You handle yourself with the utmost professionalism and I have never seen you speak out on something that wasn’t warranted or true. I follow you (no not stalking…lol) in another forum and have never seen anything written by you to be rude or negative.

This is just another one of those times you can chalk it up to a learning experience. Have a great day!

I must have missed something though…lol…cause I never saw anything either.

Thank you again for the great article.
Rachel

There will be a big crimp in the revenue, and if the bashers and idiots take over a site I can imagine the readership will die off. Tight margins plus a real chance of major failure makes this biz something more like retail sales than I’d be comfortable with.

Still, the main reason any of us try this stuff (I had my first blog in 1999, before the word “blog” existed) is to have some kind of independent outlet for writing. While I’m not too sure about the security of the current state, we have to keep looking for something that works. It pains me to see how horribly under-valued good writing is, and the only way to change that is to have a viable outlet that we can control ourselves.

I missed the controversy thing I’m afraid

Again, I don’t mind disagreeing, but I’d like to keep it clean. For instance if you want to visit Celebrity Cowboy and talk about whether or not it’s more attractive to age gracefully over getting plastic surgery I’d welcome that discussion. If you’re just going to call Paris Hilton vulgar names, I’m probably going to delete you.

I think you can have a popular celeb blog and be a bit snarky without going over board. That’s what I’m trying to do anyway.

Sure there are blogs that thrive on negative and hatful comments and traffic, but that is their choice of a blog. The blogs in your post and at other forums are to be informational and drive people there to learn and have a pleasant chat.

I have to agree that negative traffic generation is hurtful to your loyal followers, who expect respect and tame converstion.

Just my two cents.

Word of mouth can affect things though and I was just thinking of something unrelated but along the lines of word of mouth. I was just chatting with my brother to find out if he’s feeling better – he had the stomach flu over the weekend. Anyway, he suddenly vanished mid-sentence. Came back fifteen minutes later to explain. He’d been talking and heard a wicked pop come from his living room. Went in and found his universal remote lying on the floor, the battery cover off, and one of the Duracell batteries he’d just put into it had exploded and there was battery acid leaking out. I find that scary, imagine if it had been a kid’s toy!

After quick search of the keywords duracell exploding, I come across an article in a British version of PC World – http://www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/analysis/2196695/strange-case-exploding-aaa-cell

Then I found two more about people whose Duracell’s had exploded. I can guarantee that I won’t be buying Duracells again based on these experiences, and I’m about to get off my computer and go see if I have any Duracells on hand that need to be disposed of. Four exploding batteries is definitely going to be the end of my ever using Duracell, and my little brother’s about to head to The Consumerist to share his story and pictures.

While this has nothing to do with Deb’s experiences, it does go to show that personal thoughts/experiences can destroy a company’s reputation.

If you respect someone and their writing, you will disagree, maybe make a comment on it, then continue on to what you do like.

The other blog is a place for you to let your hair down a little. It’s the same as people always assuming a teacher must be prim and proper outside of school, that a police officer is always on duty, and that a mother has no right to ever be anything but a mom.

You didn’t get out of line, curse anyone out, give insults towards appearance, or anything else that could affect you professional or show that you are any less qualified to give advice.

@Phil – I didn’t lose traffic. I had a huge increase in traffic but it was due to a negative situation and didn’t help my blog any. Though in all fairness, my traffic and revenue tanked once I switched to my own domain and I’ve been pretty much running this blog out of my own pocket since the end of October.

Valencia – Actually I didn’t lose my readers because of a post, I lost readers thanks to vulgar and abusive comments as a result of that post. At first I deleted the comments but received a lot of flack, so I left it up. Then I received flack for letting the drama continue through the comments. I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. But there will be no more of that here.

Anyway, your core community will certainly remain loyal and that’s the good traffic, right?