Imaginif

Many are at a loss to work me out (me too some days). Some colleagues ask what it is I do on the computer and how is that child protection? Perplexed by how I can call what I do “social work” and how on earth I pay the bills (accountant husband ponders this too), a meme has been miraculously offered to me by the gorgeous Ange from Buzzing with Ange: a teachable moment, a chance to capitalise on teaching my colleagues a little about this blogging stuff and how I fit into the blogosphere has landed on my lap.

Article by Megan Bayliss

First, what is a blog: Blog is short for Weblog.  A blog is a form of a website that can be updated (daily) and changed, not by the web master, but by the person who often has little technical skill - a person like me. Just like the professions of social work or psychology have different specialisations, so too do blogs. There are baby blogs, parent blogs, eclectic blogs, political blogs, craft blogs, etc. My blog is a child protection blog. Blogs provide either free information or a view into the authors mind. Imaginif will be facilitating a Blogging Workshop early in 2008 so my colleagues, perhaps you will attend that to learn more of how to use blogging as a business or consciousness raising platform.

Second what is a meme? Originally named by British zoologist, Richard Dawkins  (he was looking at genes in a new way of replication), memes have become popular items of study in psychology, anthropology and political science. Memes are those little items that repeat themselves and become firmly implanted in our head - a tune, a saying, a catch cry. They travel through our communities, cross borders, gallop into other countries and run around inside our heads like a virus. “Happy Birthday to you,”: who can say that without singing the tune? The famous birthday song is a meme - a small thing that is replicated over and over again. Meme’s are viral - contagious and spread like wld fire.

Blogs loan themselves nicely to memes because bloggers can pass on the same questions again and again. For example, this meme given to me by Ange, contains five questions. While individual responses to these questions will change, the questions will remain the same. I will play a game of tag, by sending these same questions to other bloggers. They answer and they tag other bloggers with the same questions…and the meme continues throughout the blogosphere.

And here’s Ange’s meme questions to me:

1. How long have you been blogging.

I first heard/read about blogging when I was living in London in 2003. I thought they were silly and self indulgent. I cringed at the thought of somebody writing about their baby’s bowel movements juxtaposed against adult constipation. I wondered though if a blog was a way for my friends and family to keep up to date with my work and travel exploits???????

My view of a blog was limited! I understood them to be on line journals or diaries. A way to digitally record your day and share it with everyone through out the world. I got the sharing aspect, even if online sharing was not one of my strengths (I rather like my privacy)! In the 1970’s, naked workshops were a popular form of group therapy. The basic thesis of the nakedness was metaphorical - you have nothing to hide behind. I never did a naked workshop. I like to hide thanks. Blogs were too much like naked workshops for my liking.

Blogs didn’t leave my mind though. I knew that my initial critical reaction was wrong. Blogging was associated with some big name important people. These were people that could not afford to be publicly self indulgent and domestically boring. I investigated. I got it. Blogging was a new form of communication and as a professional communicator, I wanted in. I ‘got’ the potential of doing global social work and raising people’s consciousness, without having to leave my country and pay exorbitant rents in foreign cities (well, have you ever rented in London on Social Work wages!!!).

So, I’m a late starter (this means I had no idea how to access free blogging platforms and hosts). Life happens sometimes, and it wasn’t my turn to enter blogging until I got a gig with families.com in August 2006. They took me on as a mental health blogger. They trained and paid me and I cut my baby teeth on them. They own the copyright of my early articles written for them - some brilliant, some less so! They also let me go after not even three months of blogging. They said I concentrated on the evils in society without giving readers the tools to deal with the evil (hows that for victim blame and making the hunted responsible?). I do believe that families.com has since been sold and the management has changed.

I set up my own blogs after that (at blogger) and fine tuned my learning about blogging, platforms, free share ware, etiquette, traffic, domain names, social networking, monetization, creative commons, selling blogs, etc. In May, 2007, Imaginif opened our corporate website and included our own blog, built on a wordpress platform, with our own domain name. In short, we grew up.

Today, we have made the two elite blogging lists in Australia. We are currently number 43, and climbing, on the top 100 Australian blogs index and number 18 on the Top 50 Australian Women’s blogs list. Not bad for someone who went from knowing zilch about blogging in August 2006 to our success in November 2007 (15 months blogging with 3 platform and domain changes).

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors

Knowledge and understanding of the world wide web as a canvas for painting a new picture about child safety and child protection was my inspiration.I just ‘got it’. I looked at the numbers of people who use the internet, my target group, my knowledge and made a salad out of those ingredients.

My mentors are a static bunch. In the beginning, there was no-one. I relied upon my own curiosity to drive my clicking, discovering and reading ability to seek home directed mentor ship. I read other blogs, I studied their comments, I left comments. I reflected on why I bothered to save some blogs to my favorites (I knew not of RSS at that time). Once I was sacked from families.com, I became a reader of tech blogs, mostly the social networking site blogs.  They provided me terrific tech knowledge. I then discovered:

• Darren Rowse of Problogger,
• Meg from Dipping into the Blogpond,
• Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur’s Journey,
• Leigh over at All for Women and
• Opal from Vegan Momma.

Darren failed to respond to me on a number of occasions (he has HUGE readership and no time) so I failed to visit him again. Meg and Opal, I would count as blogging friends. They each offer something different to me and I love their quirky and eclectic sense of humor. Meg is a white Aussie and Opal is a black American woman. The black and white minstrels these women are not. They are brilliant diamonds and they have taught me heaps through their patient responses and willingness to explain step by step. Because of that, I will remain loyal to them until they close their blogs. Yaro is just adorable. A Queenslander with crazy hair like mine, he is a blogging guru. I am one of his students but because I pay him to teach me, he does not get the elevated goddess position that Meg and Opal do. Nonetheless, I thoroughly recommend Yaro’s Blog Mentoring course (and no, I’m not using his affiliate link here. There’s nothing in it for me - I recommend because I belive in it). And All for Women….well, I consider them to be my informal sister site. Leigh is totally committed to women and raising their self esteem. Leigh breaths women as I breath child protection. I find that stimulating and encouraging. Thank you Leigh.

My true mentors though, are those millions of bloggers affected by child abuse. They may not identify themselves as survivors but I read it in their words. It is to them that I say thank you. They have mentored my courage and my ability to continue to blog about child safety, even though blogging costs me money and takes me away from other pleasurable things, I do it because I believe in making a difference. To all of you amazing men and women, thank you. I am forever indebted to you. I am hosting the Carnival against Child Abuse here on December the 14th so I hope that some of you will consider submitting your posts and allowing me to positively market your blogs. There is no shame in being a survivor of child abuse, there is only shame in being a child abuser.

Child protection is a bit like butter is to bread - hard to spread sometimes. But, the longer it’s out, the easier it gets. Won’t you take the Imaginif paddle and help us to spread child protection? Either subscribe to reading this blog or join us over at MyBlogLog community. Child Protection is every bodies responsibility. Thanks every body for being a some body.

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun

I do it as work and my intention is to become problogger and replace my current income. Blogging is my platform for raising consciousness about child protection. Lucky for me, I believe that work places need to be fun. I follow my passions and believe in what I do. Blogging has become an extension of my work with clients. In real time, I can only work with a limited number of people at any given moment. With blogging, the number who I can work with is so big that I fail to comprehend it.

Do I make money from it? Not yet, (revenue neutral) but I know I will as child protection spreads further through our online communities. Imaginif’s aim is to have the largest online child protection conversation in the world. We converse through the blog and through our Safety Talk forum. The more traffic we have, the greater the likelihood of Google ad hits, affiliate purchases and sales from our online protective play store.

I have attempted to monetize my site. I use Google ads, affiliate ads (both pay per click and percentage of sale) and I sell banner advertising space on my web site ($50.00 per month or free to Imaginif voluntary bloggers) to child protection related industry.

I am currently averaging $1.00 per day income. Thank goodness I earn income by doing professional supervisions and that my husband is an accountant and can cope with $1.00 blog income! lol (this is shorthand for laughing out loud for my colleagues new to the blogosphere and its strange language). What a shame the web site outgoings are not limited to $1.oo per day!!!!!

Child safety and child protection advertising is worth very little (oh yes, I intend to change this). Someone who has law or business related Google ads on their site may gross between $5.00 and $10.00 per click. Child Safety ad clicks are lucky to pay me 25 cents per click. Most of them appear to pay below 10 cents per click. Do I make money from them. Ummmm….my charge out rate for seeing clients is at $110.00 per hour, so no, I do not make any money from blogging. I still have to see clients (supervisions and some face to face work) to be able to do what I ultimately intend to do full time.

4. What 3 things do you love about being online

1. This is the biggest group of survivors of child abuse I have ever worked with.  They energise and sustain me. I adore them.
2. The endless platform of consciousness raising around my chosen profession and absolute passion: the prevention of child sexual abuse.
3. I do not have to brush my hair (not that it makes a difference) or get dressed to torture myself in traffic on the way to work.

5. What 3 things do you struggle with online?

1. My technical ability. But…being the contingency Queen, I have employed Lisa Harman to do all my back end tech work for me. The woman is simply fantastic. A stay at home mother, she is almost as devoted to child protection as I am.
2. Income is a definite struggle. I do not want government funding. My determination, and business model, is a grass roots, ground up approach to child protection. However, I still have to pay bills. I can earn jolly good money working face to face, but my passion, my excitement, my commitment is to raising consciousness around child safety through blogging. I juggle this by supposedly half and half commitment. In reality, this means I work the web site full time and have a half time paid job to provide the cash flow to let me do what I know can be done.
3. Traffic issues. I would like to increase my RSS subscriptions and to have an average daily traffic of 10,000. This would be evidence of child protection being serious business. You can help end child abuse by linking, visiting or subscribing in a reader or by email.

That’s my five meme questions over now and it is time to spread the meme to another five bloggers. In the interests of me discovering blogs I don’t yet visit, I have chosen five blogs new to me (found via searching key words). To the below bloggers, I give you the me me, meme.

1. Utah Tech Spotlight (key search term at technorati - child protection)
2. More4kids (key search term Child Safety at MyBlogLog)
3. A beautiful revolution (in popular topic ‘blogs’ at Stumbleupon)
4. Womanarticles.net (found at Digg via searching for child abuse).
5. Health Philosophy Politics and Other Rants (searched for Australian Bloggers at Facebook, picked this one because the avatar looked interesting)