heh™ indeed™ read the whole thing™
A couple of folks (and this comes up periodically) post advice on how to get Instalanched. It’s tough. Facts, I am in the same geographical area of Insty. I have met him on at least three occasions. I belong to the same blogger club as Glenn. And Glenn has bought me exactly one beer. And none of these things have gotten me huge amounts of traffic. I’ve only had two Instalanches. I only email him things I think he’d be interested in. Yet, the two Instalanches I got were not the result of me emailing him (maybe one was, I don’t know for sure – I blame Bubba). He has linked to stories I’ve emailed him about four times, without mention of me. And of my 45,000 plus hits, 16,000 were probably from those two Instalanches. So, 36% of my hits are attributable to Glenn posting this and this.
When I last spoke to Glenn in person, I asked him how many emails he received daily. His answer was 300 – 400. That’s a lot. He has a considerable amount of sorting (ahem, deleting) to do. There is probably some truth in that you have catch him when he’s online. Otherwise, if he steps away for an hour, he got about 30 emails and he can’t read them all (he has a job, ya know).
Plus, it helps to send him something he’s interested in. The basic Glenn posts can be broken down into the following categories:
Heh! – a joke or something witty someone has said.
Indeed – some new way of cleverly saying something he’s already said or agrees with; or that supports the same thing he’s said or agrees with.
Pack not a herd – usually involve tales of people en masse righting a wrong.
Hating France – well, you know.
Gun stuff – stuff about guns, which coincidentally is hit or miss. Sometimes he blogs gun happy, lately he doesn’t blog guns so much.
Poking idiotarians with a sharp stick – Sometimes go in the Indeed or Heh! category.
Read the whole thing – something he likes but is too long to post all of.
Picking on the BBC/NYT/Other media – He likes these.
Blogging v. Journalism – he likes these too.
Anything mentioning Postrel, Volokh, or his three cylinder car.
The critical of Glenn post that’s disguised as a joke but is really a suck up.
Another blogger opined recently when we were talking in real life that Glenn’s not really a blogger so much anymore as he is the center point for blogging. He’s more like Yahoo! for the Blogosphere. There’s probably some truth to that.
In short, post something he likes and if you happen to time it when he’s on, you may get one. And if he doesn’t link to you, it’s probably not personal. And it probably helps if it’s well-written and insightful.
September 18th, 2003 at 4:57 pm
I emailed him last night about the Dyersburg post I was doing, titled it “Dyersburg Tennessee Hostage Situation.” Unfortunately, he was on a blogging break for a long dinner. Sadly, he didn’t link me.
I’ve had one “instalanche” and it only translated into about 800 hits. I kid you not.
Obviously, I’m doing something very, very wrong. 😉
September 18th, 2003 at 9:35 pm
I’ve had three Instalanches in my 9 months of blogging. Two of them were early on, when I was beating up on Congressman Charlie Rangel for proposing a resumption of the military draft. Both of the above posts were brought to Glenn’s attention by another blogger who happened to like what I wrote and also gets a fair amount of links from Glenn, especially on military matters.
The third Instalanche happened (is still happening) today, when I started blogging about the situation down here in eastern NC with Hurricane Isabel. I emailed Glenn that I’d be blogging through the storm and he put up the link.
My advice: either volume or passion on a breaking news event. Don’t be afraid to send Glenn an email, but make sure you’re going to make it worth his while to link by adding value for *his* readers, not yours.
September 18th, 2003 at 9:39 pm
Indeed! 🙂
September 19th, 2003 at 11:33 am
Mike, check your counter code. I just dumped bravenet because it couted only hits to my main page. Hits to archived perma links didn’t register. I suspect something like that may be going on with you.
September 19th, 2003 at 12:42 pm
Five months and still no Istalinks for me. I’ve only e-mailed him once, though. And I’m not really into factchecking the NYT and BBC.
Yes, it’s tough.
September 21st, 2003 at 12:05 pm
You could always join the alliance?
http://gevkaffeegal.typepad.com/the_alliance/
🙂
November 6th, 2003 at 1:08 pm
How are you doing? I’m doing good. What are you doing? I just got done from writing to you. I hope to hear from you real soon.
December 20th, 2003 at 10:45 pm
Heh-resy has its limits!
Has Glenn Reynolds a proprietary interest in trhe words “heh” and “indeed”? This is not an idle question brought on by having too much time on my hands. In fact, my very blogfather himself wants to know whether I had…
December 20th, 2003 at 10:47 pm
Heh-resy indeed!
Has Glenn Reynolds a proprietary interest in the words “heh” and “indeed”? This is not an idle question brought on by having too much time on my hands. In fact, my very blogfather himself wants to know whether I had…