[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: Happy blogiversary to me

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Ron Coleman:
Happy blogiversary to me
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1167672413.shtml


   Today begins the third year of blogging on [1]LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION,
   of which I'm very proud. It's a successful sub-niche blog, the
   sub-niche being intellectual property ("soft" IP, meaning trademarks,
   trade secrets and copyrights, and not patents). Our stats for last
   month looked like [2]this. That's nice steady growth and respectable
   readership, and best of all it is a meaningful readership in a
   sub-niche. My server reports indicate that many of my readers are
   colleagues and people in allied industries and sectors. I have gotten
   a lot of nice feedback from lawyers all over the country, and
   especially in New York, and that's really what every blogger not
   shooting for global glory wants: An interested audience that cares
   about what he has to say. And a client or referral from time to time,
   too.

   There's actually a story to this, and it's in no small part a Dean's
   World story.

   ([3]Read the story.)

   I realized I waited too long to get into blogging, which was a natural
   medium for me. I was never going to be the author of a general
   interest blog with any chance of achieving prominence. I also realized
   that the legal sector was well populated. As to the sub-niche, I knew
   that my friend Marty Schwimmer already wrote what was (and remained)
   [4]the definitive blog for trademark law, but rather than compete with
   Marty head-on -- which would would have been hopeless, considering his
   superior level of expertise and his considerable talent plus his head
   start -- I believed I could find a complementary space, less oriented
   to the fine points of trademark practice and more focused on trademark
   and copyright litigation, free speech on the Internet, especially
   where it intersects with the use of intellectual property. This was of
   particular interest to me because of [5]my experience in the [6]Jews
   for Jesus v. Brodsky litigation, where I saw trademark law, going hand
   in hand with judicial activism, abused as a method of repressing
   speech, to the horror of almost nobody.

   The next step was my representation of Bob Cox against the New York
   Times, which, irony of irony, was [7]cynically utilizing the Digital
   Millenium Copyright Act to shut down his parody web page of
   "[8]columnist corrections we'd like to see at the Times." I was
   [9]more successful against the Times
   than I was against the missionaries; and I realized that this could be
   a way to generate some traffic to my blog, which had been fairly poky
   until then. This incident led to the formation of the [10]Media
   Bloggers Association, of which I became the second member and the
   founding general counsel in December of 2004; Bob Cox is rolling out
   the new website and new programming for the group right now.

   There was a point earlier in 2004 when I had begun [11]advertising my
   (now defunct) law firm on [12]BlogAds, which I believe was the first
   time a business law firm had ever done that. This is the original ad:

                  [Dress_British_ad_on_Instapundit.1.JPG]

   One of my ads is still on the BlogAds site as one of their all-time
   [13]"Great Miscellaneous Ads." I made some waves doing it; I'd always
   really wanted to be an ad man. This was a high point:

                        [SEARED_ON_INSTAPUNDIT2.JPG]

   I also made friends in the Blogosphere -- people like Dean and
   [14]Glenn Reynolds, who otherwise wouldn't know me from Adam, were
   getting paid by me and I got noticed. One impetus, however, began with
   this email exchange:

     Sun 1/2/2005 2:07 AM

     Oh by the way, if you really want to build buzz, you should have
     your own blog. You don't have to update it more than once a week or
     so, and don't have to say much on it except maybe random
     observations about the legal profession. But you have it, and keep
     a blogroll on it, and any time you place an ad with a blog, offer
     them a free trade: you add them to your blogroll, they add you to
     theirs. You otherwise do more than update your blog at least once a
     month, and blogroll anyone who'll blogroll you in return.

     Do that and within two years you ARE the blogosphere's attorney.

     Two-three years from now, what I just described will be utterly
     impossible to accomplish. Because someone else will have done it,
     and dozens of others will be struggling to do the same thing. . . .

     Let me know if you need help with any of that. No charge. ;-)

   I responded:

     On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 11:01:48 -0500, Ronald D. Coleman wrote: > All
     right. I have resurrected my blog and my web guys should add a >
     link to it on my homepage? > > Can I drop your name and print parts
     of your email about my strategy > on the blog? I don't have all
     that much else I want to say right now. > > RDC

   The response:

     Where's your blog so I can see it?

   The next thing that happened was [15]this post. And then I was
   committed. And, yes, more than any other person, [16]Dean Esmay -- the
   author of those emails -- is responsible for the niche success and
   [17]recognition of LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION. (I doubt he even remembers
   the conversation.)

   And I started to think of things to say.

   I decided that since I had demonstrated a commitment to the blog by
   posting five or so times a week, it was time to switch the BlogAd
   campaign to marketing, and linking to, LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION. In
   retrospect this was a pretty good strategy. I believe I was also one
   of the first bloggers to actually advertise his own blog via BlogAds
   on other peoples' blogs. Because I had a business rationale, and a
   little bit of cash flow, and a tax writeoff, to do it, I was able to
   get traffic up fast. It also helped that I there were bloggers, such
   as Dean and Glenn, who knew me from my BlogAds presence and were happy
   to give me early links for visibility.

   No less important, considering my specialty, others with established
   IP blogs linked to me early on -- including [18]Marty Schwimmer (who
   hasn't linked to me since, so I must be doing something right! ;-)) In
   fact what's really gratifying is that a number of new IP blogs have
   been established in the last year and have placed me on their blogroll
   right at the outset ([19]here, [20]here and [21]here, and even
   [22]here, just for recent examples). This suggests that they were
   already reading me and that, in some small way, they've looked at my
   blog and said, "Oh, heck, anyone can do this!" My response, as was
   Marty's and [23]Dennis Crouch's, is always to welcome them to the
   club. The thing about blogs is that it pretty much is the more the
   merrier.

   I stayed in touch with Dean, even after I decided there was no really
   good payoff to continuing to advertise, because he'd given me advice,
   and encouragement, and -- no small thing -- a comment account at
   Dean's World, where I became a contributor last March. Did I become
   the "the blogosphere's attorney"? Not quite, but close -- because I
   am, after all, the lawyer for the Media Blogger's Association, and we
   do [24]get to do some things and, as the new MBA website passes
   through the Beta, there should be a lot more both for the group and
   for me as editor of its blog-law feed. Many bloggers you've heard of
   have in fact hired me, or at least made inquiries, or sent work my
   way. Frankly, bloggers tend to, er ... "not have money," I guess would
   be the term. So being "a blogosphere attorney," while retaining a
   brick-and-mortar practice, is a pretty good outcome.

   Frankly, that is of less interest to me than the blogging itself. I am
   really a born writer, something more of a "made" lawyer, and blogging
   means a lot to me because I can write, and be read, and be part of
   conversations on topics that matter to me. I've made great friends, it
   does add some glitter to my practice profile, and I can never, ever
   have nothing to do.

   So thanks to all of you, and Dean especially, on this, LIKELIHOOD OF
   CONFUSION's second blogiversary, and Happy New Year to everyone!

   ([25]hide)

References

   1. http://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/
   2. http://www.deanesmay.com/files/Webstats.JPG
   3. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1167672413.html
   4. http://blawgreview.blogspot.com/2006/12/blawg-review-awards-2006.html
   5. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jlaw.com%2FBriefs%2Fbrodsky1.html&ei=Tz6ZRZqzMof8oQKP_8j3Dg&usg=__k2w-eqHuCLOgEjeOjSxhfQbTXd8=&sig2=ju4bnQmQaknk2BerKRqeDg
   6. http://www.wetmachine.com/item/407
   7. http://www.chillingeffects.org/responses/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1186
   8. http://www.thenationaldebate.com/other/NYTCorrections.htm
   9. http://www.thenationaldebate.com/blogger/archive/2004_03_01_TND-ARCHIVE.html#107940685226307922
  10. http://www.mediabloggers.com/
  11. http://www.blogads.com/examples/misc/3143562_rev_25
  12. http://www.blogads.com/
  13. http://www.blogads.com/examples/nominees?topic=misc
  14. http://instapundit.com/archives/017289.php
  15. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1104926502.shtml
  16. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/www.deanesmay.com
  17. http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2006/12/best_of_the_law.html
  18. http://www.schwimmerlegal.com/2005/01/new_ip_blog_lik.html
  19. http://tmbrandingcap.blogspot.com/index.html
  20. http://counterfeitchic.com/
  21. http://seattletrademarklawyer.com/
  22. http://www.trademarkblog.ca/
  23. http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2005/01/blog_creates_li.html
  24. http://www.mediabloggers.org/mba-news/unconditional-surrender-by-ny-ad-agency-in-maine-blogger-case
  25. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1167672413.html