Whoever thought blogging was easy? I did, that’s for sure.

Things aren’t always as they seem though, and I plan to write about this today. I know that will make one spunky little girl very, very happy today!!

Beginnings

Having been a prolific writer on many spanking forums over the years, the idea for a blog was something that I had batted around with for a while. On Christmas Eve, 2006, I was in a pretty angry mood, and to take my mind off of things I decided that then was as good a time as any to create this blog.

The focus of this site was, is, and always will be about my journey in the spanking world. Now that journey has unusual components to it in that I also like to share my virtual world with you all. If there is a video that I like, a website that I enjoy, or even just a person that has endeared themselves to me, then I will also write about that. Running a blog, or several in my case, does come with problems though.

Sploggers

The biggest single problem that I get is Sploggers (spam bloggers) looking for link exchanges. Now we all had to start somewhere, I understand that, and I have no problem helping out someone who wants to get started. The problem I have is when the blog in question really has little to do with spanking at all and most importantly, when I am copied on a standard email asking that if I add them, then they will add me. Word of advice, add me first and then tell me that you did so, you are likely to get a much better response. Your requirement that you will only add me if I add you first, stinks!!!!

Now I’m going to tread on thin ice here, but I’m a big boy and I can take the feedback. At the moment there are several blogs out there whose only purpose is to make money. Now I’m not knocking that at all, there are two people in particular who put a lot of effort into marketing and fair play to them. When they market they actually put serious time and effort into making a presentable and entertaining post. In fact I even do it myself on my other sites. SPANKING GALLERIES was created solely for marketing reasons, and I put an absurd amount of hours in making the site. I also have SPANKING PICS which I will use from time to time to market.

We come back to the blanket email though, and this is what I can’t understand. Without going on an ego trip, clearly this blog is successful (my other ones to a lesser degree) and the opportunity for promotion is very good. So I cannot grasp the concept when a splogger is trying to get my traffic, especially when they say that they will only add my link if I add theirs. What in essence they are asking me for is to send them MY readers to their site, in the hopes that they will make a purchase from them and not from me. Seriously, where would that make any sense for me? You want people to buy from you and not from me, and you want me to advertise that fact?

Now there is a huge difference if someone has a personal blog and they also make a little money on the side. If their blog is about spanking and they have a bunch of links then I am okay with adding that. In fact there have been a great number of sites (friends) who I have set up with the affiliate programs so that they can also earn some money. That scenario gets back to the whole idea of sharing within the community. Cheeky freakin’ sploggers though, ASKING for a PRIME blog link placement, while at the same time sticking your link so far down the page that you have to do a ‘Control F’ just to find the damn thing!!

I know that sounds like a hard assed response but it really isn’t. I have never had a problem adding websites or blogs to this page for a link exchange, heck, if you were to go through them you will find a lot of sites that I list that haven’t even added my site to their link list, and I’m cool with that. We all like to make a little money and I like sharing ideas with fellow bloggers, many of my ideas have been implemented by other blogs and in turn I have also used the idea of others. If the purpose of your blog is just to make money though, and it isn’t actually a blog in the real sense, it is just a place to promote affiliate sites, then please don’t ask me to give you the money that I could earn myself, and most certainly don’t tell me that you will only link my site if I link yours. I’m dying to throw the F word in here, but I will contain myself for now 🙂

So that is one beef that I have, and I know for sure that other bloggers have similar thoughts, in fact I believe Adele Haze once wrote something in a similar vain. There are other problems though, and as I am in rant mode then fuck it, I’m going to write about them. See, told you the F word wouldn’t be hidden for long 🙂

Blog Love

Now before I write about the second problem that I encounter, I should also take this time to talk about the positives that running a blog can create. First and foremost, I receive some wonderful feedback both via email and in person. Now I’m probably the worst emailer in the world, sometimes emails will sit unanswered in my inbox for weeks on end. I do eventually get to them, but it is certainly an area that I need to improve on.

My favorite part is when I post something that someone really likes. Many times I have had people ask me if I had the complete picture set to a few photos that I post, and I am more than happy to email the people back with the pictures that they are looking for. Many times people will just write to say that they loved a particular theme (Audio, video or visual) and would love to see and hear more, really valuable feedback and always nice to hear. A lot of times some older folks will email me and talk about sharing a similar background to me and we compare notes on what it was like to grow up in that environment. Of course I also get the hate mail from people who cannot stand the fact that I am doing something, whether it be spanking girls or relaying a story. For nearly all of the feedback though, it is pretty much 99% positive and I love to hear it. Like any blogger out there, would I like more comments left on my blog? Well of course I would, everyone likes to hear what others have to say. If I ever get frustrated though I always go back to my prime reason for doing a blog in the first place, I’m doing it because I want to share what I have with others, I’m not doing it to get praised for doing so.

One unexpected pleasure from blogging is at spanking parties, and I had no idea that this would happen. Whenever I go to a spanking party pretty much everyone there knows who I am. Now granted, I have worked a great deal, and other websites to a lesser degree, so I understand that a portion of people will know me from that. Then there is of course the image, despite the fact that the John Timms of the world believe that I dress like a Chav and that people that look like me are a dime a dozen, I know differently 😉 I consider my sideburns to be as much a part of me as my noodle spanking arm is!! I have to admit that it is a major ego boost in the winter time, when I am standing outside of my workplace in my Stetson and leather jacket and tourists are stopping to take a picture of me!! Of course that ego boost just gets bigger when the Victor Meldrew type pissants get their knickers in a twist that someone is getting that type of attention. I happen to think that I am a very unique character and that’s all that matters there, MY happiness 🙂

Back to spanking parties and what a wonderful feeling they can be. Now I’m not the most social animal in the world, and dare I say it that when I am at a spanking party I rarely, if ever, ask someone if they want to play. I’m dead serious about that, there has hardly been a time when I have asked a lady if they wanted to play at a party. Of course I get to play plenty, but that is normally just a natural evolution of sitting around and talking to people first. Hey, what a novel idea!! Treat someone like a person and not a slab of meat there for you to play Rocky Balboa to 😉 Told you, I’m in rant mode today, so deal with it. Back to the joy of parties, it is a great feeling when people come up to you to talk about your blog. I’m serious here, despite hearing before that I am a name dropper, I am really not. Anyone with a name I am generally distant from as I try to remain humble. In this instance though, I will name drop.

Am I famous? Please tell me I’m famous!!

This has nothing to do with any spanking production that I have done, this is all the result of running a blog. At the Shadow Lane party I was delighted that I was going to finally get a chance to meet Tony and Eve, two people who I had admired for a long time. I got into the elevator and shortly thereafter Tony and Eve also got in, before I could say a word Tony extended his hand to me and said “Hey, you’re the guy who does the podcasts”. Obviously that was from the blog, and during the same time as the elevator filled, Clare Fonda waved to me at the back and said “Hi, Houndog”. It’s great, isn’t it? Any social anxiety is taken care of immediately, at any party it is a great way for a conversation to begin. Once more at the Shadow Lane party, Dallas, someone who I have never conversed with in any way, shape or form, also came over to me to introduce himself and to greet me, same for Molly St. James at the FMS party. I’m always flabbergasted at the amount of people who recognize me from the blog.

My way or the highway

So I’m going to finish with one final issue with blogging. In fact I am taking the completely opposite approach to management training. In management training you are always taught to say something nice and then talk about the constructive areas, then finish on a high. I’m going the other way around 🙂

Now I know I’m not the only one who deals with this, in fact I know for certain that paysites encounter this problem more than I do. The problem I am speaking of is blog readers telling you how you should run your blog. Now I’m not adverse to any constructive feedback whatsoever, in fact I encourage peoples thoughts and ideas, what I am talking about here is the straight down the middle of the road “This is how it should be done”

Now I contemplated using two names and whether or not I wanted to use them as an example, but as these guys feel free to impart their words of wisdom on this site, and many other sites, I am taking the “Tough titty said the kitty” approach. This is not a put down on either of these folks, and I certainly hope that neither of them takes it as such. I am just trying to demonstrate the opposite ends of the spectrum. On one hand we have Dan, who strongly presents his preference for M/F spanking (My personal preference as well) and Funbun, whose preference is F/F spanking. In between there are so many options that I can’t begin to tell you about. If I went to my inbox right now I could probably find with ease 50 emails where people are either telling me how I should run my site, or suggesting what I might need to do to improve it in the future.

Now I’m going to try my hardest not to sound like a dick here, but if I do then I will gladly accept the consequences of being one if people feel that is what I am coming across as. Now this doesn’t only apply to my blog, but it also applies to paid websites as well, and let me give you a breakdown here of how I feel about this.

When I started this blog it was to share what my perception of the spanking world was, and is. That is going to take many various forms through literary, visual or audio means. When I write a story, the story is portrayed how I envision things to go. When I post pictures, these are pictures that have personally ‘reached’ me and my hope is that they will reach others as well. Trust me, by the amount of websites that have republished pics and videos that I have found I KNOW that they do reach people. Now like I said, I have no problem hearing from anyone and what their perception of spanking is, in fact I like to hear the feedback, but if the way I present my blog is such a constant problem to some folks, I can’t understand for the life of me why someone doesn’t start their own and then present the spanking world to us as THEY see it. I try to put myself in their shoes and when I do, and let’s not forget, I am also a reader of other spanking blogs. If I see something that someone has posted and I’m not particularly fond of it, I skip past it and find the things I do like. At no point do I feel the need to point out what I don’t like about someone’s post, though I will comment on what I do like.

Lights, camera, action!!

Video productions are another thing that I liken the above statement as well. I know that Pixie has just written about this herself, but I figure I can add a little bit to it also. Now I will admit that I have been somewhat fortunate in that a lot of ideas that I have, have been used by a few websites. Now it is not that they take my whole ideas and run with it, they may take it as the basis of a scene and then change it so that it fits the product that they are producing. Trust me, we aren’t talking of a significant number here, but I have been fortunate enough to have seen some of my ideas filmed though. When I give a suggestion however, that is merely what I am doing, just offering something that people may be able to work around. I’m most certainly NOT telling them how it should be done, and I’m most certainly not going to start throwing my toys out of the crib because they are not filming my 22 page screenplay!!

As I have already started to anyway, should I want something filmed that I desperately want filmed, then I am going to put my resources together and film it as I wish to film it myself. In no form would I ever expect another company to use THEIR dime to create something specifically for me. If they did I would expect them to charge me for a custom made video. Now the reason I bring that up is because just doing amateur stuff up to now, I am still having people tell me how I need to film and what I need to be doing regarding the spanking.

Maybe I’m getting a little carried away here, but the whole purpose for making my own videos next year is to present a spanking video as I want a video to be done. Like any spanking website out there, they present spanking material as THEY see it, based on the direction that they wish to go in. I’m sure all of them have a creative direction that made them start their company in the first place and I really don’t think that they need to be told how to spend their own buck. As a consumer I have a choice, if I like what I see from a spanking company then I can subscribe to it, or not, as the case may be. They are selling me what they have to offer and if I enjoy their product then I will subscribe to it. There have been times in the past where I have said that I would love to see A, B or C, but it isn’t a requirement, if the website in question likes the idea then they can tailor it to suit the product that they wish to put out.

So maybe I am giving a disclaimer already here for the videos I plan to make next year. I already have a goal and a direction that I wish to go in, if people tell me certain things that they would like to see then I would certainly see if it fits the direction that I want to go. At the end of the day though, I will be giving you what I like from a creative standpoint, and if it fits your direction then I am sure that you will enjoy it. If it doesn’t though, look around, there are plenty of websites out there that may well have what you are looking for. Failing everything though, if you really want something done right, then do it yourself. You have a vision, then present it to us for us all to see. If you are frustrated by spanking blogs, go to blogger.com because you can start your own blog for free and then you can share your aspect of spanking with us all to enjoy as well.

Blogging isn’t easy, but it can be one hell of a fun journey. I’m done ranting, for now!!