Because of this, my blogging has been all over the map. I’ve been a part of several group blogs, and I’ve had a handful of personal blogs covering a wide range of topics. But the past six months has lead me to all but abandon every one of these efforts.

I think the main reason is that blogging, for me, is very slow and hard to maintain. When I react to energy and movements online, I do so within minutes. Rapid response to me is about instant collaboration via social media and other real time conversation mechanisms.

Blogging takes time. Lot’s of time. I’m not suggesting it can’t be effective, because for many it is. But while others are thinking of what to write, I’m acting on ways to build instant grassroots momentum. And I always feel like blogging drags me down.

So why start doing it again?

The Tea Party Movement taught me a very important lesson about people in leadership roles in online movements. If you don’t explain who you are, others will try and do it for you. This happened to me from many directions over the past couple of months.

Liberals grasp things out of thin air all the time. That was no surprise. There were vile and inaccurate things written about me all over the left wing blogosphere during the Tax Day Tea Party effort. Most of it I ignored… the parts I didn’t ignore I only read because of the humor involved.

But what really surprised me is the attacks leveled by many on our side. Specifically, Little Green Footballs and several other large righty blogs. LGF, for example, took a page out of the lefty playbook and assumed something based on a guess… and a bad one at that. Not only did LGF inaccurately paint me as a Ron Paul crazy, he also asserted that I had written something for the “National Expositor.”

The fact is, the National Expositor lifted that post from one of my own blogs and reprinted it. But facts like that often don’t make it to posts when you as the individual being written about do not make it clear who you are and what you do.

So, while I believe LGF was completely off mark and mischaracterized me as a person, I also see how I made the mistake of not painting a clear picture for these folks to pull information from.

With that said, I’ve listened to a few trusted friends and decided to act on the suggestion that I begin building a coherent online profile for myself.

The plan

I plan on using this space to discuss my political views/ideas, as well as a heavy dose of web strategy for the free-market movement online.

I hope you’ll grab my RSS feed and subscribe to my new email newsletter… “The eActivist,” and I look forward to talking with you through comments here on my blog.

Thanks for reading. And if you’re a freedom fighter for the free-market movement… keep doing what you do.

-Eric Odom

H/T: Josh Shultz

You see, I don’t just write posts, I maintain and manage a plethora of blogs, group blogs, and blogging communities. Lately I’ve been spending any and all extra time cleaning up other blogging projects and preparing them for a long term plan. The following is a list of some of the blogs I am intimately involved in.

The Oink Report – The Oink Report is a blog that documents government waste, pork barrel spending, and political corruption via earmarks. I’m joined by Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com, and I look forward to seeing this blog reach its full potential.

Telecommies – A Net Regulation blog aimed at exposing the truth about net neutrality.

Left Watch – This is a blog that I am only just starting to chew into. It’s main purpose is to follow the left wing money machine and provide details about where the money comes from and what it is used for.

BlockersRus.com – Blockers “R” Us is a new blog set up to follow the people who work to limit free speech by actively blocking citizen petition efforts.

ConservaBlogs.com – CB is a community of more than 20 bloggers who are hosted on the site and crank out an enormous amount of original content. The site currently enjoys more than 4,000 visits per day and is continuing to grow.

And, of course, I blog here, The Developers Blog, and Blogivists HQ.

Needless to say, it’s a handful keeping up with it all. But I love every minute of it.

Yes… I’m addicted to blogging.

Much to my own surprise, I now see the new media movement much differently than I did back when I first started dabbling with the concept. Back then I took the “sphere” part literally, and I focused a lot of my time on being a part of this “sphere” everyone was chattering about.

I remember the first time I read Hugh Hewitt’s book “blog”, and I remember finishing the last chapter with great enthusiasm. I studied the work of Lorelle VanFossen, Glenn Reynolds, Ed Morrissey, the guys at Powerline and many others. I monitored traffic trends, worked with PPC programs, watched networks work together in pushing big stories, and participated in just about every online forum possible.

I’ve been fortunate in my way of thinking in that I never sought blogging success for myself; Rather, I wanted to do what I could to help others succeed online with what they were already doing offline. I credit this mentality for what I see as a decent understanding of how it all works, and how we can immerse ourselves in it to further the freedom movement.

What stands out the most?

For starters, I’ve recently began noticing that a lot of the advice and consulting with regards to new media has evolved around traffic. Yes, over the past five years a common message on blogging has been increasing readership. Sure, increasing readership is important, but I think we might have put far too much emphasis on the numbers themselves. And in doing so we failed to express the importance of the readers we already have.

What makes me think this? Well, for starters I’ve seen countless bloggers throw their hands up and admit defeat in their blogging journey. Was it because they didn’t enjoy expressing themselves and sharing their opinions? Not likely. I would be willing to bet that most felt they simply didn’t have a readership.

But did they really lack readers?

I run a blog hosting community over at ConservaBlogs.com. We’re coming up on two years of being live now and we have more than 20 bloggers who post several times per week. You can see examples of these blogs here, here, and here. The site is no Townhall or Newsbusters by any means, but we see an average of 4,500 visits per day.

This traffic is nice, but it didn’t always exist. In fact, just last summer we weren’t even seeing half the traffic we see now. We were lucky if we got 1,500 visits in a single day. At the time we had more than 30 bloggers on the site and traffic was just starting to pick up. However, because the traffic was not there yet, several of our bloggers became discouraged and closed down shop. For two of them, it was the first time they had ever dabbled with blogging and will likely be the last.

One of the bloggers simply vanished. I’ve yet to speak with him since he closed his blog down and I have no idea where he is now. But I did get a chance to exchange e-mails with one of the other bloggers who had given up on his blogging efforts. When asked why he decided to bail on his blog, he said he didn’t feel it was worth the effort. He pointed me to his stats where it was apparent he never had more than 40 visits per day, and he insisted that other bloggers were telling him he should have much higher numbers.

Before I go any further I must admit that I’m probably a part of the problem here. You see, I’m one of those bloggers who has for years preached the importance of growing numbers and large traffic spikes. Now, I’m not asserting this is wrong, but I would suggest that it leaves a wide open gap in the understanding of how important new media can be.

A growing readership is important, and something every blogger should be mindful of. But more importantly, it’s the who, not the how many.

We political junkies too often look at the traffic stats when judging the importance and influence of blogs. Our national pundits and news makers have, in my opinion, completely missed the mark in identifying and crediting good bloggers. Most of the major players of the “conservative movement” will simply write off a blogger because, well, because who is that?

How ridiculous…

Many on the right assume that Townhall, Newsbusters, Redstate, HotAir and other major online news servers are some how the “A-List” bloggers of the center-right movement.

My question is simple… when was the last time Townhall.com worked to oust a school board member in Topeka Kansas, replacing him/her with a true liberty candidate? Name the last time HotAir.com worked with local bloggers in Texas to shoot down a tax increase?

Heck, Chicago just cranked the sales tax to 10.25%, the highest in the nation! Where were the “A-Listers”?

I’m not trying to say these sites are irrelevant, because they aren’t. In fact, they play an extremely vital role in disseminating news punditry. But without payrolls and full time staff would they be able to do what they do? Without big names on the roster would they have as many readers?

Think about it.

In my view, the rock star bloggers are the ones who are filing FOIA’s. The big dogs are the ones beating down tax increases and exposing local corruption. The brave bloggers are those who take on teachers unions with nothing more than a keyboard and a Wordpress login.

And guess what? I’ve seen bloggers with no more than 30 visits per day literally shift state policy. I’ve watched underdog candidates for school board knock entrenched politicians from their seats using nothing more than the internet and a few hundred dollars.

So in the end, I would argue that perhaps we should shift our focus away from being “A-list” or big traffic blogs, and start focusing more on what it is we are opining on. In my opinion, an effective blog is one that is driven by passion, honesty, and a blogger who isn’t afraid to link to a few other bloggers.

Sure, you might not see more than 40 visits a day for the first year, but those 40 visits may be the most important visits you’ll ever have.

Part two of this thought coming soon…

Sure, I might be posting somewhat prematurely considering the fact that while posting this our site is locked down and in “maintenance mode”. That being said, this blog can be found and seen so I figured why the heck not?

In this post I’ll talk about two things. First, I’ll plug this blog and explain what it’s all about. Second, I’ll talk a bit about what Blogivists.com is.

Eric Odom @ Blogivists.com
As if I don’t do enough blogging already!!!

I’ve decided to launch this blog as a sort of “developers” blog for Blogivists.com. In this blog I’ll write about some of the technical aspects of the community, as well as random updates that have to do with the back end of the system.

We have a LOT of cool things planned for the site, including a ton of theme releases, plugins, discussion forums, wiki’s and more! If you’re an RSS junkie like me, please grab my feed and stay tuned for updates.

If RSS is not your cup of tea, feel free to bookmark me and check back often.

Blogivists.com
I’m sure Mike VanWinkle and the rest of the Sam Adams Alliance crew will soon publish a much more detailed explanation of this site. But until then I’ll offer the short version.

Blogivists.com is an exciting new project being put together by Sam Adams Alliance. The project is being built around a vision to develop a web community where citizens and activists can set up free Wordpress blogs. The blogs are 100% free with no strings attached.

What do you get with a free Blogivists.com blog?

-100% FREE hosting for life
-Personalized domain (www.yourblogname.blogivists.com)
-Free Blogivists.com e-mil address
-Safe and secure blogging environment
-Like minded, limited-government seeking community
-Many themes to choose from (coming soon)
-Plugins that help make your blog more interactive
-Widgets to customize your blog
-Powerful world class Wordpress software
-The ability to embed videos and images
-LOT’S MORE!!!

I’ve built several communities like this in the past, but this one looks to be the most exciting. I’m honored to be a part of the Blogivists team and I look forward to the things to come.

If you ever have basic technical questions or would like to suggest a feature for the site, please comment here on my blog or drop me an e-mail.

Blog Hard,
-Eric Odom
eric@blogivists.com