Of course, I always need someone's help. But still.
Over the years, a LOT of people have said a lot of really nice things to me. In spite of my often arrogant facade, when I'm 'at home' in my own head I try not to let this make me truly arrogant, but at the same time it does give me confidence that I have something of value to add to the world.
As my small group of regular visitors knows, I've really been putting a lot of elbow grease into this site lately - a complete top-to-bottom redesign, a drastically increased rate of posting new material, and the addition of new tools like RSS feeds and links to various social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LiveJournal (and I'll never forget the generous, but anonymous, donor who bought me a year's paid LJ account so I could syndicate my feed through there!)
The problem is...it's not enough.
What I need, more than anything else, is traffic. I'm doing the best I can to generate that traffic, but honestly...I find it kind of a bummer that the most popular content on my site is still an addon for a game that was released in 2001.
I'm not asking anyone to spam or shill for me. I'm not asking for money or even much in the way of time.
All I'm asking is that if you've read something here that you agree with, or disagree with, or that makes you think...you share it.
I've added a new type of bookmark-sharing service link to the site called Add To Any (it replaces the old AddThis link graphic). Like any self-respecting blogger, I of course submit my own posts to Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz, Del.Icio.Us, and other social bookmarking sites...but self-promotion isn't going to help.
I've done my best to 'monetize' the site through Amazon and Google advertising affiliation, and I continue to develop and refine that...but all of the affiliate programs and ad blocks in the world aren't going to help if I don't have the traffic coming in.
The more people subscribe to my RSS feeds and use the social bookmarks and e-mail links to my posts to their friends, the more traffic I get. The more traffic I get, the better chance I have of generating income from the various ads and amazon links and search box on this site. Yeah, I've got the donation buttons up, but that's not really doing me a lot of good unless I can somehow manage to convince everyone on the planet with a computer to give me a buck or something.
More than anything else, the one thing of value I have to offer the world is my intellect. The job market has rejected me time and time again, and there's little evidence in my life that this situation will ever change substantially enough that I can count on a paycheck instead of my own initiative to keep me fed and watered.
I've had a lot of appreciative remarks sent my way over the years, and I've tried to earn that appreciation. All I asking is for pepole to spread the word around. Whether it's politics, music, gaming, or whatever else might show up here that you see and have any kind of opinion about, the more people get turned on to LowGenius.Net, the better chances are that I'll be able to continue producing quality, compelling, original content. Use the links. Use the comment forms. Share, subscribe, bookmark, tell your friends. There are, right now, about 200 people in my various social networks, and that doesn't include all of the folks that I keep in some kind of contact with but don't have on my Facebook or Livejournal. If each of you share the LowGenius with one person you know, that doubles my traffic. If each of them share, it quadruples. It's a feedback thing. An article that gets two Diggs might see 15 or 20 hits. An article that gets 4 might see 30 or 40. An article that gets 8 might see 70 or 80.
Just take a second and help me spread the word. You don't have to agree with everything I say - in fact, if you want to use the comment forms to tell me what an idiot I am, that's just fine with me...but use them.
There's much more cool content, attempts at wisdom, and so forth coming. Not a day goes by that I don't make some kind of change or addition to the site, but right now it seems like I'm mostly screaming in to a vacuum. Help me break out of that vacuum. It only takes a minute of your time, but those minutes can add up in a serious way for me. The more popular the site gets, the more capable I am of focusing my attention on developing even more quality, original content for you to happily consume and share, and then the whole thing grows like wildfire.
I'm open to any suggestions that you may have, whether you are friend, foe, constant visitor or casual reader. Is there a feature you'd like to see, a topic you'd like me to discuss, a resource you'd like to see me develop? Just let me know, and I'll be more than happy to take a stab at it.
The point of this site is not some giant ego boost to tell the world how great I am; it's to bring together all of the fascinating people I meet and connect them to more fascinating people, to create synergies and encourage conversation and critical thought or just plain old fun.
But I can't do that all by myself.
Thanks for your time.