I had hinted a couple days ago that I was about to become a professional blogger. Now I am one. Well, technically, I’m a professional co-blogger: Greta and I have signed on with Science Blogs and we’ve moved Cognitive Daily over there. Now, instead of paying a web host, the web host pays us!
We had been making an almost trivial amount of money with Google ads on the old site, but assuming we can get our traffic levels up to at least what we had been doing on Cognitive Daily (we were getting about 90,000 visits a month), we should be earning about five times as much. And if we can double that traffic, then we’ll get ten times as much! Watch out, Alex Tew. (I know, I know — that’s not just counting eggs before they’re hatched, it’s counting omelets before they’re a twinkle in granddaddy rooster’s eye, but I can dream, can’t I?)
Aside from my capitalist ambitions, the new site is actually pretty cool. [Did I mention that I’ll be blogging with P.Z. Myers, of Pharyngula (his new site isn’t up and running yet, so I hope I’m not jinxing things by mentioning this)? Six months ago, I was excited to get an e-mail from P.Z., and now I’m going to be blogging with him! Or at least nearby…] The main site is basically an RSS of all the participating blogs, but you can easily select a category and see just the posts from blogs on the topics you’re interested in. Right now, there are only 11 blogs in the system, but I understand that 14 have signed up, and the eventual goal is to expand to about 40. The idea is to create a hub of conversation about issues in science, and this to me looks like a great format for it.
Every time I’ve joined a blogging network (and most are not nearly as sophisticated as what they’re doing at Science Blogs), I’ve noticed a tremendous increase in the number of visitors; I suspect with the level of interactivity Science Blogs promotes, it is going to absolutely take off. If you’re a science blogger, I’d strongly recommend contacting them about signing up — Christopher Mims, the editor of Science Blogs, has been great to work with. He’s responsive, accommodating, and gives you complete editorial control over your blog. The only thing that will change is the URL and the design. (And if you’re not using Movable Type, you’ll have to learn that. It’s got some little quirks that are a bit different from Wordpress. Everything makes sense, but it’s got its own zen about it that just takes a while to get into.)
The next issue will be moving the archives over to Science Blogs. I’ve found a few Wordpress to MT conversion tools on the Web, but I’d be happy to hear any recommendations. I’d really like to get not only the posts, but also the comments moved over to the new site — they’re a tremendous resource.
The new blog shouldn’t affect my activity here at Word Munger — I expect I’ll be posting about the same amount at Cognitive Daily, which will leave me just about as much time to post here. There’s the possibility of introducing new features on CogDaily over the long term, but even then, I’m still going to need Word Munger as a place to let out whatever non-psychology thoughts I have.
Fear not — Word Munger will persevere!
Now go visit the new Cognitive Daily
