Some Tips Towards the Monetization of a Grief Blog

Forgive me, reader, should you think it crass that my sophomore effort in the grief space is concerned with the marketing of a grief blog. However, if you are not consoling a wide audience of the grief-stricken and ergo achieving traffic and commensurate remuneration, then why write a grief blog in the first place?

One: Avoid what is known as Direct Marketing. Do not Facebook message an acquaintance to ask if they count themselves among the stricken. Do not ghoulishly troll the obits.

Two: Be yourself. Do not emulate grief bloggers who have already achieved traffic and remuneration. The stricken will smell a rat. Avoid books like Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul lest you imitate the tepid style therein, a style that has already oversaturated the grief marketplace.

Three: If Eisenstein wrote in The Structure of the Film:

“There is no such thing as grief ‘in general.’ Grief is concrete; it is always attached to something; it has consumers,” 2 that means you must avoid wishy-washy tenses. Employ the imperative tense! When necessary, employ the counterfactual.

Four: Like and share other grief bloggers. Unbecoming as it often feels, sharing ten consecutive articles from Grievin’ Gary’s Grief Refuge will capture Grievin’ Gary’s attention. Sharing one will not. Sharing one will make you no more estimable in Grievin’ Gary’s eyes than some grief-stricken mark.

Five: Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. As Daniel Johnston famously sang, “Millions and millions of people have already died.” Thousands will die today. To say nothing of pets, catastrophic brain injurees, and those enduring a type of living death due to opiate dependence. Among the scant few not yet grieving, you can count on anticipatory grief, e.g. ‘father ridden with cancer.’ There is also a sort of nameless dread: a fatalistic grief for the unknown sorrows to come, such as the prospect of worldwide pandemic, a new Philovirus, for example.

Six: Don’t display your grief bona fides right out of the shoot. Little is more tiresome than the grief blogger flogging a deceased Bull Terrier for every last click and share. Granted, bona fides in absentia, questions may arise, e.g. “Just what is this guy gripin’ and grievin’ about anyway?” They’ll get past this, the grief-stricken, because they really don’t care, such is their bottomless need for consolation. Besides, who among us has not known grief in one or more of its many manifestations: The grief of the non-historical nature of time. 2 (Eisenstein, 1947) The grief of parasitism and the Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) during the Philoviral outbreak to come. The grief of the sinister hobbies, e.g. ‘inveigling, ’ e.g. ‘deceit. ’ The grief of the coins accidentally eaten while on Ambien, the coins presumed to be mints. The grief of Time and Narrative: “It is remarkable that it is language usage that provisionally provides the resistance to the thesis of non-being. ”3 The grief of the unread Cybergothic wherein “Time produces itself in a circuit, passing through the virtual interruption of what is to come, in order that the future which arrives is already infected. ” The grief of the coroners’ doubts as detailed in Redbook Magazine. The grief of who the heck propagates this theory of nonbeing anyway, the nontologists? The grief of your murdered sister. The grief of the downward sloping marginal utility curve, e.g. ‘Fifth burger in a row only 5% as satisfying as first burger, ’ e.g. ‘Same with roller coaster rides, sexual triumphs, all life’s phony pleasures. ’ The grief of alcohol, pills, and the fluorescent-lit morning to follow. The grief of the Archons bedevilling us since time immemorial. The grief of a sister’s shampoo in the springtime, its scent and its memory. 3 (Ricouer, 1984-1988) The grief of the intrapsychic crypt. The grief of the most troublesome mistress’ borderline personality disorder co-morbid with her glittering eyeshadow twinkling through the dextroamphetaminic evening. The grief of a wife’s allergies and the repetitive nature of allergenic sneezing. The grief of “Where’s your empathy, David? Do you think sneezing is fun?” The grief of throw pillows on a Christmas wish list when all you want is your sister alive again! The grief of not having enough “grease to go to the brothel” in the words of Donald Barthelme, author of the seminal grief novel, The Dead Father. Remarks glittering well past the borderline of propriety. The grief of “a kind of causal Darwinism called post-selection that governs the flow of information backwards and forwards through the glass block of Minkowski spacetime, ” in the words of Eric Wargo, author of Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious, “Information refluxing into the past [that] only ‘survives’ as meaningful insofar as it cannot be used to foreclose the future that ‘sent that information, ’”4 meaning sadly you can’t save your sister Catherine from being beheaded on the side of Highway 17.

Seven: Get featured on blogs like What’s Your Grief that often review the hottest grief blogs.

Eight: Know that the bar to entry at national grief conferences is refreshingly low! 4 (Wargo E., 2018)

Nine: Don’t blog of clues in Catherine’s obit pointing to Archons or maybe the Infernal Serpent being behind all this sadness, as Archon-focussed blogging and small press publishing yields next-to-nothing, remuneration-wise, and can only lessen your standing in the grief blogging space. Never mention the Archons to your prescribing doctor. If you must discuss Archons try to position them as a type of malevolent AI perpetrating non-linear-causational tyranny on humankind. Don’t mention how you may be implicated in all this. Steer clear of the word Gnosticism in discussions with your doctor, and with all others.

Ten: Don’t get in a maudlin headspace prior to composition. Listening to The Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Sessions is what the grieving are already doing. Listen to something fun like Back in the New York Groove to remind readers that,

“Hey, life can be a party, and it’s time to delete that folder of Catherine pictures and maybe blog about something more remunerative such as the Soda Stream™. ”

5 COMMENTS ON “SOME THOUGHTS TOWARDS THE MONETIZATION OF A GRIEF BLOG” Father_Of_A_Lost_Angel: Are you trying to mock the grief community? Brampton Int’l Grief Conference: All of our THIS! Would you be interested in speaking at the Brampton International Grief Conference in January? Grievin’ Gary: Sorry to hear about your sister man. Is that whom you are grieving? You should probably write a post about the specific person you’re grieving if you want the community to accept you. I’ll share this post, but I would like to know whom specifically has passed before sharing any others. If it is the dead sister then please accept my sincere condolences. Also, I would suggest buying your WordPress site. It’s only $25 a year and it will appear much more professional. And don’t worry WordPress doesn’t pay me to say that lolololol. What’s_Your_Grief: Thanks for the mention. Good luck and stay strong! ☹ Erik Wargo: Going forward please ask permission if you plan to use quotations of mine longer than three sentences. Reply David_Astaire: Won’t happen again.