Just Back From the Maker Faire!

Image by marymactavish via Flickr

Just got back last night from the Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. We had a GeekDad booth there again this year. It was a ton of fun, a little different from last year, though. We were selling our editor's new book, also called Geek Dad, and he sold out of all the copies that he had brought. I met great people from LEGO Education, Craft:, and ThinkGeek. I got some decent swag from some other booths. The kids had fun with the activities, and playing with the other GeekKids. This was my second year helping run the booth, and I hope to do it every year!

Going Viral

Image by Ivan Walsh via Flickr

I've been writing for GeekDad for about 11 months now. They have always been able to count on me for writing regular posts that are of a good length, with the occasional one which is fairly interesting. But I'm not usually the one who writes the very popular or controversial posts.

Writing has gotten easier with practice, though. I have gotten a bit stuck in a rut of writing reviews. Between asking for a few cool things and my contacts continuing to send me more and more stuff (some of which I didn't ask for), my list of reviews to do is growing. I'm trying to knock them out before asking for new stuff, but it's hard when something comes across my desk that really excites me.

Once in a while, to break up the reviews, I'm moved to write a post that has nothing to do with a product. Sometimes the ideas just come to me and I sit down and write. Those posts are usually very fast to do. Other times they require a lot of research and end up more trouble than they are worth! Sometimes they are inspired by others, such as my recent 10 Ways to a Geeky Girl's Heart. Ed had the original idea for the post, as well as a couple of ideas for items for the list. My friend Alan completely inspired the treasure hunt item. I'd written most of the post a couple of months ago, but it just didn't sound right. So I let it sit, eventually realizing that it would be great timing to put it up for Valentine's Day. Somehow I thought that I'd just get it up for Valentine's Day itself, but it occurred to me, about 8 or 9 days ahead of time, that if people wanted to take my suggestions they might need time to prepare! So I got the post up a week ahead of the holiday, and it ran on Monday, February 8, when I was on my way to Disneyland with my kids and stepdad.

I had no idea if the post would go over well or not. Then, in the middle of Disneyland, I got a call from Ed who told me that it was doing VERY well. It was on the front page of Wired.com, it was the second most popular post on the whole site, etc etc. As the day went on, he kept filling me in on all the details, such as Mythbusters tweeting the link to their almost-million followers, and how it totally went viral. I was so excited! I was having fun at Disneyland, but also wished I could be at home, in front of my computer, enjoying and participating in the buzz from my post.

Marian Call even started following me on Twitter. And it went popular on Digg. It was on Slashdot. By the next week, it had gotten almost 150,000 page views! That's about 10% of GeekDad's entire monthly page views in a good month.

Fortunately, at the last minute before posting it, I'd thought to include a few Amazon Associate links for some things. Good thing I did. I made a bunch of money that day on referrals!

Because Wired.com had several Valentine's posts rolling around that week, they decided to put us all up again on the front page for the entire weekend of Valentine's Day. More page views!

This whole thing has been very exciting for me. Going viral like that... It's never happened to me before and it's a great feeling. The comments on the post are (for the most part) very supportive and good. I think I struck a chord with a lot of geeky women out there. I hope I can do it again in the future!

Finding Your Voice

Ever since high school I've written things on my own, just for fun and mostly for myself. I always knew I wanted to write, but didn't really have much to say. Or I didn't feel that writing without an audience was terribly useful. Unless you're writing for therapeutic reasons (which I have also done), why write if no one will read it, and perhaps comment on it? I know there are a lot of valid answers to this question, but I hadn't yet found any for me. Until about a year ago. I started writing a blog for the local newspaper. This then led me to write for GeekDad. I haven't looked back. While I have put a lot of work into the GeekDad blog (and some into the newspaper one) over 2009, and haven't gotten paid much, if anything, for that hard work, it has been so personally satisfying that it's all been worth it. Plus the free review copies don't hurt. It has been like a giant unpaid internship, where I can learn, make mistakes, and personally grow without the pressure of it being a real job. I am making friends, making contacts, and having a great time. I can't wait to see where else it will lead.

The whole writing thing... In some ways, writing is easy. Sometimes the words just flow out like water from a faucet. And sometimes it is nearly impossible to come up with anything eloquent or it all sounds like gibberish. I don't always know which one of those I'll get until I start to write, so it is hard to be prolific. The best posts I've written are ones that I didn't spend a lot of time on. The worst ones are also the ones I didn't spend a lot of time on. The rest I put a lot of work into. And so it goes.

I'm learning about my process as it unfolds. Usually, especially with a review or something on which I've taken notes, there are three phases to writing. One, get all the ideas down, preferably in some semblance of order. Two, rearrange, add, subtract, and generally organize the post, making major changes. Three, fine tune it, fixing minor errors and omissions. Once in a while, I have to do a fourth pass, if pass number one was a real mess. And also, once in a while, I get lucky and get away with two passes.

But it all gets easier, the more I write. I'm sure others have experienced the same thing. Unlike some people, I am not compelled to write, but when it's easy, it's a great feeling. When it's hard, it does feel a lot like work. But that happens less and less.

GeekDad Tshirts Now Available at ThinkGeek!

We had our awesome GeekDad Tshirts made to wear to the Maker Faire this year, and so many people asked us where they could buy a Tshirt of their own that some of the other Geeks looked into it. Ken, our head Geek, wrangled a deal with ThinkGeek, everyone's favorite store for geeks. As of this week, they now offer our awesome Tshirt for sale. The logo is on the front, along with the URL, and the back has a tag cloud of post tags from GeekDad.

The price is decent, and your purchase goes to help all the Core Contributors of GeekDad earn a small amount of money (especially me, if you use my links - muhahahaha!).

(Image: GeekDad.com and ThinkGeek)