I Think This Needs Some Discussion

After the recent poll's deciding victory for the positive impact that card blogging has had on the hobby, I am not going to make some argument for the 4-10 people who voted negative, nor the 14-20 who voted indifferently. I do want to go over some philosophies regarding this voting structure as I assume that the people voted the way they did for a certain reason.

I want to start with the people who voted positively, which is where I stand myself. Card blogging has been great for the hobby and it has been around before a lot of you think it has. It has brought about a lot of discussion as well, as I know that manufacturers and hobby insiders all either have blogs or read blogs every day. It is basically free market research, and you can see a sliver of the market without even going to a store. What are the hot topics? Where are the mistakes? Who do we need to hold accountable for our actions? All of these questions are answered in the blogs.

Also, with upwards of 10 million people visiting sports blogs alone every day, you can expect that there are a lot of people who read what we write. Mario at Wax Heaven has been lucky enough to have been featured on some of the biggest sports blogs around on multiple occasions. There have been close to 400,000 visitors to his site. That is awesome. Yesterday, SCU was featured on deadspin, which was also very cool, and I can tell you that we have at least 10-15 new readers from the emails I got. Card blogs are most definitely reaching people.

Card blogs have also exposed the soft underbelly of the hobby on a regular basis, and that is something that benefits EVERYONE. Sports Card Info has made it their goal to keep everyone informed, and I think that is pretty important, as information is always at a premium for the uninformed. Plus, considering how many "im new" emails I get every day, I think its great that card blogs are becoming a resource for people rather than for profit magazines and websites. I love getting "Im new" emails because I can show these people a world of information they could never get from Beckett or Tuff Stuff. We answer to NO ONE, and I think that kind of lack of ties makes the news here as great and informative as it can be.

For those people who voted indifferent, however, ill agree with you on some points. Typically we only reach around 500-1000 people a day, most of whom are probably other bloggers who have a vested interest to check the other blogs. I know I sure do. To only reach that many people per day in a multi billion dollar industry is less than a sliver of the complete demographic. Yes, we need to reach more people. Yes, we need more sources to help us. Yes, we need to do a better job of making our message heard. But the reality is that the wrong people have the reigns on the uninformed public, and that sucks. Also, the bloggers who have made an impact on the mainstream media are not spreading any kind of good word. For "those people" the hobby has been business as usual and that is the info they spread. Worlds without cardshops being the destruction of the hobby, price guides being the best source of pricing info for any collector, "prices may be going up, but at least I still have my 1979 topps baseball cards to brighten my day..." type of things. When that is the face of the bloggers, yes, we have not made any sort of impact at all.

Moving onto the negative people, I know two of the votes were out of spite, one was from Beckett, and im not sure about the others. I keep track of IP addresses for the site, and the Beckett admins are so fucking dumb that they think I cant tell when they are here. Either way, I want to discuss why those votes may have counted, had they actually been real. I think there is a negative aspect to blogging, because of the amount of work it takes and because the companies can use it against us. Beckett has their own blog, and though it is not as widely read, its still a face for people to see when they try to break in to collecting again. Also, a lot of blogs, especially this one, can get whiny and too condecending at times. I am a huge perpetrator of this, and I get that I should focus on positive stuff too as it would help bolster some better feelings. A lot of my detractors say I don’t like anything about collecting and that is not true. I wouldn’t spend the time or money I have spent if I hated everything. Yet, that is the message that people get here, and that is a definite negative impact.

Overall, when one blogs, it becomes more about the person than about the hobby. In real life, I am just as opinionated on most topics as I am on the ones I discuss here. Stupid people bug me just as much on main street as they do on blog street. Ha.

As cathartic of an experience as it is, the true focus should be improving the things we want. I think I have made more progress than I expected I would, and I definitely never expected to be featured on deadspin or talk to the brand managers for any manufacturers. Really, as long as people are trying to improve that’s all that matters, we spend enough money to deserve that kind of respect. I know Upper Deck has made a commitment to that, surprised as some of you may be, and they know its not about shutting me up, but rather making good products so I never have to start talking in the first place. This is something Beckett refuses to understand. As recent as yesterday, I received emails from my sources saying they are trying to think of ways to make me quiet rather than improve their product so I don’t need to destroy them here.

After being here in blog land for around 6 months, its time to show you guys what blogs can really do. We are coming into the meat of Football season with Limited and Gridiron Gear coming up and SPA and Ultimate on the horizon, and you can bet I will give you what you want to know. Holy Hitter will continue his group breaks, so make sure to sign up, and Will will continue to contribute as he has. The thing I can promise, though, is that this site will continue to grow beyond your wildest expectations. I still have a few aces up my sleeve.

Will’s Pet Peeves – Five Bad Blogging Clichés

Will Here:

I read an awful lot of blogs; I think that’s no secret. Since I discovered the wonderful world of RSS feeds and Google Reader a few months ago, every time I click the little green button on my toolbar I get anywhere between 10 and 100 new entries to read from the over 100 different blogs I subscribe to.

In the sports card world I have well over a dozen different blog subscriptions, and as for my own blogs, I contribute to this one, and have two other of my own (one is just my generic online journal, the other is The Budget Sports Card Collector in which I try to focus on the cheap-end of the collecting spectrum. If you add up all the entries on all three blogs, I’ve written well over 400 articles in blog format over the last seven years. I don’t know if that makes me an expert blogger, but it does make me a bit savvier than the guy just starting out there. I'm posting this entry here instead of my own blogs because frankly Gellman gets more traffic than I do, and I want this to be read, digested and spat back out at me in disgust.

That said, I’ve noticed that there are quite a few blogging clichés out there in the blogosphere that need to be retired. No, this won’t be a retread of every other snarky “don’t do this” blog entry, because I’m just as guilty as others of spreading the bad syntax.


1. “Without further ado”, sometimes misspelled “adieu”. – This has to go, big time. It should not be used by bloggers at all, especially those who can’t spell “ado” properly. The phrase is actually one of the oldest clichés in the English language originating in the 1300’s! Time for a rest don’t you think? It’s tired and bad copy, and basically lazy. When you use this phrase it’s a signal that you’re done with the preliminaries and ready to get on with the meat of the post. Just get to it already.

2. For that matter, all phrases that are used to connote that the introduction is over and the heart of the post is coming should be excised immediately. Including my own use of “that said” which is sheer laziness. Thinking about it critically, I’m just saying “I know I said all that above that is the complete antithesis to my point, which I’m going to make anyway, so you can automatically discount my opinion because it means nothing to me as it is.”

3. Blog entries that consist of nothing but a “preview” of upcoming blog entries - Way to make your idea for one blog stretch into two or three. Are you that starved for content that you’ve decided to cannibalize your own ideas? Of course you are, because blogging on a regular basis is HARD. The problem is that blogging isn’t magazine writing, and most bloggers don’t stick to a specific schedule of blogging, they just throw up whatever entry they feel like posting that day. Advance notice of your upcoming features is not necessary.

4. Copying other blogs ideas – It’s a blog-eat-blog world out there, and I’m sure that all of us at one point or another are guilty of inadvertent theft of ideas. No, what I’m talking about here is when a meme that one blog creates gets disseminated down to other blogs and diluted, such as Gellman’s own Joe Collector idea. I know Gellman feels that it’s a form of flattery, and perhaps it is, but now he’s taking flack for creating a meme that has grown into something he didn’t intend it to mean in the first place. Then there’s the inevitable meme backlash, and the originator has to backtrack in the first place. While ideas are meant to be shared, they aren’t meant to be copied verbatim. If you like the idea, come up with your own offshoot.

5. Numbered Lists – Just like this one. One thing I learned in three years of high school journalism classes over 20 years ago is that readers have a short attention span, and anything in depth tends to go over their heads. There is no better way to keep your audience than by breaking down your ideas into short, bite-sized paragraphs and numbering them so that your audience doesn’t miss something. Of course, if we got rid of lists, then half of the blogosphere would immediately implode into a mass of starry matter that rivals a small black hole. Topless Robot would go out of business immediately.

Bonus - Any time you are self-referential, you’re being lazy (I’m lazy an awful lot, that’s why I know so much about being lazy). Speaking of lazy, run your blog entry through a spell checker before you post it please. I’m not asking for a professional edit job where you submit your writing to your editor first, but come on, if you are still confusing “your” and “you’re” or worse, “there”, “their” and “they’re” you need to stop blogging. NOW.

Did I miss something here? Yes, I probably did. But it’s Sunday morning, I’m watching kiddy TV shows to keep my toddler occupied while I write this entry. Back to Bunnytown and Zoob toys.