This is an old post that had more than thirty comments and quite a few pageviews (ranked well in the search engines for obscure terms like “douchebag bloggers” – anyways, all of that was deleted when I switched hosting. Just putting it back up, feel free to recomment

One thing that is drilled to you when you’re thinking about starting a blog in this kind of niche is that networking is important. Network this, network that, build relationships – heck, I’ve even spoken about it. Think of it as being the new kid around – you need to make friends, or else blogging is going to become one long, boring and tiresome process – something you obviously don’t want it to be or you’ll give up.

The thing is, there are different ways to network. As with everything in life, you can do it well… or do it poorly. If you’re going to do it poorly, you might as well not do it at all.

I’m still very much a newbie to blogging, even though I’ve taken to it fairly well (I hope, at least) – I’ve been around for less than half a year, and I’m learning (fast) along the way. I have made this basic mistakes along the way, and now you can learn from me – and avoid them.

One thing you should do when you are approaching bloggers is be personal. Try and find out their name, try and know a little bit about the blogger. Sometimes this is not possible – for example, when I spammed mass messaged Entrecard for contest sponsors, on some blogs I just couldn’t find the bloggers name (which should CLEARLY be displayed on their about page unless they want to hide it) so you cannot be personal. However, when it is available, you should certainly try – adding a first name adds the personal touch to your message, even if it is a generic one. I will give you two examples (personally received) of a) an email I’ve gotten and b) an instant message request. Below is the email:

Subject: you donated some ebook for a contest?

Hi

I just now found out that you made some donations for a
contest<http://bloggin-ads.com/the-one-heck-of-a-giveaway-contest>

I was about to start a contest too and here is the link
LINK REMOVED.

I am sure you will earn good publicity with the contest. Just to tell you
that recently one wiki donated $1000 worth of wiki pages.

Will be waiting for some juicy donations for the contest.

Thank You

What are the wrong things with this email – who’d like to start? Their website has been removed just not to embarrass them in public – personally, if I had been so callous, I would know mind someone telling me that I was; however not everyone sees it this way.

First off, the name. I know that the person in question visited TUK, as my email address is not available anywhere else; after visiting a blog, checking their about page to find their name is only so far away. I prefer being called “Jason” rather than just “hi” – that’s better, you know.

Secondly, tell me how this will benefit me. For example, when I messaged people, I talked about where contest participants would be required to link to all donators. To be fair, the person in question did mention this on their website, but most bloggers with less time than I do will not click through if the benefits are not apparent.

Thirdly, although the mention of what ODW donated may have been fair enough to some, to me it seems like he’s trying to create a guilt factor “ODW donated $1,000, so why don’t you donate similar” – I didn’t like that. Something like “there have been a lot of cool prizes donated” would have been better – by telling people what has specifically been donated, you are trying to create a sense of competition between sponsors (or so I feel, at least) and that is simply not on.

What do you think?

Here’s the second example – an instant messenger exchange.

(9:37 AM) removed: My main aim at this point in time is to get the word of the contest out there. NO
(10:01 AM) jason | BlogPrem: ?
(10:02 AM) removed: Can you blog about it?
(10:02 AM) jason | BlogPrem: what contest.
(10:02 AM) removed: shit
(10:02 AM) removed: LINK REMOVED
(10:02 AM) removed: sorry lol
(10:04 AM) removed: !

Followed up later by a Digg request, and slightly prior to that a request to thumbs up something.

Things that I found annoying about this.

Improper conversation starter. No “Hi”, nothing. Even if it is a generic, mass messaged request, the least you can do is add a “hey bud” / “hey mate” in front of it.

The actual first IM sent was confusing, to say the least and made me think that the person who sent it was a tad drunk / high / not in his normal state. Honestly, it didn’t make sense.

Have you ever had people that do nothing for you and expect you to do everything for them?

This guy in particular – I know he doesn’t read TUK. However, when a contest comes around (with a small prize that required people to jump through way too many hoops to get it), this guy wants a plug. WTF.

I have a few people on MSN that I have a truckload of annoying requests for (George & Reid in particular, hehe ) but should they need something that I can supply (like prizes for a contest, advice or anything) I will do it to the best of my ability – they reciprocate. On the other hand, you get people that don’t help at all and always have selfish requests – now, I don’t mind answering questions all day, as well – I’m a person whose time isn’t really used for things that are too important, but when you have people asking questions and behaving like a douchebag (you know – nudging on MSN, constantly asking you to answer within thirty seconds, using piss-annoying emoticons); that’s when the irritation starts.

Will I comply with the two requests?

The first one, probably – it doesn’t take time and I have stuff to giveaway that I don’t really need / have problems giving away. However, I will not keep it high on my list of priorities, and answer the email eventually.

The second, no way. This blog is sacred, at least to me (one would hope that my readers felt the same way) and I’m not going to plug a contest run by an annoying douchebag. Being a douchebag is never a good thing, and if you want to network with bloggers (especially with something that brings you some gain) you should try not to be a douchebag.

Just for those that don’t understand the term, a “douchebag” is defined by Google as an insult similar to jerk. As for the reason why it’s been bolded so many times, I’m going to see how highly I can get this post to rank – my last post which I targeted the search engines in, where I talked about Mike Smith, scamming douchebag is now ranked third for “Blog Theme Machine” without quotes – that’s above his website itself and is sending me a few hundred visitors a month. The word douchebag is a slightly more competitive term and we’ll see what happens. I do not think the traffic will convert well, but it will be fun nevertheless.

Anyways, this post was a bit of a rant; here’s it broken down into followable steps if you want to not irritate your fellow bloggers.

Be patient. If I have someone on MSN that nudges me thirty seconds after I do not reply to their message, they’re getting blocked. Remember, although you may think it, you are not the most important thing in the world to other people and they have other things that take up time.

Be polite. Being an arrogant jerk (or a douchebag ) to a person you are trying to get something from never helps, so be polite – this ties in with the above point as well. Do not be cocky (at first at least ) and mention your request – using manners never hurt.

Be personal. Okay, granted – this isn’t possible sometimes, especially these days when the internet brings around mass messaging and you don’t know people’s names (sorry to admit this, but I have a few hundred people on various instant messaging systems and there’s no way in hell I’m going to remember all of their names. However, adding something like “Hey mate”, or even just “Howdy” to the beginning of your request increases the chance that someone will respond to your by 43.97% as studies have shown*.

Be reciprocative. If someone offers you a sponsored prize for example, offer them one back when they ask for it – I hate someone that is a selfish douchebag person. You may not be able to offer what the person wants (for example, I cannot offer anymore reviews to people should they ask for them as they have already been given out for this month and I don’t want this blog to turn into a spam farm) but try and compromise with something else. Offering a prize to someone as part of a contest and then having them try and back out of doing the same when you want the same is one of the biggest annoyances in blogging – a couple people did that to me recently and it lowered my standing of them.

Do you want a sponsored prize for your contest?

I will sponsor prizes worth upwards of $1,000 for your contest – just ask.

Note, this won’t be cash, as I’m not that loaded, however I will happily sponsor up to 1,000 copies of my one dollar eBook, which works out to one thousand dollars worth. Do you agree?

Seriously though, I’ll sponsor as many copies of the eBook as you want – by having this, you can do something like “everyone wins” which means more people will be inclined to participate. I will also sponsor up to 2 x 1 hour consultation time should you want it – bigger bloggers will find this useless, but I certainly wouldn’t mind helping a newbie avoid some of the horrific mistakes that I had when I started out.

You don’t even need to ask me for these prizes – just add them if you’re having a contest on your blog and let me know what you’ve committed me too. I’d certainly appreciate a linkback – the hour’s consultation sponsored by this blog, the eBooks sponsored by Blog Premiere’s Forums. Just let me know.

Hope you guys enjoyed the read and remember not to be a douchebag because being a douchebag is just not cool and it will not make you many friends. Make sure you join Blog Premiere’s forums to avoid further use of the above term (which was douchebag, just in case you missed it ).