Yes, I’ve started yet another project, but finally one that I can really get behind. It’s taken a lot of soul searching and mind-mapping (that one’s for Sean) and I came up with a solid concept for a site/business/blog. Some of my diehards will remember my time with MODE. It was great and I really like that site, but I was having a hard time staying motivated and generating content. For my first blog effort, I have to say I did fairly well, but after a self inflicted database disaster that I couldn’t recover from, I killed it off. This new site takes the idea of MODE to a more specific niche.

I have spent the majority of my time in marketing/graphic arts inside the automotive industry, specifically the aftermarket portion. Anytime you hear about someone customizing their car in anyway, whether is for more horsepower, a nicer interior or a fancy new stereo setup, that’s the aftermarket. I’ve spent time with all types of companies from magazines to manufacturers to the small speed shops that do the grunt work. One thing I’ve noticed over the past 10 years is that a large majority of these companies are either stuck in an outdated marketing frame of mind or they no clue what they’re doing, most likely being led by the nose by someone who just wants to sell them something. Recently I heard a prominent manufacturer took their entire ad budget away from print mags and moved it to the websites because some young turk in the digital sales department convinced the company that “the internet is where everything is going”. I nearly flipped!

Yes, the internet can be useful, but to change your entire platform on the word of some slick salesman is asking for complete failure. That was my breaking point. At that moment I decided to stop talking about what I would do different and put act on it. Thus brings me to The Backfire Blog. My hopes for the site is to educate and insight conversation and maybe pick up a client or two in the process. It’s a work in progress right now and I’m still working out the bugs on the theme, but the content is fresh and updated regularly. If you can ignore the aesthetic changes, you’ll have some good, chunky content to digest (at least I hope).

I’m toying with the idea of occasional video blogs and and ebook or two down the road a bit. So that should be fun. If I know you and you’re already involved in these things, be sure that I’ll be hitting you up for advise advice at some point in the future.

So if you’re in the aftermarket industry, come check out The Backfire Blog and join the conversation. If you’re not, well, come by and spread the love anyway because I need all the readership I can get my hands on right now. I’m totally open to suggestions and criticism, so please give me your hardest hitting remarks. I’ve got nowhere to go but up.

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I won’t ever claim to be as knowledgable about the science of blogging as some of the pros, but one thing I’m sure of is that if your desire is to alienate your readers, the best way to do that is to attack them when they disagree with you.

I had my first blog feud today with Adie Cooke of Net Business Blog. He posted about how one of his clients had a logo redesign to go with their new ecommerce site. I had my misgivings about the post because I felt the information was a bit lacking and the arguments he was making were, well, wrong.

Let me state for the record that I have been a subscriber to Net Business for awhile now and he typically has some really informative pieces. I’m not really sure why it is, but I’ve never commented there before, but since this particular post dipped into my area of expertise, I figured I’d chime in.

I tried to be as constructive as possible with my comment and avoid making any ego driven comments. I’m not the greatest designer ever, far from it, so I wanted to come off as knowledgeable and helpful but humble. Unfortunately, Adie didn’t take it that way.

I always subscribe to comments when I’ve commented because I never know when I will learn something, but when I got a message with Adie’s response, I was honestly taken back. I wouldn’t say his response was caustic, but definitely not happy. His first comment I chalk up to being a miscommunication, but his second comment was definitely passive aggressive, calling me ignorant in a round about way.

Now I’m a pretty easy going guy, but if you call me ignorant, especially on a subject I feel I’ve fairly knowledgeable on, I’m going to stand up for myself. So I responded, still professional, but definitely telling him what I thought about him and his comments. Once that was posted, I was done with it… or so I thought.

I then got another email, this one an automated response to my first comment:

Hello Dave Conrey,

Thank you for posting a comment on this Article…

If you haven’t already, please sign up to our full RSS Feed

Now I’m pissed off. So you want me to subscribe to your feed? Why? So you can attack me again in another post? Reading this pandering auto email after that exchange made me reject him completely, and I let him know in a response email. Then I went to Google Reader and unsubscribed myself.

So, if you’re a blogger, but tired of all your trusted subscribers, follow Adie’s example.