Out of Office

I am heading out on family vacation for about 10 days.  Probably won’t be blogging.

I wanted to throw out a couple of links though:

It was only active for about 3 months, but “Scumbag Hanz” had a pretty amusing blog about his adventures in Ninja Salvaging and Ninja Looting.  I am adding it to the relevant part of my new player exploration guide.

Another blog that is fairly new is Across the Threshold.  I noticed it on the Blog Banter and it is a pretty interesting read.  It is the tales of a fairly new CEO of a fairly new Wormhole corp.  Go check it out.

I already added the Killmail Archivist to my blogroll.  He has only been blogging since May, but he is going to be a phenomenon.  He is already being compared to Jester, and since he is part of Rote Kapelle the connection carries some weight.  If you aren’t reading him already, you will be shortly.

Finally, there is this exploration guide site.  It has lots of ads and it is written to make money for the author (and heavily promoted on Reddit), but it is decently done.  It focuses on the data/relic side of exploration and gives a good overview and some good tips.

 

Explorers Extraordinaire

I will put them on the blog list shortly, but I wanted to highlight a couple of new (to me) exploration blogs that are WAY cooler than mine.

First up is Mynxee who was space famous as part of CSM5 and leader of the Hellcats – a small, but influential women-only pirate corporation.  Her last few posts have contained absolutely gorgeous water-color drawings in her exploration journal.  For example:

You can find more of this on her blog:

http://outlawinsouciant.blogspot.com/

 

Next up is “To Boldly Go”, a blogger chronicling her quest to pass through every system in EVE online.  She has logged 1447 systems (26.64%) so far.  It is a really nice looking blog and she even includes some info on RL exploration.

You can check out her blog here:

http://blog.saganexplorations.net/

 

 

 

 

 

Align Alone

So far, one new blogger taken me up on my offer to link any new EVE blogger with at least 5 posts up.  You can read about his exploits at alignalone.blogspot.co.uk.  He is another solo player focusing on Faction Warfare with some exploration and a handful of other enterprises thrown in.

Today, he has a great story up about being ambushed in an combat gas site by EVE Uni pilots.

Not only that, but his Tengu fit looks vaguely familiar (although I might suggest dropping one of the hardeners for some jamming resistance if you are facing Guristas, it will make the site go faster).

Go check out his blog!

 

Newbie Bloggers

As someone who has been blogging for about six months, I am kind of in between being a “new blogger” and being “old” enough to give advice to new bloggers.  So I am reading both sides on the Newbie Blogger Initiative.

I appreciate all those who support new bloggers.  The NBI is a good way to kickstart a blog by giving some referrals and there is a also ton of good advice out there from veteran bloggers.   I will keep mine short and sweet.

1.  Be the blog you want to read.  Write for yourself, whether it is newsy or conversation or rambling or full of pictures or speculative or provocative.  I liked reading EVE exploration blogs,   but there weren’t very many and most of them were inactive.  So I decided to write one.

2.  Blogspot vs. WordPress.  Blogspot has 1 major advantage in that it has a dynamically updated blogroll.  If you have a good blogroll on Blogpsot, you can get a lot of traffic just because of that.  Personally, I think WordPress is better for just about everything else.  The layouts are more varied and the mobile app is very nice for approving comments, checking stats, etc.  I went with wordpress, but I envy that blogroll.

3.  Have ideas for at least 10 blog posts before you start.  Give them at least a title.  If you don’t have an idea for at least 5 posts, you probably aren’t ready to start blogging.  It helps to have a weekly rhythm or pattern as well, but that is easier said than done.

4.  Getting traffic.  Basically there are 2 main ways of getting traffic: web searches and referring blogs.  To get traffic from web searches, you need to use good descriptive blog post titles.  If you are writing about your experience in a dungeon or mission some such, put that in the title.  Referrals are a bit harder.  It helps to get some listing on the NBI.  Sometimes you can just ask some of the bloggers you like if they will put you on their blogroll.  For reasons stated above, it is better to be on a blogpost blogroll than a wordpress one.  If you are a New EVE blogger, let me know I and I will link you as soon as you have 5 posts up.

Happy blogging.

 

 

The end is in sight

I haven’t touched Eve in a week except to check my training queue and re-start my 3-day cycle PI extractors.  I am in the middle of crunch time on a major work project and have barely had time to breathe, let alone blog.  I even had to work this past weekend.  The end is in sight, however, and I should be back to playing and blogging again shortly.

As a side note, I am insanely jealous of all those bloggers that somehow manage to play multiple MMO’s (and blog about it) simultaneously.  I can barely manage one (and not even that at the moment).