How YaGoof! was born

From: Keith, dad and co-co-co-co-host of YaGoof!

Our local newspaper, the Altoona Mirror, has invited submissions for a story on blogging. I've sent them the text of this post. Our blog was developed in part for the Mirror; I'm not sure if that will hurt or help our chance to become part of the story!

I hit upon blogging as a way to create books. As described in our host bio (top of the sidebar), our family uses the pen name Team EEK! to create books. We aim to create fifty books together. That may seem ambitious, but we were inspired by the much larger goal of a South Dakota family that has so far spent over sixty years carving a mountain into a statue. So far, we've completed two novels, one draft of a picture book, and outlines for three more novels. The Altoona Mirror has been a great partner in our adventures, publishing the first two novels as serials and the first novel in book form, as well as being our main avenue for promotion.

After Team EEK! began, I started noticing that blogs have become a major means to promote books. Authors have blogs, publishing companies set up blogs for particular books, and so on. But what REALLY struck me was this National Public Radio story about a man turning his blog into a best-seller. (PARENTAL DISCRETION ADVISED on the content of the blog.) The book compiled submissions from people far and wide, so to an extent, the book created itself. With over forty-five books left to go in our family's goal—that made me envious! I wanted a book-generating blog, too!

To make a long story short, we developed the notion shown when you enter YaGoof!—Submit a funny story of how you've goofed up for a chance to win FREE CHOCOLATE! Everyone goofs up now and then, and it's good to be able to laugh it off. Goofs unite us all! We hope for a steady stream of goof stories that can run in the Mirror and be collected in books. That would also mean valuable exposure for our chocolate sponsor, McIntyre's Candies.

Having a blog is one thing, attracting bloggers is another. We honestly don't know how to generate traffic; we're learning as we go. We hope that exposure in the Mirror will help generate local word-of-mouth. We're picking up tricks of online promotion, including trading links with other sites and attracting bloggers by commenting at other blogs. We decided to try emailing one school in every state, stressing that our site is family- and child-friendly—only to disover that many school districts prohibit students and staff from blogging. Ah, well—blog and learn. Our site meter shows that we do have some traffic, but so far no has submitted a goof. We do have "sample" goofs. And "diary entries" like this.

Just a few nuts and bolts behind the site: The first official day for YaGoof! was March 1, 2006. It took about six weeks to develop the concept, find a host(Blogger.com is great! And FREE!), and build the site itself. I have a little HTML experience, but it still took a lot of trial and error to get (pretty much!) the look that we wanted.

We're glad that we've become ultra-hip bloggers! :) It's fun to start from zero and learn, see your entries posted right away, and watch the beginnings of traffic. We look forward to reading about GOOFS and awarding FREE CHOCOLATE!