In case you missed the announcement (I have on the past three occasions, and have taken special measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again), 9rules is enrolling today. Of the hundreds and thousands and millions of blogs that they will review, only about three will be allowed to join their exclusive blog network. And since one of those blogs is bound to be Asymptomatic, that only leaves two slots open for the rest of you.
Since your chances of being accepted as a true blogger are about as likely as the chances of anyone escaping from the Lost island alive, I thought that I might provide some suggestions as to what you can do to quell your thoughts of suicidal rejection.
Option A: Go on a comment spam fit on all of the newly added blogs and leave hateful messages about how 9rules sucks because they didn’t add your site. Explain how you think their network is bogus self-promotion and that you wouldn’t join their crappy little group if they paid you. Deny that you ever submitted your site for inclusion, and cast aspersions on any such insinuations.
Option B: Revamp your entire site trying to improve it for the next enrollment round. Change your site from HTML to XHTML to XML with XSLT. Become unsatisfied with the whole mess, register a new domain name, and build a whole new blog using a whole new engine. Decide that your blog needs a more specific topic, like ping-pong, and write only about ping-pong. Sit in the dark behind your monitor, smoking a cigarette, continuously reloading the 9rules RSS feed, waiting for the day…
Option D: Build your own blog network. Invite your friends. Force them to use your own blog software, even. Build something sort of like a network but really something else. Register a domain for it, throw up a coming soon page, forget about it, then let the domain expire into sedo.com territory so it can show ads until someone buys your beat old domain for the price of a small used car. Nobody liked what you named your network anyway.
Option E: Convince me to proselytize your site to others. A small cash fee may be involved.
Option F: Dump your blog and move to MySpace. Collect some blinkies. Insist that your non-computer-using friends borrow chair time at your desk so that they can build their profile as “UberHottChik37″ and add you as a friend. Add your interests to your profile. Find people you knew from highschool and rediscover why you hated each other back then. Spend so much time collecting “friends” that you forget all about 9rules.
Option G: Write it off. You were going to blog whether 9rules took you or not. No need to feel as though you wasted your time. No need to feel inferior or unwanted. Get on with what you’ve been doing. See if you can get more readers by creating more great content.
