ABOUT THE BLOG...

For the past year, I have been running “The Writer’s Blog.” Started on Google’s Blogspot (http://nakedspacehamsters.blogspot.com), but I started posting copies of the blog on MySpace after my daughter convinced me I needed a MySpace “presence.”

Every week, pretty much without fail, I have posted a new blog entry in both places. One of the things I was told was that a Website needs to change at least every week or potential fans will stop checking it. (About once a week is all I can handle. I have a job, after all. And a life, too, maybe.) I have the links to both in most of my “signatures” on all the writers’ Websites I subscribe to—again, like I was encouraged to do.

I have had very lately received some indication that the postings—on MySpace only, not blogspot—are actually being read. There have been some comments (thank you), and some offers to help with the Benefit Dance (and I will take you up on them), and I have heard some people mention some things they could only have learned from the blog. So, MySpace good, blogspot pretty much useless. Good to know.

I still think there’s a need for a “real” Joe Website, that would act as a sort of clearinghouse—go there, and it’d just have links to the songs on Soundclick, to the MySpace page (for the blog and gig announcements—when there are any), to CDBaby (no, doesn’t exist yet—I want to set that one up to market the next CD), and a place where people could sign up for the “tell me where Joe’s playing next” and “tell me when the next CD’s coming out” e-mail lists. Maybe this coming year.

I may be able to get a little space from my current ISP (don’t need much for just a clearinghouse), as long as I can name it something like joewrabek.com. (A piece of Ayn Rand advice, there. If you’re proud of what you do, you should be proud to put your own name on it.) Ran into a kid who designs Web pages for hip-hop musicians (really good work), and he’s potentially interested in designing mine—said he’d never done anything for a country musician before, but he’s willing to try. And of course, I’d have a link to his Website for his graphic design business. Links, as one old online pharmacist once told me, are the key to successful marketing on the Internet. (The pharmacist fellow’s in Germany, which kind of underscores his point.)

UPDATES: Got the invitation to New Year’s Eve at Johnny B.’s. We’re on. The weekend, and the rest of the week, look kinda dead, and the following weekend I’ll be home for my daughter’s birthday. In the meantime, though, I have (I think) somebody sending me some lyrics I might be able to set to music—one of the things I like to do during “dead” times to keep feeling creative.

Joe