I started my first BMX freestyle zine in September of 1985, as a way to meet other freestylers, when I moved from Boise, Idaho to San Jose, California. I was inspired by an article Andy Jenkins wrote about zines in FREESTYLIN'magazine. While working nights at a Pizza Hut, I published my zine, starting with a $15, manual, 1940's era Royal typewriter, and a Kodak 110 Instamatic camera. Eleven issues of that zine, San Jose Stylin', landed me a job at Wizard Publications, drawing me into the BMX industry. At 20 years old, I worked at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines for five months, and got laid off because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. Well, that, and I was a really uptight, moody dork in those days.
I then worked as editor/photographer at the AFA newsletter for most of 1987. That led to video work, and a job at Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboards' video company, for about 2 1/2 years, into 1990. I published a few issues of a zine called Periscope, while working at Unreel. Altogether, I've published over 40 zines, several of them 40-52 pages, which is really big for a zine.
In 2007, working as a taxi driver, I got the idea to start a blog about taxi driving. It sucked. I think only my mom and the police read it, which are the people you don't want reading your blogs. I did maybe 30 posts, and got 45 views or something. Then Fate pushed me out of Southern California in late 2008, after taxi driving died, and I'd been homeless and on the streets for almost a year.
I wound up living with my parents, in a small apartment, in a tiny town in North Carolina. I was unable to find any job at all, as the country plunged into the Great Recession. I became seriously depressed almost immediately in NC. I was 42, unemployed, fat, broke, had no car, and was living with my parents. I did, for the first time in my life, have a decent computer, with internet access, in my room. I began "surfing the web" each night, just exploring the internet. Remember those days when we called it "surfing the web?"
After looking up BMX and porn for a a few hours, every night, for a couple of weeks, I got bored, and decided to publish a BMX blog. I started FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, after finding the FREESTYLIN' book online. I decided to write a few of my stories from my short stint working there in 1986. I was completely clueless, I didn't promote my blog in any way, put tags on it, or link to it from anywhere. I wasn't on any social media, and didn't even really know what that was then. I'd been living in a taxi or homeless on the streets for the previous 6 or 7 years. The internet was basically brand new to me. I thought blog posts just went out into this big black hole of cyber space, and just sat there waiting for someone to randomly find them. I started writing little stories about my magazine days, every couple of nights.
One post in particular, found an audience, after about a month. People from BMX freestyle in the 1980's started emailing me. Some were people I knew back then, some were people I knew of, but had never really met. A few were complete strangers. They all told me to keep writing. So I did. That was before the Old School BMX Reunion began, and long before podcasts with old BMX freestylers telling their stories.
Since that first real blog, I've tried out somewhere between 50 and 100 different blog ideas. A handful of my blogs found audiences, most of them in the Old School BMX freestyle world. This is post #998 of Steve Emig: The White Bear blog, a blog I started in 2017, thinking almost no one would bother to read it. I was wrong, people started checking it out. And people kept checking it out. I figured it was time to total up my blog stats, as this blog is about to hit a brand new milestone for me, 1,000 posts in a single blog. To put that in perspective, Internet marketer Seth Godin has over 8,000 posts on his Seth blog, which he started in 2000 or so. I have been able to find who the next most prolific bloggers are. But out of an estimated 600 million blogs on the internet, I'm near the very top by sheer number of total blog posts. No one keeps stats after Seth's blog, but very few blogs get to 1,000 or more posts. I've now written and published over 2,849 posts.
So here are the stats on my various blogs, the ones with more than 1,000 page views each, anyhow.
FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales- 2008-2009: about 110 posts, over 25,000 page views. Took it down in 2012.
Freestyle BMX Tales- 2009-2012: About 510 posts, and over 125,000 page views. Took it down in 2012.
Make Money Panhandling- 2009-2011: This was a joke blog that I started just to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. It got serious, and I wrote over 100 posts, and got over 60,000 page views. I took it down in 2012.
Steve Emig: The White Bear- 2017-2024- 998 posts- 331,578 page views. I seriously thought almost no one would read this blog when I began it, right after I moved into a tent in the woods, while living in North Carolina, in June of 2017. It's become my longest and most read blog ever. You never know when you start a creative project where it will ultimately lead.
Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack- 55 posts- over 1,500 page views. I'm doing a lot of longer form writing on Substack lately, a platform designed specifically for writers.
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now- Book 1- 2019-2020- This is my 20 chapter "book/blog thing," describing the economic and social chaos I saw coming in The Tumultuous 2020's. This is the most intense thing I've written, trying to explain in late 2019 and early 2020 why I thought the 2020's would turn into one of the craziest decades ever. 20 posts- 6,047 page views.
Freestyle BMX Tales (Version 2- on Wordpress, not Blogger): I wrote a couple of dozen posts, I think. I forget the stats. Went back to Blogger, which works better for me.
Freestyle BMX Tales (Version 3)- 2015-2022- 102 posts- 72,769 page views.
Become Your Own Hero- 2015-2016: 50 posts- 5,680 page views.
Bum to Bankroll- 2016- 51 posts- 5,858 page views.
Cash Poor, Story Rich- 2016- 7 posts- 2,504 page views.
Crazy California 43- 2021- 75 posts- 16,632 page views.
Check out Downtown Kernersville- 2016- 6 posts- 2,067 page views.
Create Your Own Dang Job- 2016-2017- 17 posts- 2,500 page views.
Freaks, Geeks, Dorks, and Weirdos- 2016- 11 posts- 4,348 page views.
Full Circle 43 blog- 28 posts- 2,922 page views.
Get Off Your Ass and Make a Scene- 2017- 8 posts- 1,686 page views.
Get Weird Make Money- 2017- 38 posts- 6,231- page views.
How to Make Your Lame City Better- Part 1- 2016-2023- 26 posts- 4,192 page views.
How to Make Your Lame City Better- Part 2- 2016- 57 posts- 2,565 page views.
I Hate Homeless People (yes, the title is sarcastic)- 2020- 14 posts- 1,690 page views.
New Ideas For Old Buildings- 2017- 25 posts- 2,651 page views.
Small Business Blaster- 2020- 17 posts- 4,575 page views.
Small Business Futurist- 2023- 43 posts- 10,650 page views.
Steve Emig Art- 2015-2016- 86 posts- 20,597
Steve Emig Adventuring- 2020-2021- 67 posts- 9,012
Steve Emig's Street Life- 2022- 126 posts- 23, 164
Block Bikes Blog- 2019- 96 posts- 44,259 page views.
The Phoenix Great Depression- 2020- 48 posts- 2020- 8,752 page views.
The Spot Finder- 2021- 39 blog posts- 8,513 page views.
Uncle Steve's Music Picks- 2016- 2023- 34 posts- 2,243 page views.
WPOS Kreative Ideas- 2021- 40 posts- 26,424 page views.
These are just the blog ideas that I've tried, that pulled in at least 1,000 page views per blog. There are at least 30 other blogs I started from 2009-2012, that I deleted in late 2012 (big mistake). There are at least 10 or 15 more blogs I've tried since 2012. But these are the ones that actually got some readership while sitting out there on the interwebs. I have not used A.I. to write posts, that seems stupid to me. The whole point is to get my own, personal idea out there. For good or ill, I wrote every single post myself. I don't see the point in using A.I. to write a post, because it'll just be boring garbage, and the algorithms wouldn't like it anyway.
Obviously, turning my prodigious output of writing into actual income is the issue I've struggled with. But I'll keep plugging away. I wake up in the morning, on the sidewalk as a homeless guy, and slowly get myself going. Once I'm up, I say, out loud, "Let's go create some shit!" Then I try to do some writing or drawing, every single day. You can get a lot of create work down if you can't find a "real" job for 15 years.
This blog is rolling up on the 1,000 post milestone, this is post #998
I've been doing a lot of writing on a platform called Substack lately, which is designed for writers. Check it out.
Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack
My thoughts on financial markets
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