Look at me!

When Harvey looked at my blogroll, and noticed his site was included, he posted about the experience of seeing his site's name listed with the others.

Look at those names. It's like a who's freakin' who of blogdom... come to think of it, it looks a lot like my first blogroll.

Except this one's got MY name on it.

I think I can relate, though. Because I felt a similar feeling, though probably not to the same degree. The reason was this: Someone on my blogroll *noticed* me, took the time to post about me, and even requested that I write something about myself so that he could "make fun of [me] properly." It's like having a celebrity call you by name and ask you to come hang with her.

When I started this little foray into the 'net I basically figured that a few people here and there might come and read what I write. That's basically how it still is. However, I feel like I've crossed some kind of threshold. Harvey is read by a lot more folks than I am but now they're going to see what he wrote about me and maybe, just maybe, they'll click the link and see for themselves just who this Radar Rider guy is and what he's all about. And maybe, just maybe, they'll like what they see and come back again a while later to see if there's anything new. Who knows?

Actually, this isn't the first time this has happened. One of my other blogrollee's, Joe Kelly at The Sake of Argument, put me in his blogroll and, when I saw that, I felt that same sort of giddiness. He didn't post anything about me, though.

And now the possibility exists that someone will read this and want to ask, "How did you come to their attention in the first place?" Well I'll tell you... (he's going to tell, he's going to tell)

I did it be leaving comments on their weblogs and trying to make them insightful. Sure, I could just leave a note that says, "Hey! Look! I have a blog, too! Come see!" It may get one or two clicks but not many. Unless you provide some idea of your writing style and what you think, most people probably aren't going to be interested. But give them something good, something that makes them think, and (in my opinion) they'll be more likely to take a look at the rest of what you got.

Wow, look at that! I've only been at this for six months and I'm already giving advice about blogging. Is this arrogance or hubris? I guess only time will tell.

In the end, the reason most of us do this is because we want people to want to read what we write. It's like the Open Source Software community where many if not most of the members write and modify software for the recognition. With a few notable exceptions, people who author weblogs do not make any money at it. We do it for pure enjoyment, to get our words out on the net, and in the hope that someone will stop by, read what we wrote, and say, "Good job."