The Mini Web Empire of Alexander Zakharov
Alexander Zakharov claims to be lazy, but we don't believe it. On his off-hours, this Russian Web enthusiast produces three distinct blogs, and at least one requires daily attention.
Two of Alexander's sites consider the graphic artwork and propaganda of Communist regimes: A Soviet Poster A Day and Posters of Cuba. A third site, Unusual Instruments' Musical Videos, leaves bold text and bright colors behind to celebrate such oddball music makers as the glass harmonica, the Stylophone, and the aeolian harp. What motivates Alexander to create and maintain this mini e-empire? We emailed him to find out:
Alexander, what inspired you to start three blogs?
Well actually I started these blogs to make some money. Money is one of the best drivers for any activity, you know. I am lazy, like everybody else, so if I don't push myself I wouldn't do a thing. I have even named it "A Soviet Poster a Day" to eliminate possible excuses to miss a day...
In any business you never know what idea will succeed and what is doomed from the beginning. You have to start implementing several things and see what's working. So these three blogs—A Soviet Poster A Day, Posters of Cuba, and Weird Instruments' Videos—are not the only blogs I have started, these are the successful ones.
What blogs have you started that didn't work out?
I started a blog about geek wrist watches, but could hardly compete with other watches blogs. Another attempt was to make a blog about exhibitions in Russia; I have worked in this field for a while, so it seemed to be a good idea at the moment.
Unfortunately I didn't find the right and inexpensive promotion channel for it, so I cancelled it. I also started a Woman at War blog—this was just a simple reprinting of a diary of WW1 nurse with some WW1 photos. This was an attempt to create a blog which does not take time at all. But no so many people are interested in this kind of things. So I dropped it as well.
Actually there are plenty of ideas ready for implementation; the question is where to find the time :)
How much time does it take you to research and compose the posts for you the blogs you have now?
For Soviet Posters this is strictly no more than an hour. I have imposed such a restriction, because there is so much interesting information about each poster, so I have to limit myself. Otherwise I could do one post a week, but it will be as long as yacht sails.
I am quite interested in history, so an hour a day is only for writing, collecting quotes, and checking facts. I also read history books and look through historical websites every day.
What are some of your favorite historical sites?
There's a great site about world history. It has lots of timelines, invaluable in structuring of jumble in my head. AirForce.ru is about aviation. The WW2 Victory site, a wonderful site which has scans and articles from loads of old newspapers—you can spend hours there. WW2 war photos.
Does one blog require more attention than the others?
Yes, they are all different. WeirdInstruments take the least time—about 15 minutes per post. And this is almost a copypaste activity, but you have to look through lots of videos on YouTube. Then comes Soviet Poster—about an hour. The Cuban posters also take about an hour to write an article, but the preliminary research takes huge amount of time as I do not know Cuban history that well yet.
The Soviet site has been around the longest and, we think, it's garnered the most attention so far. Is that true? Have you been surprised by peoples' reaction to it?
The people's reaction is surprising indeed. I have never thought that so many people may be interested in a dead empire's art. I intended A Soviet Poster A Day to be a perfect blog for graphic designers, as these posters are just bursting with ideas and techniques. Surprisingly, there are thousands of people who find Soviet art interesting and inspiring. Thanks for that, I really appreciate it.
It's fascinating to see the different styles of the Soviet and Cuban posters. Do you have any favorites? Have you considered merging those two blogs into one deluxe site on communist propaganda?
Yes, sure. Some of them are just startling. Like "Motherland is calling" poster. Or Gagarin. But they have so much history in them, that they are not pure art anymore—they are artifacts. So I wouldn't put them on the wall of my bedroom. :)
I've been thinking about starting a blog about Chinese posters, but unfortunately the language and culture barrier is huge. And it's impossible to do a joint communist propaganda site without the Chinese. I have a friend who lives in China, but I couldn't talk him into starting a blog. He is even more lazy than me. ;) So, I think I'll stick to things I can do well, for the time being.
Where do you live? What's your day job?
I was born in Moscow and still live here. A beautiful place although it's a bit expensive. Now I work for a Russian telecommunication software company as a sales manager—a perfect position with some traveling and lots of talking to people. Nevertheless I've been doing this for a few years, so I think it's time to try something new. Anybody need a blogger? ;)
Do you have any advice for someone looking to start a blog?
Yeah, sure. Define your goal—why are you doing it? You won't be able to do meaningless work for long. Set a deadline—like "I should have a thousand subscribers in three months", or "I should have an orgasm by only looking at my blog no less than three times a week". If you break the schedule either scrap the blog or choose another goal. But be fair with yourself. Pick the topic carefully. This should be something you like AND you know a thing or two about.
If you don't like the topic, you'll start hating it in no time. And if you're ignorant of the field you'll never know where to look for the info. Don't forget about optimization (social networks, feedburner, tags, etc.) and go on posting on regular basis. If the content is good people will come. If not... well 99% of all information is crap, so your failure is pure statistics. Start another blog.
Thanks, Alexander. Good luck with the blogs!
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