Three years and three months ago I started Publicato with dreams of click-jacking, SEO optimization, and AdSense pennies rolling in. I was unemployed, on my own, pretty cognizant of a dim future; my friends were either safely employed, studying, or hustling. I had some crazy and vague ideas about becoming a true internet personality, maybe doing some cross-promotion via Twitter, and getting into the thousands (re: readership) pretty quickly. Guest blogging my way up to a guest feature with a big name, like Vice or Cracked (which was still pretty legit in those days), or something even better (like a magazine website or maybe even print)... incredibly naive stuff, but I had my ambitions and what better way to pursue them than with Google Blogger?
Well, quite obviously, I should've made a hi-concept WordPress or Tumblr setup and done some mind-bending po-mo conceptualist shit. I knew about WordPress, but being a vaporwave blogger versus real Google monies was just too much. I had to make rent, I needed some better shirts and pants, maybe a third tie, something quantifiably adult that only true income or a career can provide. The internet was a different place in 2010 - there was less anxiety about content farming (which peaked and declined), it was less introspective, the 'blogosphere' was less of a joke term. Twitter was still kind of uncertain and it was easy enough to get by calling it a lifestyle service for people with goldfish brains and smartphones.
Times certainly have changed, but enough of that good memory stuff. This article is about Publicato... now you know what I wanted it to be (a $10-100/mo income supplement with good as hell jokes, sharp satire, reviewish articles and a ladder to proper freelance writing) and what it became (pro-bono, introspective, distracted, weary, strident, kind of phoned-in at times [sorry]) but what never changed was the mission, which was detailed in the first ever blog post I made (Canned Soup) on September 20, 2010:
"... if you let me I will create spectacular vistas of invented and existing things ... maybe not, and I will just be a bitter, judgmental internet spectator..."
Very prescient and wise, I'd say. It was the unstable first step, when I didn't know what to do, really, but wanted a bit of everything. Lots of blogs specialize or self-promote (often both in some ratio) and I didn't really have anything worth specializing in. What followed were mostly unremarkable posts, as I sought a voice and some kind of sense of purpose beyond getting a good number of readers and then monetizing the hell out of the blog. Name was chosen, quite obviously, as a piss take of Politico... the brand motto (slogan?) was derived from a line of Juvenalian satire. Satire was and remains quite important to this blog, but the aggregation of the odd sincere article and natural disinclination (not going to compete with the Onion), corroded any sense of purity of purpose. For reference: canned soup is still incredibly bland to me and I haven't found any good brands or varieties, nor does seasoning really solve the problem.
In the first three months I got a grand total of 31 hits, putting my dreams of monetization in jeopardy and essentially sending me directly into a dark place from which I have never emerged, all the while unemployed and pissing money into rent and other things. Reflecting on times gone by, I have to say the original content is actually quite decent. I would encourage any interested reader (assuming I have an actual readership and not just spider/bot/crawler traffic) to check out the older stuff all the way to 2010. 'Midst the hack writing there are a few gems, and the germs of some later fixations. If you're lazy or disinterested, don't despair! I will, before the year 2014, go through myself and post a list and review format blog post about the cream of the crop.
My blogging fortune changed dramatically in December 2010, when my recap of a Conan O'Brien (newly on TBS then) episode drew an unprecedented 200+ visitors, and even the attention of the audience member at the core of that episode. I was extremely excited by how that turned out, and did a sequel post about my stupid excitation, and replied to the comments like an idiot, and possibly established a readership that may or may not still exist. After that post I could expect more hits in a month than the first three months combined, and December 2010's stats eclipsed the next four months combined. Anecdotally, it would take almost a full year before I would get another non-spam comment.
You bet the grand visions returned to me then, and promptly fell away as reality intervened. A number of hardscrabble months followed, in which I realized that 70-100 views a month were fantastic compared to my old numbers but hardly encouraging. I wondered what I was doing wrong (probably everything) and how I could fix it (hoping to have to do nothing). I think I redesigned some font colors, the background, and the spacing in the header title... then kept on plugging away. I hoped that hard work could be substituted for buzz, but if anything this blog stands for the fact that you can do amazing work (hahah – just go with it) and get a minimal amount of interest. That brings me roughly to the end of 2010... please note that I am planning a 'best of Publicato' review (I am told it WILL unearth some gems), as well as at least one more part of reminiscence/retrospective.
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