We Get A Little More Unpopular

This one's quasi off-topic, kids, and a small lesson to be passed up the line for your employers. Listen up now; I'm old, so what I have to say occasionally smells like wisdom. Or something more pungent, really.

Two months ago at the old job, Times Were Bad. Faced with budget numbers that were all kinds of south and all kinds of meetings were revenue was stressed, I decided to take action. I pulled on my professional network to try to draw work into the place. And since I work in advertising, marketing and design management, that meant that... in trying to bring in more bucks in the door, all I wound up doing was de facto advertising for a new position. Which came when colleagues at an old gig came knocking and offering, and now I get to work from home. Whoops for the old gig, yay for me, and not quite germane to the story. Back to it.

As one of my revenue efforts, I went up the ladder in Blogfrica, and pinged some of the people who help sell ads and send traffic my way here at the lovely FTT. They seemed grateful for the introduction. I thought a deal might be made. And then... well, I left that old company, and I'm guessing that no deal was made. And as a not inconsiderable little bonus? Traffic from that source to this site went about as dry as Fill In An Old Female Celebrity's Nether Regions At A Hacky Roast. (Me, I personally think that insult is more effective when you name someone in their 30s or 40s, and shock them with the first great You So Old rank of their life. But I'm mean that way.)

Now, I get that the site has not had its best era in 2011; the lockouts have more or less taken away two of our three reasons for being, and anytime the day job takes up a ton of my time, the blog gets short shrift. It's also not as if there aren't a million guys pounding out lists of snark now, or that Bleacher Report hasn't personally ruined the world of search engine traffic results for literate blogs. (And hey, if you like Bleacher Report blogs, and are about to tell me how bitter I sound in busting on them? Eat a bag of male sexual organs. I bet if they are flash fried, they'd be a lot like pork rinds.) But I'm reasonably sure that the content of the site hasn't gotten so bad as to deserve well, no support from that former source. None at all.

So the next time that you are in a work situation where you feel like you need to put your personal network in play to save your employer? Just save yourself first. It's not as if any good deed goes unpunished...