Queen of the No-Niche Bloggers, that is!
Rasheed Hooda, aka, “Mister Weirdo,” (never to be confused with Mr. Weirdo) – the man who, at age 62, walked from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Barbara, California, has handed me the virtual scepter in his post, “My Favorite No-Niche Bloggers.” I have apparently fallen down on the SEO, but you know you’ve arrived when you no longer have to scrabble for page one on Google to have your claim to the throne publicly acknowledged.
Once upon a time, word around the Internet was, “Marketing is KING!” And I argued for content, but grudgingly conceded that without marketing, content was easily overlooked. “If marketing is king, then content is queen.” Like Queen Victoria. Or Queen Elizabeth.
In 2009, I took a 31 Days to a Build a Better Blog (31DBBB) workshop with Darren Rowse. When we got to defining and redefining our “niche” as bloggers, I told Darren that my goal was to “dominate the no-niche niche.” He knew before I joined the class that this had been my plan all along:
https://twitter.com/HollyJahangiri/status/1047935152
He conceded:
@HollyJahangiri well your strategy could be to be yourself I guess 😉
— Darren Rowse (@problogger) December 9, 2008
“I guess”? If @ProBlogger was skeptical, I think that Rasheed Hooda has proven my case, albeit ten years later. Even if I do have only 20 subscribers to this blog, we dance to the best of drummers! (I started to write “to the beat of our own drummers,” but my subconscious and Finngelo’s enigmatic spell-checker know – that is the “best of drummers”!) If each of you could just recruit 5.263157894736842 new subscribers for me, I’d have a hundred. “But how do I recruit .263157894736842 of a reader?” I hear you cry. I’m counting those who skim, read with one eye closed, and mutter “tl;dr.”
I’m sure Darren has 16 million subscribers, but he’s such a nice guy, I can’t even envy him. So long as he keeps his mitts off my no-niche niche, I’m happy to let him be him.
Reading Rasheed’s post, I am delighted – and feel a bit like the high-school Prom Queen whose boyfriend is somewhere on the dance floor, looking for the spiked punch, to note that my friend and fellow blogger, Mitch Mitchell, has been declared King of the No-Niche Bloggers by Rasheed. The world is a small, weird, wonderful place. Mitch, I think, is doing a better job of the SEO. But he’s also good at kicking my “weirdly competitive” side into high gear.
Mitch has some competition, here, now – the Shahenshah? Rasheed has declared our mutual friend, Ramana Rajgopaul, aka, Rummuser, the “King of Kings” (fortunately, not of Queens, or we might have had to duel it to the death with a digital poetry slam, or something!)
I’m getting the feeling that all of us no-niche bloggers know and like each other. That’s what happens when the make-money-online bloggers convince everyone that you have and dominate a niche in order to make it as a blogger. And so many have learned, the hard way, that they could not dominate a niche without dying of boredom or twisting themselves into half-baked pretzels – there are billions of blogs, out there, abandoned and festering at the side of the Information Superhighway, while we no-niche bloggers are still having fun.
What Rasheed failed to tell you is that Jahangiri means “of a family of world conquerors.” Don’t mess with the Queen, now, y’hear? Go find your niche. I’m out to conquer the world.
Congratulations queen!
Thank you, Dad! You’ve always encouraged and had faith in me… 🙂
Good stuff! I am pleased for both you and Mitch. Rasheed did a great write up and captured you both.
Cheers,
Mitch
Thank you, Mitch. (Another Mitch, SMH)
Yup, we’re prevalent around here lol
What’s funny is that Rasheed has met both of us – in person. As long as I’ve known Mitch, we still haven’t met face to face. I wish you could’ve seen the look on my face when I saw a picture of the two of them on Mitch’s blog! Just too funny.
Shame on me. But you must excuse the oversight; my Farsi is a bit rusty after 50+ years since the said middle school classes. But, I should’ve known that. Ironically, Jahangir was the self-proclaimed title of the successor to Akbar, who claimed to be the Shahenshah.
BTW, I am Mister Weirdo, not to be confused with Mr. Weirdo. (Yeah, weird, isn’t it?)
LOL! I almost feel ashamed because all I did was comment on the blog post. Almost that is… at least I did that much. 🙂 I think it’s just amazing that we’ve been blogging so long and have known each other this long without hating each other; I’m great with that as a legacy.
Me, too, Mitch! It’s a great legacy.
God works in mysterious ways and He has sent you as an angel to revive my connections with you and Rasheed. Congratulations Queen and I HAVE now subscribed to your posts and will recommence hounding you.
I have not met you, Mitch or Rasheed but hope to before I pop off. I hope that at least Rasheed will come over to India to climb Mount Everest! Both you and Mitch are most welcome to my humble abode any time.
If any of us will climb Mt. Everest, it will be Rasheed – and I do not doubt that if it’s on his bucket list, he’ll do it!
I would love to meet you in person, Ramana. Meanwhile, thank you for subscribing and visiting me here. 🙂