In the fifteen months that I've been doing this, I've been pleasantly surprised time and again just how relatively little hatemail I've received. It's not quite a worth breaking out the calculator, but off-hand I'd estimate that easily more than 99 percent of the reader feedback I've received has been either positive or neutral. In fact, quite a few people have taken to writing in just to tell me to keep doing what I'm doing. But occasionally, as I did this morning, I wake up to find something in my inbox that reads like this:
To: "feedback@ipodgarage.com"
From: "r-a-n-d-y"
Subject: "Palmer"
Message: "Man am I sick of seeing articles by Bill Palmer ... he started out with one a day ... and then it became several and then now on iPod Garage. The guy isn't even rational. Ditch the partisan."
Poor guy. I suppose it's just his bad luck that anything sent to that particular email address comes directly to my inbox. But then again, perhaps it speaks to his deductive abilities that he couldn't quite figure out that that's exactly what was going to happen. If the fact that more than 70 percent of the articles published on the iPod Garage are written by "Bill Palmer" didn't give away the fact that general feedback sent into the site was likely going to go directly to me, then the fact that the site's "About" page lists me as the "founder, owner, and publisher" probably should have. Actually, it's kind of funny if you think about it. But the little tirade from "r-a-n-d-y" did get me thinking.
Even though the general purpose of this site (and all my sites, really) is to try to make other people's lives just a tiny smidgeon better, the fact remains that there are people out there who absolutely hate what I do. There are those who just wish I would shut up and go hide in a corner somewhere and stay there. But if almost none of the feedback sent directly to me displays this kind of attitude, then how do I know that the sentiment is actually out there?
Because when you run a site or two (or four), you have these little things called "referrer logs" that can essentially give you a complete listing of every page out there on the internet that has ever linked to any page of your site for any reason. And whenever I've got a little time to spare, I try to go exploring in order to see just who it is that's linking to what I've written (and perhaps more importantly, what they had to say about it). I like to think of it as obtaining feedback from those who didn't take the time to send me an email containing their thoughts on the article. For me at least, it's not a matter of wanting to know what's being said about me, so that I my ego can rise or sink accordingly. You see, I simply want to know if my efforts are actually having any meaningful effect on people. After all, that was the whole point of founding this site in the first place, right?
Now, I don't need a referrer log to tell me that MacSurfer linked to me today, or that LowEndMac linked to me on Monday, or that MacDevCenter linked to me sometime last week. I already know that they all did, because I check all of those sites on a daily basis anyway (and you should as well). But where the logs are particularly useful is when they lead you to a webpage that you would never have otherwise known even existed, let alone have visited. Often it means that someone has referenced (and linked to) one of my articles in their blog.
Allow me to explain what I mean here by the term blog. I'm not talking about web logs that are strictly Mac-related (as a side note, incredibly, there are people who still mischaracterize billpalmer.net as a "blog" despite the fact that it now has a writing staff of seven people...I knew I'd live to regret naming the site after myself). But I'm talking about personal blogs, the unfocused, online public diaries that people keep that, over a period of time, manage to encompass just about every aspect of their life. Some of these blogs tend to have quite a bit of a following, while others appear to simply be a form of catharsis for the author.
But in any case, my referrer logs led me to someone's personal blog last month that instantly caught my attention -- not for the personal details of the author's life, but for the fact that she was apparently on the verge of deciding to switch to the Macintosh. And one of the sources of inspiration she listed was an article entitled "Sorry, Windows users, we just have it better than you do," written by a guy named Bill Palmer.
Wait a minute...that's me.
Now, you have to understand that the author of this blog is not someone I've ever met, ever had any contact with, or ever heard of. Lord only knows how she found my site or my article in the first place. Perhaps she was out Googling for Mac-related content, maybe she'd been turned on to a hub such as MacSurfer, or it's even possible that my article had been forwarded to her by a Mac-using friend who happens to be a regular reader. But the bottom line is that, for whatever reason, she found it. And, as was my original intention, my article appeared to be on the verge of working.
"But Bill," you might comment, "we always figured that your more arrogant-sounding articles were just a product of the fact that you were feeling arrogant at the time." Nope, afraid not, folks. Sure enough, such articles do come off as fairly arrogant sometimes, and as it turns out, manage to get people pretty well stirred up after all. For instance, down in the comments section of that very same blog entry, someone opined that "that Bill Palmer guy sounds like a complete a**hole." But you know what? As I was going over the referrer logs last night, I was reminded of the potential Switcher and decided to take another peek at her blog to see whether it happened or not. And sure enough, not only did she purchase a PowerBook and an iPod two days ago, she's spent most of the past two days using her blog to brag up the Macintosh to high heaven. Apparently, her switch to the Mac has been even more positive than she had expected.
So how much or how little of an effect did my article have on her decision to switch? I have no idea. Perhaps it was the final straw that caused her to do it, or maybe she had already made up her mind long before she ever read anything written by Bill Palmer. But in any case, chalk up another Switcher to the Mac platform. Further evidence, I suppose, that Apple's Switch campaign was an outright failure. ;)
But what about the guy who was so offended by what I wrote that he took to calling me names? Well, I decided awhile ago that the Mac-PC issue wasn't worth hindering any real-world friendships or relationships over (my two best friends are both die-hard PC users, for instance). But if someone I've never met has been even partly moved to switch to the Mac because of one of my more arrogant articles, and that causes someone else I've never met to call me an a**hole, then so be it. That's a price I'm willing to pay, I suppose. If something productive comes out of it, then I'm willing to take that particular bullet every time.
That leads me, though, to why I do what I do. My original purpose for this site, which I spelled out fifteen months ago when I started the site, was "to remind Mac users that they've never had it so good, and to let Windows users know that there's never been a better time to switch to the Mac." And in an overall sense, to this day, that's what I think I'm still doing. At least I hope so. But here's the question that a lot of people are wondering, even if they're not actually asking it: why can't Apple just do this itself? What do they need somebody like me for?
The short answer is that they don't. Because if I'm on Apple's payroll, then the company owes me about fifteen months of back pay, because I have yet to see a dime from the company. But there are things that I can do in the name of bringing people to the Mac platform that Apple itself simply cannot do. Suppose, for instance, that Apple itself had chosen to write an article along the lines of "Sorry, Windows users, we just have it better than you do" (Apple's Switch campaign didn't come even close to that level of arrogance, yet still caught flack). Remember the guy that called me an a** hole? He'd be thinking that thought about Apple instead...and Apple just can't have that. Let's suppose that that same guy decides six months from now that he might want to switch to the Mac as well. You think he's likely to actually buy a Mac, if it's Apple that wrote that article? I doubt it. But Apple isn't the one who wrote it. It was me. And even though six months from now his opinion of me won't likely have changed, that's not going to stop him from buying a Mac if that's what he really wants to do.
I take the heat, Apple gets the customer. Doesn't really sound fair. But then, I'm not looking to score customers for Apple. I'm merely looking to drive people to the Mac platform. And if I've managed to come across someone who might have been prompted by one of my articles to go ahead and switch to the Mac, then there are likely plenty more instances out there of my efforts having the exact same effect, that just didn't happen to end up getting written up on someone's website. After all, as shocking as this may seem to us web geeks, most of the general public doesn't even have a blog.
So what, then, of our poor friend who, way back at the beginning of this article, tried to complain about me to my boss...without realizing that I am the boss? Once again, this is what he wrote:
"Man am I sick of seeing articles by Bill Palmer ... he started out with one a day ... and then it became several and then now on iPod Garage. The guy isn't even rational. Ditch the partisan."
My response?
"Dear Randy,
Thank you for your interest in the iPod Garage.
I am afraid that I am unable to fire myself at this time.
Sincerely,
Bill Palmer
iPod Garage Owner, Founder, and Publisher"
Huh? Arrogant? Who, me? At least it can't be said that I haven't learned to have a little fun with it...
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