, moderate, libertarian or Albigensian, with the exception of spam or porn blogs or anything else your mother would be embarrassed to read," it states. I oppose litmus tests for blogs as well as Supreme Court Justices.

You will find this humble effort on Jon's Blogroll - fairly quickly, but if you're farther down the alphabet it takes a scroll bar to view the roll. This may be a draw back. You will have noticed, if you're a regular reader, that my blogroll of 27 recently expanded by 10 with asterisks that were my selections from Jon's Blogroll's self-selected best. (I guess that's second hand self-selected self-selected - or something odd) My Blogroll doesn't contain any of the big A-listers, I figure if you're a reader of them you know where to find them and these out of the way spots hold some gems you wouldn't see otherwise. The biggest benefit to being on Jon's Blogroll is invitations to post for links, such as the self-selecteds or this post. It is fairly easy to tell when Jon has linked, my readership doubles or more. This site is pretty far down the pecking order, not a Z-list, it is in the top 200K and I have seen a 6M before on Technorati so a P-list?

I seem to have driven off some political readers in the last couple months, gun article Googles are running 3/5 or higher and BlueOregon link-ins are way off. Maybe my skepticism of the two leading Democratic presidential candidates has something to do with it. Well, the US House & Senate Sgt at Arms haven't lost interest. I'm still running numbers that would have pleased me spitless two years ago.

Back to the topic at hand, I do use Blogrolls from sites that interest me and I find interesting sites doing it. I hope mine gets some usage, if you haven't cruised it some, you've missed out. Doing the research to write this thing cuts into my cruising. There is something self-reinforcing in the big A-lists cross referencing each other, some of the high listed blogs got there as much by happy accident as good writing or well thought out analysis and nothing breeds success like success. My Blog's peculiar outlook has a lot to do with its readership numbers, but so does lack of exposure. (there are really good writers with small numbers, not that I include myself)

Consistently interesting blogs aren't that common, it is an uneven terrain out here. I've tried to put some of those into my blogroll while considering my readership's interests so that those folks can benefit from some increased exposure. While you're reading one of these P-list blogs it is important to remember that some real effort goes into doing this stuff consistently. Your three minute read may have involved hours of work, most of us are rank amateurs as writers/editors/publishers and we are all of those.

I try to be inclusive in my rolls, I think most people linking me are linked, so here's the deal: at any time you find something you particularly like, consistently, give me the link and I'll take a look and include it if I agree. It's not the mutual linking of Jon's (and Skippy), I don't have the room or even the inclination to have a mile long roll, but it is something and a way to recognize good efforts that are otherwise ignored.



If you've been under the impression that Blogging is a real easy way to reach large numbers of people, let me point out that being linked in very complimentary terms in an article on a very big A-list blog generated a spike of about 200 verifiable hits to this site. One or more of my headlines has been viewed 9400 some times in the past 7 days on Reuters.com and an infinitesimal percentage of those views resulted in hits. So when I talk about exposure being a big deal, I'm not exaggerating. My Archives, particularly "Ruger No1 in 45-70 Govt" get many more hits each day than current postings not to mention some truly strange Google hits that come in by accident. (very accidentally, very, very)

***Update***

Jon's article is here and here's what Skippy has to say, I include these because they were partners in crime, so's to speak, in rectifying the massacre. If you come in from one of those sites and ask for a link, I'll put it up and I'd appreciate the same, but I'll ask anyone coming in to at least take a look at another article to get a feel for this place, you may or may not want to link this site once you've had a taste of it. For my readers, please do the same if you pop over to Jon's and if you find something you really like, let me know. I have to admit that my cruising time has dropped with the demands of posting time.

And thanks for coming in, we've got politics, guns, and some fast cars and other eclectic stuff.