How To Land A Girl, Part I: Claim Her

I haven't really cracked into reviewing the blogging world, since, as you may or may not be able to tell by this garbage blog, I'm not an expert blogger, but I got this email and I couldn't resist. She sounds too pretty. I'm a sucker for pretty.

Brittany, vixen of pshaboutthat.blogspot.com, requests,

Mr. Edelman,

I know nothing about all this crap, but I love the way you write...mmm...it’s the hot. You are my only link on my page, so I figured why not. You know the drill; in case you forgot, follow my simple instructions below.

Review my site. Bitch.

Well well well...aren't we fiesty? Just how I like 'em. Hopefully you're not a 52-year-old woman pretending to be 22, because that would be, as you would say, the sad. And the creepy. I'll just pretend that you're a hot 22 year-old girl with a thing for guys who have nothing better to do than try to help hapless webmasters on his lame Blogger blog. I'm glad you like the way I write. Some people just come and see that it's a Blogger site and completely discredit it for no other reason than that. It's refreshing to hear that someone's actually reading this. I'm your only link, eh? I guess that means we're dating.

So, Girlfriend, let's talk about your site. Holy crap. Yeah, I said it. Have you seen your design? I mean, for the love of Texas Pete and various other hot sauces, it looks like you just took a default template from a free service and didn't do a thing to it. There's no way anyone will ever read anything on your site because the design is so cliché and bland and unoriginal and...oh, wait. I have one of those, too. Hmmm...isn't it great to be able to focus completely on content (of which yours is a-mazing, but more on that in a moment) without having to worry about design?

I'm sure guys hit on you constantly, so this analogy should hit home: So Guy1 takes you out to dinner and he's just the handsomest thing ever. However, the conversation consists of him staring at your chest and commenting on the deliciousness of the beer in his hand. Kinda sucks, huh? Now you can't ever wear that dress again because the popped seams from where he ripped it open with his eyes will remind you of that horrific date. This is kind of how your site is. People are just looking for flashy design to validate whether or not your content is worthwhile, but sometimes can't look past it, or don't even care. What they don't realize is any moron with enough cash to burn can drop $100 in the saliva pool collecting at the feet of blog designers, upload the design, and continue writing crap content. Who wants to read a blog that's 99% looks and 1% content? Is that even considered "reading" or just eye-raping?

So I applaud you on biting your thumb at the blogging community and not spending time or money on a design when a) you aren't going to be making any money off of this site, and b) you clearly don't care if people even like what you write. Your (hilarious) writing alone is enough to keep people coming back. You've already got more comments (and secret admirers) than me and your blog is a month old. I pretty much have to beg for comments, and I still don't get them (anyone? anyone?). While your posts are spread out, it almost adds to the quality of the blog. Sure, frequent posting is a good thing, and is the one thing I would suggest you do with this blog, but when you post more sporadically (and are consistant with your sporadicity) without too much time betwixt posts, people will keep coming back. Hell, I depend on my reader(s) checking back every once in a while, because I sure can't post every day. Sometimes it'll take a week or more for me to write a review. This one? Three months in the making, baby.

Oh, yeah, I did just call you baby. But I guess I can do that now that we're dating.