Balls: balls balls balls.
Balls. Balls - balls; … balls

Balls.
Balls.
Balls.
Balls Balls. Balls

on your chin.

A knowledge worker is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.

So a knowledge worker is working smart.

MSNBC has an article discussing longer and more demanding work weeks. Most of these employees would be considered knowledge workers. They’re working hard.

That’s not to say that physical labor, factory labor, construction labor, etc. isn’t hard work - but it suffices to say most, if not all, of the people I’ve known personally in any of those fields did not grow up deciding they wanted to assemble conveyor belts or pour concrete. They’re doing it out of necessity.

Those who chose to work smart likely chose something they enjoyed doing. Unfortunately they’re being driven to exhaustion. In either case the employee is forced to work because wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few:

There is no level of national wealth, no matter how high, that necessitates some of that wealth trickling down to the common wageworker. This fact can be shown by the commonly cited thought experiment: what would happen to wages if capital became so productive that it could produce all goods with no aid from labor? Wages would become zero, and laborers would have no other means of survival but the charity of capital owners.

Excerpted from Karl Wilderquist’sEconomic Possibilities of Our Grandparents (I did not read this, as of the time of this post.

(This was posted in an incomplete state… I was at work and had to get back to some pressing deadlines…)

While it is an overall interesting and enjoyable read the following prompted me to create this post:

You drop your purse in the street. A rogue picks it up. In his private conscience he says, “Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,–it is simply no policy at all,–it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?”–So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,–which, in fact, completely sets aside his fag-end of a husky-voiced conscience, and makes virtue his necessity, and necessity his virtue. External morality is hastily drawn on as a decent overcoat to hide the tag-rags of his roguishness, while he magnanimously restores the purse to the owner.

In times past I felt as though most literature, texts, stories, editorials, and other written pieces which came well before my time were of little to no value - be it because they are outdated and irrelevant or because they came from a time when the populace had no concept or understanding of my world and its day to day events. As I’m getting older I realize how much these older pieces directly influenced the writers who influenced the writers who influenced … … the writers who are writing today. My world can be traced back to these pieces, these thoughts, these ideas which I previously found completely irrelevant to my existence.

The further back in time you go the more difficult it becomes to trace a direct path between your world and any given written piece. It takes a lot of time, effort and energy to find the answer and when it’s found it’s not always convincing. Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - it will show you how Greek philosophers and their writings have, directly and indirectly, lead us to a world where we compartmentalize everything (including abstract, philosophical concepts) and feel a need for religious leadership.

But alas, I am rambling, as easily happens when inspired. I strongly recommend you browse any of the Project Gutenberg websites or free online e-text collections - pick a piece that sounds interesting and you’re likely to find yourself inspired in some way.

When a potential reader follows a link to your site or stumbles onto an article submitted you’ve got a little less than two minutes to convince them to stick around. Chances are they’re not going to spend all of that time on one article, either. They’re going to click around a few times - glance at this, glance at that, move on to another site. So you’ve got to grab your readers attention and show them that things are going on - things that they’d be foolish to not participate in.

• Be sure to include a featured content section on your blog. For instructions on how to do this read the post I wrote a few days back on How to create and separate your featured content categories on wordpress..
• Make it easy for a potential long-term reader to sign up to your rss feeds and mailing lists.
• Have recent comments displayed prominently but unobtrusively displayed somewhere on your page - in the sidebar or in their own section after the first two or three posts.
• Write good content and be sure to use a related-posts plugin (if you’re using wordpress).

If you’ve got 96 seconds to get your new visitor to come back or stay longer in normal circumstances you get even less when it comes to Stumbleupon visitors. Read my post from the future on how to keep stumbleupon traffic at your site and keep a few things in mind: stumblers are like shoplifters, they’ll come by, grab something if they like it but hardly ever earn you any money; stumblers like things that are interactive, like games and demos; stumblers are bored and looking for some quick fun.

So! Make sure your readers are likely to find something they like and something that will make them look good when they share it with their friends and you’ll be guaranteed return visits.

…keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and where you want to get. In scientific work and electronics technology this is necessary because otherwise the problems get so complex you get lost in them and confused and forget what you know and what you don’t know and have to give up. In cycle maintenance things are not that involved, but when confusion starts it’s a good idea to hold it down by making everything formal and exact. Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.
The logical statements entered into the notebook are broken down into six categories: 1) statement of the problem, 2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem 3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis 4) predicted results of the experiments 5) observed results of the experiments and 6) conclusions from the results of the experiments. This is not different from the formal arrangement of many college and high-school lab notebooks but the purpose here is no longer just busywork. The purpose now is precise guidance of thoughts that will fail if they are not accurate.

When you’re blogging you’re keeping a notebook - albeit a digital notebook. If you apply the second half of the above statement to your blog you can easily write good content that spans several posts (therefore resulting in return visitors) and track your learning process for future reference. I’ve often found that the act of writing something down helps to cement it into my mind that much more. So, how do you apply this concept to your blog in a way that will help to result in good content and yield return visitors?

Post 1:
1. Find a problem. I’m sure you don’t have to try too hard.
2. Create your hypothesis/hypotheses. Why do you think the problem exists? What do you think are the solutions to the problems?
3. Figure out how you’ll test your hypotheses and solve your problems
4. Predict how it’ll all turn out.

Now package all this up into a nice blog post, about 500 words in length. Introduce your problem in a way that shows your readers they too have the same problem. Make them feel as though they will benefit from following along with your experiments/tests and that it is imperative they find out your results - people tend to be lazy and if you’ll solve their problems for them they’ll love it.

Blog Post 2
1. Run multiple iterations of each test/experiment. Be sure to keep as many variables the same between each test/experiment as possible to get accurate results.
2. Report your results and explain whether you have solved the problem or saved your reader some time by telling them what solutions will not solve their problem.
3. Provide detailed instructions for the reader to run the same experiment on their own and encourage them to share their results.

At this point you’ve provided the reader almost everything they’ll be able to get from this topic, so make sure it’s good. Encourage the reader to come back yet again to report on their results if they’ve opted to give your experiments and tests a try.

It’s important not to run too many of these experiments on your blog and it’s important not to let too much time lapse between introduction of the experiment and reporting the results. You might want to actually complete the tests before you ever even introduce the topic - this will allow you to post the results on a scheduled date.

I’ve developed a solution (which is probably not unique, but I had never come across instructions on how to do this, before) to easily allow you to add your featured content to your sidebar.

First create a new category called “Featured” and note it’s ID number. Now navigate to your theme editor and locate the beginning of the <ul> unordered list all sidebars seem to contain. Immediately below that copy and paste the following code, replacing $YOUR-FEATURED-CAT-ID with your featured category id you just noted.

Now go categorize your best articles as “Featured” and check out your main index - you should see some links to your featured content right there!

If you’re having trouble getting this working use the live chat on the sidebar (if I’m away, be sure to leave your email address) or leave a comment and I’ll help you as best I can.

Note: I understand this could be done using a widget. The primary purpose of this article is to introduce you to a few wordpress functions.

Tips for creating quality traffic:

• Write great linkbait
• Write lots of timeless content
• Write lots of resource lists (top 10’s and 101’s)
• Participate in link carnivals
• Develop friends in the blogosphere who are willing to exchange links/mentions in posts
• Submit your linkbait, resource lists and timeless content to digg, reddit, netscape, etc.
• Have a lots of linkbait, timeless content and resource lists in your archives
• Create a “Featured Articles” category for your posts and separate them from the rest of your content. Again, these will tend to be your timeless pieces, resource lists and linkbait. List them separately and prominently on your front page and sidebar (read how to do this on wordpress to encourage new readers to find your best content and see the value in subscribing to your feeds and returning to your site regularly.
• Make it easy for new readers to subscribe to your RSS feeds
• Join Technorati

How to generate garbage traffic

1. Submit your site to stumble upon

I’m sure there are other ways to generate garbage traffic - so far I haven’t experienced any of them, though. I will admit that submitting your site to stumbleupon CAN garner quality traffic, but my general experience is that it will not. As a regular user of stumbleupon I can understand why - when stumbling you’re usually looking for a quick thrill. It’s rare that I’ll move my mouse from the stumble button unless the result was interesting, interactive, a resource I was looking for or some combination of the three. I have gained one or two regular visitors through stumbleupon out of a total of about 1000 unique visitors. To increase the likelihood of converting those stumblers into repeat visitors be sure to tag your submission accurately and appropriately. Even though your article might relate loosely to SEO do not tag it as such unless it is entirely based on SEO. You shouldn’t even post it unless it is something that, to your knowledge, is currently unavailable anywhere else and make sure it’s got buttons for digg, reddit, del.icio.us, and netscape submission.

]]> http://www.thedoublezero.org/quality-traffic-vs-garbage-traffic/feed/ http://www.thedoublezero.org/quality-traffic-vs-garbage-traffic/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDoubleZero/~3/-6uX9nojr3Q/ http://www.thedoublezero.org/the-power-of-specificity/#comments Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:10:49 +0000 seramar http://www.thedoublezero.org/the-power-of-specificity/ Over on CopyBlogger they have a great write up about the power of specificity:

Which one of these headlines works best?

* How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day
* How to Get Over 6,000 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day
* How to Get a Torrent of Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day

Go read the rest of the article >>>

So next time you want to write a top 10 list, make it a top 6,312 list.

]]> http://www.thedoublezero.org/the-power-of-specificity/feed/ http://www.thedoublezero.org/the-power-of-specificity/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDoubleZero/~3/LQ5DgTidF0g/ http://www.thedoublezero.org/smashing-magazine-presents-45-excellent-blog-designs/#comments Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:08:43 +0000 seramar http://www.thedoublezero.org/smashing-magazine-presents-45-excellent-blog-designs/ Smashing Magazine Presents 45 excellent blog designs. If my blog were as good as theirs, I’d be rich.
]]> http://www.thedoublezero.org/smashing-magazine-presents-45-excellent-blog-designs/feed/ http://www.thedoublezero.org/smashing-magazine-presents-45-excellent-blog-designs/