By Jim R Regan
Nobody likes you. It’s sad but true, eh? You get traffic, but nobody subscribes. You get emails saying “hey I liked your blog,” but nobody ever comments or comes back. I have seen countless bloggers struggle to produce effective content, competitive traffic, retained readers or all of the above. There are many fish in this sea, and unless you are confident and unique… you are going to fail. Don’t fall into this trap!
Hate to be a downer, but it needs to be said.
There are many ways to turn off potential “regulars” like myself, and I have literally seen them all. You need to separate yourself from the pack, and to get on the map… so without further ado, here is the top five list of why people aren’t sticking around.
1. Your Content is Bland and UnoriginalThis is an obvious starter. If your content is composed of mindless ramblings about what you did at work today, or useless commentary about how great Stumble Upon or EntreCard is… why even have a blog? Realize that nobody wants to read about what kind of sandwich you prefer just as much as nobody wants to be batted down with common knowledge that they can probably find more about by just visiting the creator’s website. This was really brought to my attention by my blogging buddy Jason Periera in his recent posting, and the kid has a point. What he misses is that it is fine to have the basics. I think that every start up blog needs to have some generally understood information like “how do I buy stock?” and “how do I boost my RSS subscribers?” before continuing. It’s a fact, you need the starting point. However, if you don’t branch off and start telling people how you are running things in a unique way… why would anyone stick around?
I think the best lesson here is that after you write a post, always to back over it and say to yourself “would I want to read this?” If you yourself think that your writing is water under the bridge, then delete it and start over, as painful as that might be.
2. You Draw Up Lame Metaphors About BloggingStop it. There is nothing I hate more than posts that start out “blogging is like a race car” or “writing a post is like climbing a tree.” Seriously, blogging is usually going to be about one of three things: making money, getting famous or teaching/helping readers. If you can’t help yourself but tell us how much boosting traffic is like baking a cake, sell your website now and save us the hassle. Please. When people read posts like this, they are thinking to themselves… wow I just wasted five minutes of my life, I wish he/she had some actual advice for me. I’m sorry for calling you out, but it had to be said. This is just like the girl in school that takes black and white pictures and everyone says “wow, you are so artistic” when they are really saying to themselves: “wow, that was just a bad picture.”
Don’t be that black-and-white artist. Give us something we can use!
3. You are Selling Your Soul, and Your Soul Isn’t Worth a Dime
If your website has less than 100 readers a day and you are trying to load up your content with Adsense advertisements, you better know what you are doing. I’m all for effective advertising, pestering readers with “subscribe to my feed!” requests and writing up the occasional sponsored posting. But only if you are qualified.
Before you monetize your website, ask yourself if you would pay $5 a month to read your own material. This is basically an understatement of the opportunity cost foregone when someone is an active reader of your blog, roughly five bucks. If you wouldn’t pay a measly five dollars to subscribe to your own content, nobody is going to want to break through advertisements in order to read your stuff.
I could care less if you are giving up profit for a month or two, it just isn’t worth it. There is nothing that is more of a turn off than blogs that are chock-full of ads and bad content (and a bad design too perhaps). If you yourself wouldn’t want to pay for your content, why impose a toll (advertising) on your readers for doing the same? Don’t sell your soul if the devil ain’t buying.
4. You Use Freebies Instead of Paying Your Dues
You know exactly what I am talking about. If you are trying to boost your traffic, your readership, your income and you are sitting on a “.wordpress.com” or a “.blogspot.com” domain name… you don’t deserve it. If you are using free web hosting from I-care-more-about-my-2-bucks-than-my-readers.com instead of paying the CHEAP fees involved with reliable web hosting in this day and age… you don’t deserve it.
It’s time to get serious about blogging folks!
The blogging universe is a crowded place, and if you haven’t paid your 6 bucks yearly for a cheap domain name, then you aren’t going to be noticed (save a few). It’s the cheapest way to guarantee a shred of respect around. Buying a domain name is very easy, very cheap and very effective. If you don’t have one, people feel turned off from the get-go… believe me. Save yourself the trouble and open that wallet, you won’t regret it.
Buying the domain name is a must. But I would recommend going a step further and paying for web hosting from one of the big resellers like Host Gator or 1&1. This will run you just a few bucks a month, and boy is it worth it. You now have peace of mind that your website wont take more than 7 seconds to load (I click out of these immediately) and that everything functions as it should (crashes, debugging messages, etc.). It is very cost effective nowadays, and you don’t need much space at all (50mb - 250mb should cover this requirement with ease).
The Bottom Line: If you don’t like your blog enough to spring for some extras, people aren’t likely to find your material interesting or worthwhile.
5. You Don’t Post Regularly, So I Don’t Visit Regularly
The title says it all. Unless you are writing some brilliant articles 2 times weekly, you probably should be aiming to post every day or at minimum 4-5 times a week. After all, your competition is doing it!
Even if I have nothing original for the day (rare), I will still at least put up an announcement post that lets you guys in on how I am doing and what to expect coming up. As much as you want to escape the issue, the fact remains that you have bloggers in your niche, and whoever is putting out more unique content will win the race in the long run.
When I first started blogging, I made a list of 25 websites I wanted to visit regularly. After about a week, I noticed that a few of these bloggers weren’t updating at all… and guess what happened *guillotine sound effect.* Don’t put your blog on the back-burner, and neither will the public.
I know this is more of a rant than anything else, but heed my word because it represents what the world thinks about your blog site. Fix it! The simple metrics I have mentioned like buying a domain name and posting useful articles can go for miles. Globalization of the blogging world is upon us, where will you be?
The author of this article is Jim “The Net Fool”. He is owner of theNetFool.com If you’d like to learn more about blogging, you can visit http://www.thenetfool.com You’ll find all the information you need!
(COMING SOON!)
