Quote of the Day
33 Likes, 0 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram
"Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part."
-- Hermann Broch
Check It Out
Head on over to my Forbes blog, if you haven't been there lately. This month, I've got a few posts that may be of interest. I wrote about some very racy ads in Paris created by Yves Saint Laurent that caused a scandal: "Yves Saint Laurent 'Porno Chic' Ads Are Enraging Shocked Parisians." I also wrote about an NRA video that should piss off some women: "A Provocative New NRA Video Argues Owning a Gun Is a Feminist Act." And I had fun writing about two young black Vegas-based entrepreneurs who wound up getting star placement: "How Two Young Black Entrepreneurs Got a 'Retired Drug Dealer' Hat on Jay-Z's Head."
Some people love it. Some people hate it.
You're dumb if you wear this, people say.
You're going to go to jail if you wear this, people say.
You're going to get shot if you wear this, people say.
But here's the thing: They just don't get it.
5
77 Likes, 11 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Five years cancer-free #cancersurvivor #breastcancer #mammogram 💅🏻👑🦄"
Five years cancer-free today. Feels pretty awesome. Looking forward to living my life. Thanks for following!
"You Have to Know How to Accept Rejection and Reject Acceptance" -- Ray Bradbury
Dear Susannah,
Thanks very much for writing. I'm afraid we won't have room for this one, but I appreciate the chance to read and wish you the best finding it a good home.
Yours,
[redacted]
Quitters Never Win
Dear Susannah,
Thank you for sending us "[Redacted]." This is an interesting topic, but the piece is missing the connection to a bigger picture idea, the reflection or takeaway that would make it a [redacted] story.
Best of luck with this, and I hope you’ll pitch us again in the future. To receive future calls for pitches, sign up here: [redacted].
Sincerely,
[redacted]
If at First You Don't Succeed, Try Again, and Fail Again
The MacDowell Colony
Dear Susannah,
We regret that we are not able to offer you a residency during this coming Summer 2017 period. Your work was appreciated by the admissions panel members, but the number of excellent applications has grown as has the competition for residencies.
We hope that this news will not discourage you from applying to the Colony again after two years’ time.
In the meantime, we send you our best wishes.
Sincerely,
[redacted]
Executive Director
No, Thanks
Hello,
1) We can pay you $70 for writing 1000+ words content. We will do our part by promoting your work in our social network, but If you are ready to help us in promoting your published article we will pay you extra money, that is $30 for sharing of that article, but it should get on an average of 100+ likes from your Social Networks, so for writing and marketing of the same article we will pay you to total $100. You have to share an article on your social media networks as well as in groups, if it gets 100+ likes then only will pay you $30. Otherwise, you will get $70 for writing content. In addition to this, we will also feature you in our expert's panel: [redacted]. You can promote your courses, e-book, etc. through articles by adding links to the same at the end, in the author bio section. You can write on any topic of your choice ( should be related to health or you can see the categories we have covered on our website) or let me know if you want me to suggest a topic.
2) We will pay you $10 for sharing our three articles three times in a week. The article will be on health & fitness topics, that your audience will surely enjoy reading.
Let me know in which way you want to work with us.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Freelance Math
On average, you will land one story for every ten you pitch.
What I'm Reading
0 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "📚"
Upcoming Stuff
Buy merch here
I'm going to be contributing to an upcoming installment of the OBJECTS project. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be included in Significant Objects. Keep an eye out for it!
Have a Great Weekend
24 Likes, 3 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "#florida in #winter"
Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #4
Yayoi Kusama via Artsy
This is the fourth post in a series in which I explore my Forbes blog traffic. Since I've made a living for years by prompting people to click, I'm using this to document some of the ways in which this works. The answer, by the way, will always be as elusive as the human soul.
Regardless, simply put, I fucking killed it in February. Which was nice, because last month, I really shit the bed.
In January, I had 51,135 views.
In February, I had 193,011 views.
What went right? (I wrote another post about all this stuff on my Forbes blog yesterday, as well.) Basically, I'd been working the business of vice beat for years, and I never really felt like I could get a handle on it, so this last month, I was like, fuck it, I'm going to do it, and by doing it, I'll figure it out. So my commitment to myself was that I had to post once a day every weekday. Which I did. Thankfully, a short month. It's kind of like running, I suppose. You don't figure out how to run longer by thinking about it. You figure out how to run longer by running. Seems obvious, but do you practice it? Sometimes, thinking about shit is an excuse.
The most popular post was "Playboy Is Naked Again and It Is Awesome" with 85,978 views. Second most popular was "What Diversity? Kate Upton Covers Sports Illustrated Issue" with 33,912 views. Third most popular was "This $85,000 Gun Has a Piece of the Statue of Liberty in It" with 12,875 views. Fourth most popular was "A Male Porn Star Discovers Leaving Porn Is Harder Than You'd Think" with 9,535 views. And fifth most popular was "This Female Photographer Shoots in Strip Clubs" with 7,905 views. Sensing a trend? Never let them tell you sex doesn't sell. I'd like this lineup of top posts to be more diverse -- although, let's not frown at sex and violence. I'd like to see more posts about guns, booze, smoking, gambling, and rampant drug use. And over-the-top cars. And prisons. Let's shoot for that in March.
What went wrong? Here are a few posts that really shit the bed: "This Fashion Brand Wants You to Make Love, Not Walls" with 81 views, "Why Is This Model Wearing a Garbage Can Lid on Her Head?" with 158 views, and "How to Quadruple Your Blog Traffic in 30 Days" (meta!) with 133 views. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong here, but I would say that in general my headlines need work. They're too flat. Why is this? I need to deliver more hot takes and write more about things that I have some sort of passionate response to when I find them. All of these titles are boring. Boring is the enemy. Kill boredom. Toss it in a wood chipper. Die, boredom, die.
The front page of a site that gets 50M+ uniques a months is where you want to be.
Come back in April to find out how I did in March. I call it blogging for dollars, and that's how we roll in 2017.
Final monthly stats:
Pageviews: 230,163
Total Monthly Visitors: 193,011
One-time Visitors: 186,854
Repeat Visitors: 6,157
Comments: 42
Posts: 20
Current Recency Score: 83.928%
Oh, and my repeat visitors are an embarrassment. My bounce rate is to the moon. Must. Fix. That.
Read It and Don't Weep
Over on my Forbes blog, I wrote a kind of impassioned post about blogging for dollars, and also about women, and of course about writing.
Read it, won't you?
"Then I realized something that's taken decades of therapy to penetrate my thick skull. You can't think your way into things. You have to do your way into things. So at the start of February 2017, I decided: I still don't 'get' how to do this beat, but I'm just going to do it, and I'm willing to bet that by simply doing it, even though I think I don't know how to do it, I will figure out how to do it."
#neverquit
See Moonlight
Didn't see this until Friday. Wow. Just breathtaking. Gorgeous, and heartbreaking, and true. It's three stories in one. It's everybody's story in one movie. It's a poke in the eye of white people everywhere. It's complicated, and simple, and beautifully written. I cried multiple times. I got my heart broken. It is one of the best movies ever made. Hurry up. It's hard to explain. Just see it. It'll open your heart, and your mind, and your spirit.
Personal Essay Seeks Home With Non-Rejecting Publication
Image via Drawception
Know anyone who wants a nonfiction essay?
This one is up for adoption and needs a home.
Declined by Brevity.
Email:
Dear Susannah Breslin,
Thank you for sending us your brief essay 'It Was Hard'.
Although we do not have a place for your work in the issues for which we are currently reading, we wanted you to know that our readers read your essay closely.
We have been blessed with a large number of excellent submissions lately, and we hope that you understand that we can only publish a small fraction of the material we receive.
We wish you the best of luck with your writing,
Sincerely,
The Editors
Brevity
1/10/2017 (1 month, 13 days ago)
ICYMI
Dildoes | Las Vegas, Nevada | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
"To date, he has produced and directed over 500 adult movies. But, this isn’t your father’s porn. Equal parts freak show, horror movie, and Russ Meyer-on-crack, his X-rated visions are deranged, demented, mind-boggling expeditions into the dark, unexplored continent of human sexual perversity. Fascinating, horrifying, and amusing—oftentimes all of those things at the same time—Powers’ celluloid world is one populated by midgets, bald chicks, and crazed men outfitted with monster-sized papier-mâché phalluses which spew torrents of goo onto the naked bodies of supine women, movies in which everyone has sex all of the time, and in which, most of the time, no one appears to win." -- They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?
Don't Let the Boys Win
If you're a girl, and you blog for a living, don't just aggregate. Originate. Sometimes it seems like the boys have more balls. They brag about their FOIAs, and they win their Pulitzers. You should be digging up the new stuff, too, not just regurgitating that shit that's already out there.
That's Lois Lane
Send an email
It takes you 10 minutes to write an email with 10 questions in it. Find someone who interests you, write 10 interview questions, and then push SEND. You just might learning something new that you can add to your story.
Get on the phone
The other day, I made a call to request permission to use some photos. I ended up doing an interview with the head of the company. Phoners really aren't that hard. Do one a day. A down-and-dirty call can take as little as 15 minutes.
Leave the house
Get out of your apartment/office/house at least once a day. Look around in the world for something you'd like to cover. One time I did this, and I found a guy who was looking for a job from his living room window.
Yum
6 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Snack 👾"
Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #3
Last year, I started and then stopped a transparent blogging traffic series in which I examined the numbers associated with my Forbes blog, SIN INC, where I cover the business of vice (guns, sex, alcohol, gambling, etc.). That series -- you can read #1 here and #2 here -- went on hiatus for some reason. Now it's back. It may or may not shed light on "blogging for dollars" for you, if that's something you do.
I'm going to focus here in on January 2017, which I hope is the last month that my traffic on the blog there will suck. I had put a pause on blogging on the Forbes website for a few months prior, in order to work on another project, but this month, February 2017, is really banging so far, traffic-wise, and I look forward to detailing that next month.
Let's talk about January. So January 2017 will be, I hope, the last time I post the minimum number of times required, which is five, at least for me. Historically, I've not infrequently procrastinated until the end of the month, and then posted during the last five days of the month. What a bum. Thankfully, in February 2017, I started posting five times a week, every weekday, and that's been working great. I'll detail how that happened in next month's post.
In any case, I did a post on a firearms coloring book that I thought was interesting. I enjoyed interviewing the woman who created it. That post got 2,833 views, which is not that great, but whatever. I also wrote a post about a new Playboy Club that's coming to New York. That got 1,806 views, which is way meh. Since I sometimes work as a copywriter, I like to write about ads, and I wrote about the Mr. Clean sexes up the Super Bowl phenomenon. That got 6,018 views, which is better than the others. A post about an autographed copy of Playboy signed by Not My President really shit the bed with 724 views. I also watched the new Warren Buffett documentary and extracted five tips for women. That got 6,000 views. So, in all, not a great month, but lots of room for improvement.
Thoughts: My headlines aren't strong enough. Thankfully, the Forbes CMS has a funny little widget that reviews your headline, grades it, and helps you make it better. I didn't post more, but I'm working on that this month. And I offered little in the way of "hot takes." The closest thing was the Buffett post, because part of my point to women was good luck turning into Buffett if you weren't born a white male, because that's what Buffett points to in the documentary as the equivalent of winning the "ovarian lottery." But the post should've been stronger in tone and funnier.
Final monthly stats:
Pageviews: 66,116
Total Monthly Visitors: 51,135
One-time Visitors: 49,431
Repeat Visitors: 1,704
Comments: 0
Posts: 5
Current Recency Score: 35.967
In any case, come back next month for a far-more impressive tally. I'm also going to talk about finding better story ideas on what I've come to refer to as "the grey web." It's where everyone else isn't hunting for fodder.