Back in late July I went through a little experiment. That is I started a little experiment and reported my intent here at Performancing. I launched a site for the sole purpose of protesting a situation that I felt compelled to protest. I then locked myself to my mouse for 180 days and didn't eat anything.
Actually, it didn't work quite like that. Back then it looked like Michael Vick would get away with breaking several laws and not have to serve anytime in jail. Knowing what we know today, that seems a little hard to believe.
He's now temporarily out of the NFL, lost his contracts , lost his dogs, lost his house, and went to prison for gambling.
I started the site titled the Campaign to Sack Michael Vick, spinning a theme away from a PETA press release, which I am not affiliated with. Right away the site was rich with SEO keywords surrounding Michael Vick's name. I populated the site with articles about the situation and lots of access to petitions and blog carnivals. Plus, a lot of videos and parodies.
The site included:
- Major News, Minor News
- Parody videos from youtube
- A news feed focused on Michael Vick
- Access to a few dozen related protest petitions and face book groups
- and a lot more.
This was not a money raising endeavor. I just wanted to see how much voice the blog could achieve. I also wanted to learn some of the ins and outs, perils and pros of protesting on the internet. I did run Adsense on the site in case I received a spike in traffic, but at the end of the day the Adsense barely paid for the domain registration. In fairness, I didn't do a lot to optimize for Adsense.
Lessons Learned
- Blogging about a negative topic like this was hard on the soul for the writer, yours truly. Talking about the negative stuff associated with a man that squandered $250 million, tortured and killed animals for fun, and who was involved in illegal activies that led to the murder of a man that lives about 20 miles from me(coincidence I hope.) just wasn't terribly fun.
- It was easy to stay passionate about the subject. I never wavered in thinking that he needed to be held accountable for his actions. The protest started when it looked like he would be given a free pass.
- There are a lot of people out there that like to yell at protesters. Most people on both sides of this issue were fairly respectful, but a lot of people just get angry if you try to stand up for what you believe in. The internet is useful in that it shield some of this and I think that was a positive.
- Hate Speech Policy - Right away, especially in the early days, I saw a lot of hate speech directed at Michael Vick because of his race. I am unabashedly unempathetic to racists. I do not give them equal time, I do not give them voice, if their voice slips through, I lampoon them for being racist. I learned a long time ago that when you attempt to be respectful of someone that has a fundamentally disrespectful position like being racist, you only give them more power, credibility and voice. So I turned up the spam filter for racists remarks (which was extremely unpleasant to have to do in WordPress as you have to sit there and think of racist phrases and type them. Honestly that was about the most unpleasant thing I've ever had to do as a blogger. I know the words, but mentally conjuring them up so that I could type them was just nasty. ) Any comments or comment user id's that slipped through with a racist overtone was deleted, same with links out to such sites.
- Images were very powerful, video even more so. As bloggers we know that images are worth a thousand words and video makes a site sticky. Good video can do amazing things. This was true on SackVick also. As the subject topic was depraved it was very difficult to pick pictures that did not cross the line and celebrate the gore as opposed to convey a message. I'm sure war correspondents and reporters that cover genocide and atrocities go through this at a much greater level. At some level, you want to be real and show what is really happening, but you don't want shallow rubber neckers slowing down on the interstate just to stare at something gorey.
When do you Quit?
After the hate speech the next difficult question was trying to figure out when to quit. Michael Vick kept getting into trouble. More bad stuff kept coming out (like the murder of one of his partners/customers, a drug dealer that he bought dogs from and fought dogs against. He has another trial coming up in April too and now his brother is getting into some potentially related trouble.
I do not want to cover Michael Vick for the rest of my life. The problem is that there is still a bullet point in my mission that is unfulfilled. Vick is likely to return to the NFL and that is something that I wanted to thwart.
So now, I have to figure out what to do next. As a blogger and sometime domainer I know that the blog could be worth something. I could sell it on Sedo and recoup some of my expenses. Its a PR 4 blog with lots of articles, content, links etc. It has good SERPs for several different keywords that is sure to pop it up in the top 10 if not top 2. But if I'm not careful, I may sell it to someone working for Michael Vick.
I do not know where I'm going with this one from here, but I did learn a great deal along the way. I feel well positioned now as prepare for all of the upcoming 2008 political races. I've learned some good lessons and know how to apply them and do better next time around. The only open question I have is how to wind things down. maybe I'll just have to take a shot in the dark on that one and learn another lesson.
Post new comment