I yen for you to be my valentine

My March issue came Saturday, so I’ll take a short break in this long stretch of non-Yen-related stories to talk about it a little. Nightschool is on a hiatus at Svetlana Chmakova helps prepare the third collected volume for print, but in its place is a bonus two-page comic she drew about her trip to Japan. The comic features a very nicely done coloring job, and though it’s mostly drawn in the same silly cartoony style she uses for her Nightschool bonus pages, there’s one panel in particular that… well, you’ll just have to see for yourself. That’s all I’ve been able to read so far of it comics-wise, but JuYuon’s Editor’s Letter promises that this issue’s chapter of One Fine Day is “especially heartwarming,” so that might be something else for you fans of the cute to look forward to.

Now, here’s a somewhat lengthy rant to send out to my fellow bloggers before I sign off. It may not be relevant or interesting to others, so I’ll put it behind a break so that I don’t flood the front page with my babbling.

Still with me? Okay, here we go. Every once in a while, I get a message through this site’s contact form from someone assuming that they’re contacting the “real” Yen Plus, and asking if they can submit their comic for consideration publication or asking where their late issue is or something like that. It happened again recently, which prompted me to check the popularity of Yen Plus Info in the major search engines versus Yen Press’s official site. At the time I checked, YPI outranked Yen Press’s site when searching for “Yen Plus” in Bing, Ask and Google - in the latter two, Yen Press’s official site was buried in the wasteland of the second page of results. A search on Yahoo fared better, putting Yen Press’s site first and mine third. The fact that I’m outranking the official site on three of the Big Four prompted the more prominent “Hey, this ain’t the official site!” notice you see on the front page. You probably know that to have your unofficial site outrank the official site for a brand name is a search engine optimization slam dunk. To toot my own horn, I pulled off something awesome.

And yet, this blog features very few of the features - the annoyances - you see on blogs nowadays. No social bookmarking or networking site logos. No obnoxious RSS or Twitter icons. No banner ads. No inline text ads. No paid posts. No stat tracker scripts. No baiting or begging for comments (well, maybe a little begging). No “Top X” lists. No referral links. No trackbacks, incoming or outgoing. No tricks, no scams, no scum. Just content. Content. Glorious content.

There was a misguided time in my life where I tried to do the “professional blogger” thing. I hated it. Hated it. Hated the desperation of trying to trick people and search engines, of constantly checking tracker statistics and AdSense income (twenty-two cents today! Yay!), of feeling obligated to feed the site content even if I really had nothing to say. It sucked, and despite people who are trying to sell you something will tell you, there simply isn’t any money in it if you want to have any sort of a life or a soul. Now, on this site and others, I just write what I want to write, when I want to write it, not worrying about hit counts or profits. And my sites are better, the content I’m providing is more valuable, and I’m much happier as both a blogger and as a whole. And somehow, I even managed to pull off this mother of SEO coups without even really trying to.

So, to wrap it all up… Please, follow my example. Make your blog more about being a showcase of valuable content than a source of residual income (ha!) and/or an obnoxious ego-fest. Delete your stats tracker systems and scripts, remove anything which even vaguely looks like you’re begging for links or subscriptions, get rid of the ads, and blog for the joy of blogging. Your readers will appreciate it, search engines will appreciate it, and you may even find yourself becoming a happier person as well.

Now all that being said, Yen Press, if you’re considering revamping your site and would consider hiring a web developer who clearly enjoys your product and has even almost subconsciously trumped your own site when it comes to search engine ratings, I may be available in mid-April… (Hey, it’s worth a try.)