Milking It 1 On 1
We’ve often been told that copying is the most sincere form of flattery and it seems we’ve got a crazed fan on our hands! A certain John Buffalo has registered his domain yesterday and went ‘live’ for the public. Quickly glancing at his ‘About’ page we find loads of useful info; This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress..
We’d like to take the time to show Mr. Buffalo how we would have gone about the whole thing.
Style.
1. It’s not just about downloading the standard wordpress theme, it’s more about customizing it exactly as the site you’re trying to copy. Stop wrecking your head by trying to modify it by hand. Just right-click on your idol’s blog, view source and find a line that ends with ‘CSS’. Go there, copy and paste it into your own style.CSS and voila!(e.g http://www.johnbuffalo.com/wp-content/themes/MistyLook/style.css).
Timing.
2. We thought about what would happen if we went live before we were done getting it just right. Think about all the plugins, pages and ad placements for example. The chances that someone accidentally would find us before we were done would ruin the surprise. Word might even get out before you’re done and all the people that visit your site because of that would find a work in progress, not thinking much of it and never coming back.
Privacy.
3. So coming back to point two, here’s something you could do/have done while working on your masterpiece. One option is to do it the hard way and install PHP, MySQL and Apache on a local machine. An easy fix is password-protect your webroot (main folder on your webserver). Everyone that comes across your site will not see anything unless they have the password you’ve just set. It’s also not advisable to start linking back to other blogs as they will get a pingback and see what’s going on in Technorati for example.
Attitude.
4. It’s OK to think you’re better than the other guy but try to keep it for yourself until you’ve got some momentum going. Remember that he’s probably already got a lot of fans and if you have nothing to backup your claims of having better milk, people might think bad of you. This will have a wrong effect from the start. Remember what they say about first impressions!
We hope that this bovine advise will help you on the road to dotcow dollars and don’t forget; There is no spoon!
Keep on milking, JC.
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I can’t see Mr Buffalo taking off somehow, he doesn’t have the very thing that have made you guys so popular ‘an original idea’.
I just saw his blog and came here to let you guys know, but first I checked if you already knew and obviously you do. Anyway, I agree with you, I don’t think his blog will take off because it just isn’t original.
this is one crazy blog post, yeah i agree with fatgadget, he does have a nice header though to be honest!
To paraphrase Steve Martin as Clouseau, “Gud won”.
Time to separate the bulls from the oxen.
The difference? Balls.
It always comes down to cojones doesn’t it? LMAO!
It’s like when everybody started switching to the Misty theme when they saw Chow using it. It gets boring after a while.
People want a lazy dollar and don’t want to do any work to get it. And they don’t realize that they are giving away free ideas for content on this site!
it is a pretty boring theme to be honest, i wish it could be more vibrant at times but, it does well for JC
Seems that John Cow is a little buffalow like when it comes to copy cats!
MMh, another one?
http://www.johnhow.com/
I want to see johnmeow.com I am too lazy to do it myself.
It’s actually available so maybe you should snag it before someone else takes your idea! For farmers, maybe they could do a johnplow.com. And if you’re just tired of the whole thing, there’s always johnciao.com!
or you could have done it the way I did to get the reaction out of you that I did!
LOL
Thanks
JB
Yes, we hope the information was helpfull.
Trust me, I read every word and taking advantage of it all! From one Cow to Another!
I dunno man… the Buffalo just wrote a blog post about my site to convince me that my first impression about the site was wrong… That’s pretty tough to argue with…
And that’s why your name is blogging ‘experiment’
This is funny. I have this feeling that you can see a decline in visitors on websites that keep copying each other. He’ll have some, then some one will try to do him and they’ll have even less.
To paraphrase Steve Martin as Clouseau, “Gud won”.
Time to separate the bulls from the oxen.
The difference? Balls.