I’m trimming back my blog reading, and I thought I’d share my reasons, along with some benefits I discovered. I’ve been working on this for a while, and I’ve trimmed it down to a small fraction of what my reading list once was.
As I scroll through my blog subscriptions to hand pick the ones I find most valuable, there is a nagging thought I just can’t seem to shake. It forced me to question how much of the information in blogs is simply re-worded hyperbole and borrowed thoughts picked up at another blog, versus truly unique and useful insight.
This is not a blanket insult of bloggers at all, but rather an observation, and a compliment to the ones who are doing exceptional work. We are each influenced, to some degree, by the blogs we read. That can be a very good thing, but it can also have some downsides if we are not selective. I wrote about the influences around us in a recent article titled “Social Media Self-Analysis: How Are You Being Influenced?” I think it is worth some serious consideration of how this influence can affect the topics and tone of a blog.
I used to read a lot more blogs from within my industry, but in the online marketing field, it seems that many blogs will fall into one of the four categories as follows:
A.) Preaching to the Choir
B.) Blind Leading the Blind
C.) Beating a Dead Horse
D.) Boundless Awesomeness
I have been honored to know a good share of boundlessly awesome thinkers, but “A”, “B”, and “C” groups certainly account for a majority of blogs. “A”, “B”, and “C” also seem to be the ones copying and rewording the same topics as their peers.
I still read a lot, but a lot less than I once did, and I am being more selective than ever before. It has improved the quality of my work, too. I find myself addressing more topics that others are not. It has made me more creative, and even more than ever before, the inspiration comes from my own real-world useful experiences rather than something I just read about. Here is a recent example, and it was inspired by a conversation with a friend. See “Everybody” is Not Your Target Market!.
This is the same reason I did not read any of the other books about Twitter before I wrote one myself back in 2009. I wanted my book to be uniquely mine, and not hold any reflection of somebody else’s work. The same goes for blogging, books, or other creative works.
Same Blog, Different Author
Blogs can be a great source of ideas and inspiration, but if not chosen carefully, and when relied on in place of our own unique talents, the reverse is true.
Let’s face it, there is a whole lot of the same message regurgitated a squillion different ways. Some bloggers will have a more unique and interesting slant on the same topic, but overall, I find a lot of it to be the same old thing. It made me realize that of the many blogs I read, there is a much smaller number of truly unique thinkers. Those are the blogs I will continue to read.
There you have it, the story of why I don’t read as many blogs as I used to. I have found that I am still just as in touch with my industry without reading all of that repetitive static. It lifted a burden, and it allowed me to focus on the work I am actually paid to do … and it is not reading blogs.
I enjoy thought provoking blogs that can shift my perspective or inspire new ideas. When I find one with value, I immediately subscribe and keep coming back for more. That keeps me on track with good thinking and it helps me to avoid the proliferation of repackaged hyperbole.
Can you relate to this? Do you ever trim back your reading in order to focus on quality? Do you notice those four categories I mentioned? Do you ever wonder if your blog will make it on your readers’ shortened list?
Please share your thoughts, and don’t worry, we can still be friends if you unsubscribe.
It takes less than a single minute to find somebody willing to write a blog for under $10 per article. There are thousands of writers begging for business. Not unlike the phenomena that anybody with a camera can be a photographer, it seems that anybody with a computer is an eloquent writer. That’s fine, but with such a low cost to have a blog, it is easy to confuse cost with value.
What is the value of a blog article? There are obviously some variables, right? Do you know the variables, and do you value them appropriately? Some important considerations are the time or money to produce the article, its usefulness to the public, the accuracy and experience of the writer, and the longevity of its circulation. These are easy factors for many people to overlook, and can inspire a lot of confusion about the value of a blog.
When you consider your business efforts, we can all surely agree it is important to stop doing things that do not benefit the company. Doing things that cost the company more than they benefit the company is popular, and we see it every day. When done in enough volume, that kind of math will break even the biggest bank account.
Whether the benefit you seek from a blog is improved customer relations, brand awareness, attracting investors, increased sales, or otherwise; if you spend more money on blogging than its potential benefit, then it is time to stop it! This means blogging is worth some evaluation and serious consideration of the downsides, weighed with the potential benefits. Many companies fail to consider the benefits, and so there should be little wonder why some companies still do not have a blog.
I have written about good reasons to blog, and it is not filled with a bunch of talk about making money, but it does address the importance of value. Many bloggers will agree that it is important to give more value than we take. That absolutely does not mean to imply we should give more value than we receive … and there is the confusing part.
Providing more value than you take is just as simple as providing value. If somebody receives benefit from it, and you have not taken anything from them, except perhaps an email address, you have met this value objective. You gave more than you took, as it should be. At the same time, you have added potential for your own benefit. At least it should happen that way.
Value of a Blog Article From a Longevity Perspective
Many of the best blog articles remain useful for years, and it is why smart bloggers keep them around in a blog archive. Some people like to assume the latest is the greatest, but this is very often not the case at all.
I spend a lot of time preparing each of my blog articles, but I also expect them to perform very well for a long time. It would be easier to just whip out my thought of the moment and keep my fingers crossed, but that would not be worth as much to others, or to me.
I value the average article on my blog at over $10,000. This may sound totally absurd to some people, but only on the surface. If you look a little closer, it makes sense. Of course, the exact amount is between me, some taxation fellas, and my wife. The exact dollar value I place on a blog post is irrelevant for this example, but I’ll explain.
I should add that this is about business blogs, and not blogs about where your family spent their holiday. This is also about blogs, like most, that do not charge a subscription fee.
This subscription is free, so feel welcome to subscribe before you forget.
In my instance, the math is easier, because I have been here on this Internet a long time, but each of us must begin somewhere. On this particular blog, this is the 77th article I have written in 2011, and the 334th since I re-purposed it in 2008. If I did not believe what I have written in 2011 is worth a minimum return of $770,000 ($10,000 each), I would not have done it. It took a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of experience.
Here’s the part where people often get confused: That’s not just to say these 77 articles of 2011 will yield an immediate return on investment of $770,000 … but they will.
Consider how I look at this. There is an article I wrote about H1 tags on another of my websites. H1 tags are in the programming code of a website, and they are a web page heading. The topic relates directly to my industry, and most people who search for and find that article have an actual need for my services. That particular article has been there for over 10 years, and still consistently receives over 2,000 unique visitors per month from search engines.
Another instance is a little piece I wrote about screen resolution. I wrote an article explaining screen resolution, and also a handy javascript to help users open their website in a browser at different sizes to see how it may look to others. That particular piece receives well over 3,000 visitors per month … every month … for over ten years!
In a more recent instance, I wrote an article titled “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is The Wrong Question. I wrote that one in February 2011, and in the past week alone, I have received enough telephone calls from people who found that article by searching “how much does SEO cost” that I wrote new business proposals totaling over $50,000. Yes, just as a direct result of that single article … this week alone.
These are just a tiny sample to consider, but what about the many other hundreds like them which support them? They are not so shabby either, and each one provides value to readers, and also returns a value to me. Looking at it like this, doesn’t it begin to make sense what the value of an article may become, over time?
I count on each and every article on my blog to return its cost in multiples, and they do. Sometimes the exact dollar value is not obvious at the time you publish something, but if you are doing it well, the value will become clear, in time.
To answer my opening question of “Can You Value Each Blog Post at $10,000?”, my answer is yes! I believe you can, too, if you give it the appropriate effort, usefulness, and longevity.
Blogs Provide Compounded Value
We surely all heard how popular the Internet has become. When it comes to blogging, there is value on top of value. Aside from the value to me as a blog owner, the value to any given subscriber is often far greater than $10,000 if they implement the experience I share freely … even if they don’t pay me a penny. I feel really good about that!
Although many businesses may think of blogs as a burden, or that they must only be for purely altruistic purposes, they are an excellent source of additional business. This holds true for nearly any type of industry. For example, in my job role, this blog is the primary way people get to know what I do, and to discover if they want to hire my services.
Some people who believe that blogs are only for giving away free information and that nobody ever actually receives any business benefit from them may hate me for valuing this article at over $10,000. Some may even think I am evil or conniving for seeking a profit from my hard work. In their mind, it should just be about providing information for free … you know, like it’s a hobby.
I believe in giving away a lot for free, but the fact is that most people cannot implement everything I know by themselves. After all, I do this professionally, day in and day out, and I have done so for many years. Some of those few who do not know everything there is to know about online marketing call me to help them. The value to me of that minuscule few who do become customers is more than $10,000 per instance. So, again … my answer is an emphatic “Yes!”
What about you? Do you think a blog is an altruistic burden? How do you value a blog article? Go ahead … add your thoughts to my blog.
More Valuable Articles About Blogging
Just one more thing, before you go: Here are some articles about blogging that I think you may find interesting and useful. It will not zap your brain and render it useless to read them, either. In fact, you may find that they are significantly useful to you. At least read the titles before you decide. 😉
Blogging Tip on Posts Per Page
The question of how many blog posts to display on the home page of a blog is a pretty tough call for a lot of people. After all, it affects the page load time, the number of generated pages in your archive, the number of pages indexed by search engines, and most importantly, the user experience.
What is the best number of blog posts per page? The answer will depend on a number of things, but I want to offer some food for thought, and share what I have experienced.
If you don’t already have a blog, you may want to sit this one out, but if that is the case, I encourage you to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“.
As an SEO guy, I am not always right about every SEO topic. I try my best to keep my percentage of being right pretty high, but even I can get it wrong sometimes. It usually happens because of overlooking the obvious things I should be doing, but conveniently neglect.
The reality about SEO is that sometimes the right answers take a little bit of testing. Some people may call it “tinkering”, but that implies doing it without forethought. My suggestion is to stop “tinkering”, but always be testing. In this instance, I do not suggest making frequent changes, so it is good to make your best guess the first time.
Changing Number of Posts Per Page: Think Ahead!
It was not so long ago that I faced the question of changing the number of blog posts per page, on this blog. I had previously displayed ten articles on the home page and on each archive page. It was not a good idea, but then, I get wrapped up in client work and forget about my own stuff. I am often like a cobbler with barefoot children. Once I got around to this issue of blog posts per page, I was really glad to finally address it. I know that others have this question, and in fact, a friend who writes “Social Media Philanthropy” recently had a poll of his readers to see what they think.
Depending on your blog theme, the number of blog posts on your home page will generally be the same number which will be listed in each of your archive pages, too. I don’t mean the kind of archive like my complete archive where I list all of my articles, but rather the pages that are generated for chronological archiving, tag archiving, and category archiving.
If you do not know exactly what I mean, just click on the “older articles” link at the bottom of this page, click on any tag (for example, SEO), or click on a category (for example Marketing). My blog presently lists a total of five articles for each of these types of generated pages, and then has a link to the next page of posts.
Changing the number of posts per page will change other factors of your website, so it is best to think ahead and not do it too often. I will tell you a bit about what it will change.
Changing Blog Posts Per Page Has Multiple Effects
Let’s think about how a change in the number of posts per page will change other things. When my blog displayed ten posts per page, there was the obvious outcome that each page was longer. It makes sense that the potential for keyword phrase matching in a given search engine index may be higher, because of the lengthier content on each page. It also took a bit longer for each page to load, so that was a downside. Plus, consider how daunting a huge long scrollbar can look to somebody just wanting some quick and easy information.
An even greater downside to having large numbers of posts per page is the much lower number of total pages of the blog. More pages can be a really good thing, but of course not just any pages. You can add pages just by adding a bunch of extra blog tags or categories, too, but it is not recommended.
I am certainly not saying that you should go and set your blog to display two articles per page just to bump up your page count. That could be a bad thing. After all, just consider how many times somebody will want to click to the next page, and how annoying that could be. The rule of thumb is that you have three clicks before you lose somebody. Certainly some blogs are much higher, and some are much lower, but it is really important to keep those readers happily surfing on your awesome wave. You do this by having everything just right … or at least as close as possible.
The most important factor is how it will affect the people reading your blog, and not the search engine indexing. If people like your blog, they are more likely to link to it, subscribe to it, and keep coming back. This should always be the primary consideration, but this really can make a big difference in search engine indexing, too.
Fewer Blog Posts Per Page Means More Indexed Pages
This is something I offer with caution. You do not want to aspire to a bunch of frivolous extra pages in search engines. You want search engines to index valuable, useful, and human-worthy content. That is what search engines want, too.
There is a lot of hype on one side or the other about allowing blog tag archives and category archives to be indexed by search engines. There are multiple easy ways to control this, and I use a (highly modified) WordPress plugin called “All-in-One SEO Pack” on this blog. Everything it does can be manually programmed into a WordPress blog, or any other website, but I consider it a handy tool.
A lot of people will argue about the perfect settings, and what to tell the search engines to not index. For example, in my category archive pages, I added the directive for search engines to not index the pages, but to follow the links found within them to other pages. It is in the header of the page and it looks like this:
Example of NoIndex, Follow Directive (click to see it applied):
Against some people’s notion of what works best, I have not included the content=”noindex,follow” directive in my blog tag pages (see example source code). This means that by default, my blog tag pages are being indexed. That is a lot of pages, and when you add up the differences in switching from ten blog posts per page to five blog posts per page, it multiplied the number of indexed pages in search engines. Best of all, it happened without any devious trickery or being spammy to search engines, and it simultaneously improved the user experience.
What About Duplicate Content Penalties?
I know that it is popular for people to wake up sweating profusely after having a nightmare about being penalized by search engines for having duplicate content. Search engines frown on duplicated content, because it has often been used in attempts to cheat rankings. It is the topic of many SEO discussions, and a fright to many bloggers and webmasters.
What is duplicate content? An easy way to describe this is by looking at two given blog tag pages. For example, if you seem my “SEO” tag, it may be significantly similar to the content of my “SEO blogging” tag. I also use the rel=”tag” attribute, but that is another article, and still relatively speculative in search engine recognition, and adherence.
If this gives you sweaty nightmares, stop freaking out, walk to the kitchen, and fix yourself a glass of warm milk (or better yet, Scotch). Then take a calming suggestion from good old Murnahan, and try to get back to sleep. Google and other search engines already have figured this out, and they know how blogs work. Yes, Google and other search engines have this under control, and they have indexed more than just a few other blogs.
It is extremely unlikely that you will be penalized for duplicate content, unless you are doing something to intentionally cheat the system. This is a topic for another blog post, but let me just stroke your hair and carry you back to bed. You will be just fine, and the monster under the bed will leave you alone until another time.
A Summary About Posts Per Page
Every blog is different, and some of us have really long and drawn out content, while others are much shorter articles. I also addressed this in a previous article about whether to use blog excerpts or full-length articles on your pages. The article is titled “Blogging Dilemma: Truncated Blog Excerpts or Full Blog Articles?” It is worth a read if you are on the fence about how to display your blog posts.
Because this can make such significant changes to the number of pages on your website, in your XML sitemap, and number of pages indexed in search engines, I suggest carefully limiting the number of times you change this.
I welcome your input, and if you found this useful or thought provoking, maybe your friends will, too. Please add your comments or questions and pass this along to other fellow bloggers.
I read a lot of blogs, and I gather a lot of great ideas from them. There is a lot of amazing talent out there on the Internet, sitting at their computer every day to blog about what they know, what they think, what they do, and what they sell. A few of those squillion blogs will become popular with readers, but how?
It is easy for me to answer why I read the blogs I read. They help me to keep my thinking sharp with new ideas. My brain needs a lot of daily exercise to keep up with my industry.
It seems easy to define why the popular blogs I read are successful at their mission, but harder when I turn it around and look at my own work. I hope you can relate to this. I find that it is always harder to scrutinize myself than to scrutinize others.
I have been a bit blessed with having a solid readership for my SEO and social media marketing blog. I appreciate that very much, because I work hard at it. Once in a while, I have to consider “What makes it popular, and why do people subscribe and come back?” Then, on a bad day, I find myself questioning “Why do I keep doing this?” That is when I have to go and re-read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” and I am back at it again, quick.
Today is a good day, so I am asking myself the earlier question. Is it because I am in a popular industry? No, because there are a lot of SEO and social media marketing blogs with just three readers (spouse, mother, and author). Is it because I take my shirt off to blog because the ladies like that? No, although it may not hurt, because I am yummy like bacon (I should post more pictures). Is it because I have a squillion friends who love me? No, I am generally a nice guy, but I don’t try to please everybody, and I piss a few people off, too (like this Bhashkar guy). Is it because I throw down a clever line here and there to be entertaining? No, because I will never be as funny as this cat video with 47 Million views (damn them cats).
When I begin to think about things which make a blog popular, it seems that my thoughts keep leading me back to “intent”. Good blogging tools, a lot of coffee, and just a slight touch of insanity can help, but it is not enough!
I know, I know … people say that “content is king”, or that “engagement” and “social equity” are important. Sure, we can throw a whole lot of silly buzz phrases on the table to sort through. It really does take a lot of things coming together just right to produce something that people want.
I think that in the end, even if you get every other piece right, but your intent is flawed, it is as fragile as a house of cards.
What is Your Blog’s Intent?
Let’s define this: Clearly, if you have a blog, you have an intent. Whether is just to pour your mind out to the Internet, or to bring more brand recognition to a product or service, nobody does this without something that drives them to do it.
I will share my intent with you, and I hope it will help you start thinking about yours. So, let’s see, why do I write this blog?
The focus of this blog is to help educate people about things which can help them. I like to help people think and create their own ideas. I like to teach people about things which they may find useful. I also like to dispel the many SEO lies which are common in the industry.
When I say that intent is important, here is how I look at it: If my intent was centered around selling something rather than educating and helping people, the direction would be totally different. The intent would show through, and the value to others would be far less.
Stop Seeing “Everybody” as a Potential Customer!
I hope that sharing my intent will help you think about yours, and your strategy. Here I go, trying to be helpful, again. Now, you may wonder “How is there any room left for a strategy, and how can a blog possibly be worth all of the headache?”
When I think about my intent, it is what I wish to provide for others. That does not have to mean there is no benefit in it for me, but when I focus on these things which benefit others, my work is far better and it makes me a swell guy.
The good news is that I don’t view you as my potential customer. Sure, maybe you are, but probably not. Most people that land on any blog are not there to buy stuff. In the case of company blogs, the smart companies already know this.
Pssst: Let me whisper a thought in your ear:
People know other people, and they communicate with them … a lot. If people like what you do, and they think highly of you, they will do the heavy lifting for you. They will share your blog with friends, and maybe those friends will share it with other friends. All of the sudden, you have your hands on something valuable. Somewhere down the line, there is probably a customer in it for you, and you didn’t even have to be pushy … just useful.
Keep Your Intent Dear to You
It can be easy to wander off the path of your intent, but don’t! Always remember the overall purpose of being useful, and know that it really will make the difference in reaching longer term objectives. If you have a very purposeful intent, it will be easier to stay on track.
My blog’s intent is sincerely focused on being helpful. I go out of my way to do that. As a benefit, it enhances my resume as a SEO and social media marketing professional and reflects my knowledge. A tiny percentage of people will contact me with an interest of hiring me as a consultant, or as their new Director of Marketing.
I ask myself:“What if somebody offers me a salary so big I can barely spend it all and puts me in a big shiny office building as their head marketing guy working 100 hours per week?”
My answer is:“I will still be right here to share what I know with others, just as I have been for years.”
That is how I know that my intent is right.
If selling something was the primary goal, I would not ask for your input, your brainstorms, or your time. I would also not expect anybody to subscribe and keep coming back. Although, I probably would still ask to pass my name along to somebody who may need me … but that is just my eensy little selfish side talking. (Hint: See sharing and bookmarking links below.) Hey, I have a family of five to feed, after all.
What is your intent, and how are you expressing it to others?
Have you ever noticed that when you visit a blog, you generally only look through the most recent articles? It is pretty common that upon visiting a blog’s home page, people will just scan through a few items and see if there is something they want to read. In the blogging world, it is often assumed that newer is better, but this is quite often not the case. It is just more visible.
I am guilty of looking at the date something was published. I am not sure why in some cases, but I guess I am just so accustomed to seeing a date on blog articles. I suppose it is just one more way that people can feel that they are getting the latest and greatest news. A reality check for bloggers and readers alike can come in the form of these two little questions:
For Blog Readers: What about all of the great information that is not just recent or new?
For Blog Authors: What about the people who are not there for the news, but who just want great information?
I have noticed many blogs removing their publish date from articles, and it actually makes sense for some blogs. If the information is still useful, does it really matter whether it was written this week, this month, or even this year? A lot of great information is timeless. As I ponder this, I am reminded of an article I wrote about eight or nine years ago on the topic of H1 tags titled “H1 Tags Improve Search Engine Placement”. Thousands of people per month read that article. It is the top ranked article in search engines on the topic, and has been since the day I published it. Does the date really matter? H1 tags (web page headings) are still as important today as they were then. The information is still useful.
Some Blogs Are “Evergreen”
When I say “evergreen”, I mean that the information is as useful a year from now as it is today. Blogs have widely varying degrees of “evergreen” content, but most business blogs will have a good level of content that is still relevant and useful for a long time. It would be pretty hard for most businesses to have a blog that was no better than a used newspaper.
For blog authors, it can sometimes feel like a huge shame that people are actually missing some of your greatest pieces of work. So what do you do? Do you try to make everything more genius than the last? That is a good idea, but it is probably not always going to work. In my case, I know darn well that some days I am just a whole lot less brilliant than I would like. I often write blog articles on those days, too.
Scanning through the first few items listed on the home page of your blog is often how new readers will decide whether to come back, subscribe to your blog, or schedule an afternoon of reading through page after page of your past articles. This makes it pretty important to have something right up front to impress them, but how? You cannot just leave your best work parked on the front page of your blog forever. Your regular readers would get sick of seeing it. Do you just stop blogging until you can come up with something to beat the last piece? That is probably not the best answer. In fact, that is a pretty terrible answer.
You could republish some of your best work, but the same problem of repetition arises when you consider your long-time readers. Plus for many blogs where the date is part of the URL, there is the tragedy of changing the URL where all of those great incoming links are pointing. Sure, a 301 permanent redirect to the article’s new location is easy, but you still lose some of the link value for those older works.
Of course, you could just count on excellent search engine ranking for everything on your blog, and use Google as your website navigation. That way, if they are looking for it they will find you anyway. I have often counted on this, but then again, search engine optimization is my job. What about the people already on your blog who may find some of your past articles to be really useful? Larger websites often have a user-friendly sitemap to help people find useful information. The equivalent for a blog is the archive. Website search tools are excellent, but some people want to browse, and you should make it easy for them.
What about all of those readers discovering your blog from an older article? Will they even notice your most recent brilliance? What can you do to grab their attention to your latest and greatest stuff? Maybe a better solution is to create more evergreen content and to revive your archive.
Revive Your Archive!
Scanning the home page of a blog makes sense if you are a regular reader who has participated in the blog for a while, or if the blog is mostly about recent news. Let’s face it, though, many blogs are full of “evergreen” content that is not just seasonal or only applies to right now. If this is the case with your blog, it is a good idea to promote some of your past articles for those who may have missed them. The trouble is that you don’t want to annoy your current readers by saying the same old thing over and over. So how do you deal with keeping things current and fresh, while also being sure that people can see that you have been brilliant long before they happened upon your blog?
You can tell where this is going, right? Sure, I want you to go back and browse my blog archive. There are some excellent tips there, and a lot of information that I am confident can help you. I also want to be sure that you are thinking of this with your blog, so I am not just being selfish.
Make Your Blog Archive Easy to Navigate!
I have noticed that it is easy to assume that I have not missed much on some of the blogs I regularly keep up with. However, I still sometimes like to go back through the archives of my favorite blogs. Sometimes this can be a hassle, and sometimes it is a breeze. Now consider the people reading your blog, do you want it to be a hassle for them, or a breeze?
There are a lot of types of archives, but many of them require a lot of clicking back through a chronological month-by-month archive structure or going to the end of the page and clicking on a link for previous articles. Some will have archives nicely paginated so you can flip through them quickly. Other blogs seem to make it a challenge to read what they have had to say in the past.
A lot of blogs have killed their tag clouds, and do not even show their tags on posts. I still love them, and appreciate bloggers who make a tag cloud available, or at least tags on individual posts. For example, go click on a tag for this article (listed at the bottom, such as blogging) and see how easy it is to find more related information. Some blogs do not even list the blog categories for articles. Call me old fashioned, but I still love tags and categories. I can use them to find other things with similar information. I think I love them even more because I know from my website statistics logs that they are used extensively by readers on my blog.
I hope that you will consider your archived blog content and how you may keep it easily accessible. Making it easy for people to find and for them to browse could add up to a lot more subscribers over time. You may notice that on my blog, I have my archive linked at the very top of every page, just below the recent articles listed on the left, and at the bottom of every article along with links to my most recent articles. Isn’t redundancy awesome?
