Ransomology Weekly Newsletter No. 1
January 13, 2015.

In what some of you may view as a sad and desperate attempt to have visitors to my blog become followers of my blog, last week I promised all my email followers a weekly(ish) newsletter. I also offered huge cash payments and free blow jobs, but thankfully no one has yet taken me up on the offer.

What’s with this lunacy? Well, last week I published my most successful post ever…if you measure the success of a post by the number of people who read it that is (which I don’t – in my opinion Day 2 of the Coffee Quitting series is my most successful from a writing stand point, though it’s only ever been read by about 15 people). 15 Helpful Tips for Riding a Scooter in Ubud Bali has been read (or viewed at least) by over 400 people. It’s been shared all around too, and weirdly, according to my Word Press stats, about 70 of the readers are from Poland.

I am pleased about this. However, of those 400 plus readers, 70 of whom were from Poland, a somewhat smaller number elected to follow my blog. One in fact. Exactly one. Looking on the bright side, it’s infinitely more than zero. After speaking a few days ago to one of my friends who is Gen Y and so all tech savvy, I learned that blog readers who are referred by Facebook are the most lazy people on the entire planet. They make nodding opium addicts and chronic fatigue syndrome sufferers look like towering whirlwinds of high achievement. Asking them to type in an email address and follow you is viewed as on par with asking them to foster a child…with autism. It’s very much a “let me think about it and get back to you”, kind of commitment. It’s an “I dunno… I better go speak to my mom/husband/girlfriend/therapist first”, kind of commitment.

Hence the Ransomology Newsletter, of which this is the first ever. A total circulation of 9.

In other news, I continue to struggle with the About page for my blog. Having spent not less than 427 hours on it so far, producing a total of 98 iterations and discarding them all in disgust, I still don’t have a fucking clue what I’m about. Although I have no idea how to write it, I have managed to discover what NOT to do. To anyone who is struggling to write an About page I can recommend NOT doing a Google search using the terms ‘Best Blog About Pages’, because all that will come up is a screen full of pressure:

About is the most important page on your blog;

Better not fuck up your About page or you’re finished;

Grab attention with your About page in 4 nano-seconds or your reader will flee in terror;

10 Man Booker winners who lost their publishing deals with shit About pages; etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Anyone who knows what I’m about please contact me urgently.