Calacanis Offers A Few Nuggets Of Advice

I don’t know if Tony Hung did it on purpose or not but he got himself some real attention by baiting Jason Calacanis to respond to Tony’s blue collar blogging post. Good for him for creating some buzz around an issue that may or may not have ever existed. Tony set up the bait and Jason bit it.

In summary, Tony defended the right of bloggers who aren’t big name (like Jason) to make money by doing paid reviews. Jason has made it clear how he feels about bloggers who do paid posts (i.e., they have “no integrity”). Tony argues that not everyone has the name pull and influence of bloggers like Calacanis, Scoble and Jarvis (who can make a living just opining). There are those stay-at-home moms and others who do everything they can to monetize their blogs, and to denigrate them just because they chose to do paid reviews is classist and elitist.

Jason responded by calling the whole thing “the dumbest argument in the blogosphere.” Then he proceeded to list off a bunch of criteria that would make anyone “A-list” in less than 90 days:

1. Blog intelligently. Think about your post for a day before you hit publish. Do research–do primary research in the real work. Write something with insight, and include links to other folks ideas.

2. Go to 2-3 events or conferences a week.

3. Get a great domain name that is easy to remember and spell (i.e. buzzmachine.com).

4. Go to TechMeme and write an insightful piece daily about one of the top stories.

5. Start emailing other bloggers with feedback on their stories. (don’t beg for links)

6. Be smart.

7. Don’t be an idiot.

In spite of what you think of the whole blowup, Calacanis does offer up a few nuggets of advice. While number 1 is obvious, it is number 2 and number 5 that caught my attention. I do remember reading a few industry blogs a couple of years ago when Calacanis wasn’t as big a name as now and Gawker was (and still is) the big boy in town. Nick Denton didn’t think too much of Jason at the time (my opinion) and I do recall reading about Jason being referred to as the wannabe at the conferences trying to talk up the big boys. But schmoozing with the big boys did work it seems–look where Calacanis is now. You can’t say Jason didn’t follow his own advice.

The other point is emailing bloggers with feedback on their stories. I didn’t know he did that. Well, good for him that it worked. I’m not so sure it would work as well today given the the exposure top blogs get and the amount of email the top bloggers receive. I suppose for blogs about anything other than tech, it would be fine.

If you want to take your blogging to the next level and join the A-list for your niche, doing those two things above might make a difference for you (unless your blog is about anything related to tech).