Blogging (Page 2)

I don’t want to appear rude, so I’ll say this publically, I almost never answer “Contact Us” messages that want advice of one sort or another.  Like many other bloggers, I receive a fair number of this sort of queries. I’m not sure why people believe that journalists (bloggers are journalists) should be expected to provide personalized service to individual readers.

It isn’t that I think I am too good to help out. It’s just that writing an almost-daily post takes a lot of time and effort. I don’t have the time or desire to reply individually to people I’ve never met. By the way, none of those people ever express any interest in us. They want advice on chastity and FLR. Most don’t even take the time to do a site search to see if their questions had already been answered in posts.

Occasionally, someone sends an interesting email that gets my attention. I do answer those. I understand how hard it is to find advice on these subjects. When we first got started, I sent a contact us email to a blogger. He never answered.

The online world is a strange place. Bloggers, like us, share intimate details of our lives. We aren’t compensated for our writing. We do it because we want to. Some of us actually pay for the facilities to publish what we write. Most blogs get very few readers. We are lucky. Quite a few people read what we write.

The people who send demanding emails wanting personal advice tend to come to us via Google or other search engines. Based on what they write, I don’t think they bothered to read a single line on our site. They just click the “Contact” button and expect free help. Our regular readers offer comments to our posts, and if they have questions, they ask them in that public forum. I love answering comments…well, most comments. Some comments are obvious attempts to solicit advice without reading our content.

Speaking of content, bloggers jealously guard their ownership of their audience. Most will never mention another blog, much less post a link to it. That’s dumb. All of us are connected by omnipresent search engines. Type a query about “male chastity,” and you will see pretty much everyone writing about it. The same is true about any subject. I don’t have time to read too many blogs like ours, but when I find one that has something to say that I want to share, I feel fine about publishing a link to it. They almost never return the favor.

Anyone who owns a website can get detailed statistical data about who is reading it. Google provides free, detailed information. Others do too. We have a dedicated server running analytical software that counts each visit and pageview. We don’t know who reads our blog. Our readers’ identity is safe. We do know how many people read each page and visit on any given day. We know what country they come from. We also know if they clicked a link on another site or search engine to find us.

This information is useful. It helps us understand what our audience wants to read. It lets us know how many people visit and how many pages they read on each visit. Right now, our average visitor reads between two and three pages. Almost half navigate directly to our site. They aren’t coming from search engines or other website links. I like that a lot. It means we are a destination. ChatGPT includes our site in its data model. Almost 40,000 references are in it.

All this is encouraging. It’s fun to be well-known. It doesn’t buy us anything. We have nothing to sell and we don’t solicit donations or subscriptions.  One day we may have to, but not now. You may wonder what we want in contacts. I would love to hear ideas about what might be interesting for us to write about. It’s great when we learn about something new. That’s always wonderful fun.

So far the cabergoline isn’t working. I’m still anorgasmic after more than eleven weeks. I increased the dose to .5 mg. That’s as high as I was told to go. It looks like prolactin isn’t my problem. Maybe it is psychological. I just don’t know. Perhaps the universe is telling me that it’s time to give up on sex. Mrs. Lion seems happy without it. It would be more than a little ironic that a male chastity blogger lost his ability to get off. He also lost the ability to get an erection without help. What does a sex blogger write about if he can’t have sex? What does he do with his need for it? When do I just give up?

We tried again on Saturday night. I gave myself a Trimix shot and was rewarded with a good erection. Mrs. Lion gave me oral sex. It felt great…and then it didn’t. Same problem as before. I had a feeling that if Mrs. Lion could go on long enough, the arousal would return. The problem was that it was already taking too long. I’m also pretty sure that I was fooling myself.

I don’t know if Mrs. Lion wants to keep trying. If she does, maybe we need to do more. I don’t know. Right now, I’m feeling sad and a little lost. I don’t see a path to success. I guess I’ll go watch a movie on TV.

It looks like the folks at WordPress.com have been attacking sexually-oriented blogs again. One blog, Denying Thumper has been around longer than us. Apparently, the folks at his hosting company (Automatic.com) suddenly decided his content is not suitable for them to carry. This is insane since his site is a well-respected male chastity blog with a long history of well-written posts. If you go to his URL (Link), you get a page from WordPress.com saying that the content was removed because it was unsuitable for their tender, right-wing minds.

Years ago, this blog was hosted by Automatic. I was threatened several times regarding our “adult” content. It cost us over $300 a year for their hosting services. I moved us to a less expensive and adult-friendly service provider. We moved again when the new provider got too expensive. We made another move for technical reasons. For the last couple of years, our blog lives in the cloud. It’s a bit more expensive, but then we’ve grown quite a bit. Most importantly, there aren’t any censors or technical limits.  I’m very happy with our hosting provider.

There are two big outfits that offer free hosting. Automatic (wordpress.com) is probably the largest. You can get a starter blog going for free. If you want any frills, expect to start paying. Blogger, a Google company, is the other main provider. A few years ago, Google decided to eliminate all adult blogs on its service. After a huge fuss by the online community, Google reversed itself and is happy to host adult content. Unlike wordpress.com, Google puts up an interstitial page with a warning in front of adult sites. I think that’s a fair way to do things. It’s possible to have an acceptable-if-basic blog for free on Blogger.

Of course, beggars can’t be choosers and there is very little selection when it comes to site design on the Google service. WordPress.com offers a lot more design flexibility. The tradeoff is that WordPress limits its free sites to very limited content and will start charging if too many people visit the sites. Blogger doesn’t do that.

Most hosting services censor their customers’ content. Sex-friendly hosting companies are rare. There are a few. One that I like is EasyWP, which is offered by Namecheap.com. Namecheap is one of the world’s largest domain name registrars. They are famous for their steadfast defense of their customer’s privacy. Other registrars like Godaddy have frequently caved to government pressure and revealed details about their customers. Anyway, Namecheap offers EasyWP which is an inexpensive, easy-to-use WordPress hosting service. We used it for a couple of years. We only left because they restricted the use of a plugin we like. It’s the one that shows links to the latest posts on blogs we follow.

Quite a few bloggers have no experience working with websites. There is a learning curve associated with starting any blog. Services like Blogger and WordPress.com make it a little easier. EasyWP is just as simple to use as WordPress.com. It’s too bad that WordPress.com is so anti-sex. I hope that Thumper decides to move his site to a friendlier host.

We’ve been streaming “Restaurant Impossible,” a Food Network program that’s been on for over twenty seasons. In the show, a self-important, British self-styled celebrity chef visits bad restaurants and supposedly fixes them in just two days. Watching the show is like watching train wrecks. It’s obviously phony and according to the Food Network site, almost all of the restaurants fail shortly after the “chef” leaves.

We’re well past season ten. I’m amazed every time at how horrible the conditions are at these places. They are hemorrhaging money but still get people to eat there. It’s hard to believe that these places are allowed to remain open. Yuck! It makes me even less inclined to try new places to eat.

The reason I decided to bring this up is that much of the content I find on the Internet is like those bad restaurants. The content is horribly inaccurate, the writing is at a second-grade level, and the writers surprise me that they can work a keyboard at all. I won’t name names, but take a look at some other male chastity sites and forums. Yeesh! Maybe we need a new reality show, “Website Impossible.”

Each week a needy blogger would get two days of help with the design and content of their website. A self-styled blogging expert would expand his ego while pretending to help the hapless blogger. No, I’m not thinking of myself as either the host or a hapless blogger. I might qualify as the latter, but no thanks.

When Mozilla released the first web browser, critics were excited at the possibilities of this new medium. They claimed that the only problem with the concept of the web was the lack of content. Boy, were they wrong! There are over a billion websites available to misinform and bore the public. Blogs are free and easy to publish. Anyone with access to a computer (or phone) can become a journalist. Democracy at work!

The big question is, how many of these people have anything of value to say? The bigger question is, if they do have something important to say, how do they get an audience? Most non-commercial online bloggers never get more than a few readers. Bloggers so jealously guard their little fiefdoms that they won’t refer their handful of readers to other sites. It’s third grade all over again. Buried in the giant dung pile of the blogosphere are some wonderful gems; websites with verve, humor, and content of value. Finding them is the problem.

google is not your friend

Another sad fact is that Google is the primary way people find things to read on the Web. When it comes to blogs, Google is not your friend. Search results are manipulated by experts who are hired to get links high in Google searches for popular topics. Google searches almost always list places to buy things before sites with information. If you Google “Male Chastity,” you won’t find a single reference to this site. Odd, huh? We are in our tenth year with over 6,000 posts on the subject. Oh, wait! I don’t allow Google tracking links on our site. Could that be it? Maybe I’ll add one and see what happens.

I’m using us as an example. Google actually has thousands of links to us, just none on the main topic of our site. Yet, if you search “male domestic discipline,” we are in the top five listings. Obviously, we could profit from some expert help in search optimization. My point is that there are two mutually exclusive issues facing the Web. The first is content quality. We’ll never see that fixed. Anyone can have a website. Anyone, even Donald Trump. Hey, I have one.

The second problem is that while it’s easy to have your own website, it’s very difficult to get it discovered. I’ve heard that most blogs are only read by other bloggers. That’s fine with me. I love bloggers who share their lives with me. I lean a lot. I share links to other blogs that I find interesting and on topic. I love discovering new gems. They’re hard to find. If you run across one that you think might be fun to read, let me know.

My point is that it’s hard to be a successful blogger. It’s even harder to find good reads. They’re out there. I wish there was an easier way to find them.