By jdroth
I like to write. I enjoy keeping my web sites, and Get Rich Slowly is foremost among these. To maintain so many sites requires a certain level of discipline. Over the past few months I’ve observed a set of behaviors — in myself and in others — behaviors that are counterproductive to blogging. These include:
- Checking stats compulsively. Is it really important to know how many people have come to your site in the fifteen minutes since you last checked? Yes, you’ve made $5 via Adsense today. So what? The most important thing you can do is to stop obsessing over site statistics and start creating content.
- Checking others’ stats compulsively. Worse than checking your own stats is checking your competition’s stats. Yes, The Mega Money Blog has more hits than you today. Yes, the Kingdom of Personal Finance got linked from Time Magazine. So what? If you spent more time writing and less time fretting, you’d have your day in the sun, too.
- Posting for the sake of posting. Don’t have anything to say? Then don’t say anything.
- Wandering off-topic. If you run a personal blog, then anything goes. But if your topic is subject-specific, you run into danger when you wander off-topic. Your readers come for information about a very specific subject, and unless you’re a terrificly witty writer, they’re not interested in your thoughts on sports, politics, or modern dance. Stay focused.
- Over-monetizing. I recently met with a man who runs a huge internet site, an internet site with which you are probably familiar. He makes a lot of money from the web. He gave me some advice on site design. “One thing I like about your site already,” he told me, “is that it doesn’t seem desperate.” He explained that many sites, especially personal finance sites, are so heavily and obviously monetized that it’s a turn-off, both for himself and for others. “I don’t mind if you try to make a buck,” he said, “but don’t beat me over the head with it.” His site that’s generating so much money for him? The ads are minimal. And there’s even an easy way to view the site ad-free. Ramit Sethi has the most successful personal finance blog by nearly every measure. It has no ads. Zero. Nada. Zilch. And yet he’s able to make money off it anyhow. For Ramit the blog is the ad, and he’s the product.
- Layout that sucks. To some extent, you’re bound by the limits of your blogging software and by your design skill. Even so, there’s a lot of room to tinker. While you develop your design, think like a reader. What’s most important to the average person visiting your site? If you’ve made it difficult to find your search box, your archives, or your subscription information, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Just last night I visited five sites looking for info on a book I was reviewing. The search box for each site was buried so that I had to hunt for it. This is dumb. I know you want revenue, but you’re going to get more revenue by having more readers, and you’re going to get more readers if you make the ads subservient to the stuff the readers want. Your site should be easy-to-read and easy-to-use. (And it should look good on all platforms. Whether you like Macs or not, many influential internet folks use them, and if your site looks like crap in Safari, you’re alienating important people.)
- Fussing with search-engine optimization. Do you know the best way to get search engine traffic? Get linked from other sites. Do you know the best way to get linked from other sites? Write content that people want to share with others, content that makes people go, “Wow. I’m glad I found that.” That’s only SEO trick you need to know.
- Forgetting to sharpen the saw. Take a break. You can’t do this 24/7/365. Your readers have lives. So do you. Take time off to spend with your family and friends, to read books, to see movies, to walk through your neighborhood. Developing a successful site is a long-term project. It’s not going to happen overnight. Remember to seek renewal away from the computer.
- Losing your voice. I believe one of the things that helped me become successful with Get Rich Slowly is that I was completely unaware that there was a personal finance blogging community at the start. I hadn’t yet discovered the echo chamber. Sure there are things that will get passed around any blogging community — they’re just too good to pass up. But it’s a bad sign when everything you post is a reaction to something somebody else has written. Be yourself. Write with your own voice.
- Writing too much. There’s only so much information a reader can digest. If you post too often, you risk losing readers rather than gaining them. How much is too much? It’s tough to say. It depends on the site and the types of articles. Lifehacker and Boing Boing can post 25 items a day because most of the content is summary in nature. They’re mostly aggregation sites. Users can choose to follow the bits that look interesting. Steve Pavlina only posts a few times a week. His articles are much longer than those at most blogs, and to post more often would overwhelm his readers. I think that Darren Rowse at Problogger has a good balance. He posts two or three articles of moderate length each day. If you’re posting five or six long items each day, you’re posting too much.
I don’t want to make it sound like I’m perfect and that I have all of these problems licked. I don’t. In fact, each of item is on the list because I’ve struggled with it in the past. The top three are perpetual thorns in my side. They keep me from getting things done.
In short, the best way to build a successful blog is to actually write. Everything else is secondary.
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I don’t make much money off my hobby sites, maybe $100 - 200 a month, but your point about over-monetizing your site is one to take to heart. It’s a hard temptation to resist…but by the same token, ask yourself if making an extra $1.30 from adsense each day is worth having your site appear to be nothing but adsense central (as an example).
Another important point which many people miss is to not be too clingy with your readers. If you have an email newsletter, make sure it’s easy for people to manage their own subscriptions or, gasp, leave. Even big companies make the mistake of trying to make it impossible to unsubscribe…what, exactly, do they think the person who no longer needs their service reaction is going to be to receiving their unwanted email or solicitation? Instead of a positive feeling or at worst a “meh” feeling about a company, they are now actively avoiding your products and bad-mouthing you to anyone who they can. It’s stupid to be clingy.
I believe one of the things that helped me become successful with Get Rich Slowly is that I was completely unaware that there was a personal finance blogging community at the start. I hadn’t yet discovered the echo chamber.
This is great advice. In fact, I’d go a step further and advise that if you intend to blog about a certain topic, you should deliberately avoid reading similar blogs. Better to find your own way. Blogs tend to acknowledge each other and either compete or pat each other on the back, and either way it’s boring. The most interesting blogs are written by authors who don’t appear to read blogs.
Remember to seek renewal away from the computer.
Amen. As an author, I try to observe this “sharpen the saw” principle by maintaining a 2:1 ratio: For every page you write, you ought to have read at least 2 pages. Your intake should vastly outmeasure your output. Added to which, as JD says, you’ve got to live a life: go to restaurants, visit museums, and collect the variety of experiences that inform engaging prose.
I agree with Roger about trying to milk your site, too. I read a handful of sites that feature ads, and I’ll occasionally go out of my way to click on them — because I recognize it’s a nice perk for the blogger, and it’s a small way I can show appreciation. By contrast, if I see ads littered all over your site, I probably won’t visit again. I’m immediately skeptical of your motivation. Blogs have established a place for amateur writers lacking editorial oversight, but I think it’s a small niche. If I want to read articles written purely for profit, I’d rather buy a magazine.
Get in a routine. Set aside a certain amount of time per day, if you have nothing to say, don’t say it. Work on growing your reader base during that time, doing link exchanges or buying ad space. If you don’t get into a routine, it is easy to not put as much effort into it. Same theory applies to going to the gym or eating healthy. It’s easy to start, harder to get in a habit of doing so and continue over a long period of time.
One thing Darren Rowse seems to be doing a lot lately is having guest bloggers on his site. That seems like a great way to keep from burning out and bringing a a little different perspective on things to your readers. Of course, to get good guest bloggers you typically have to have a successful blog yourself.
I compulsively check my stats and referrals. Occasionally, I get some small boost like being on page 143 of Digg. Other times I’ll find I was included in a Carnival that I had forgotten about. It’s a reminder for me to write a post about that. I’m still surprised when 10 people visit my site, so it’s almost always a pleasant surprise.
As for the “Ramit Sethi being the product” that’s great! It works for him because he uses his real name and people Google him to find that he’s knowledgeable. I’m anonymous, so there’s no product other than what you see. I think it’s still good to limit the ads. One of my regular readers praised me for that recently which is probably the best compliment I’ve gotten in two years. :-)
First off, let me say that I love Get Rich Slowly and I’m looking forward to your posts here, too, since I’m interested in pursuing more serious blogging.
Here’s one thing that’s an issue for me: Generic templates that I recognize from my own use of Wordpress. For example, the header image at Get Rich Slowly. It’s a generic one that I’ve seen on multiple blogs. Rightly or wrongly, it gives me the impression that the blogger’s not really serious or in it for the long haul. It doesn’t take much effort to replace a header image. (Just a minor nit.)
As a blog-reader I agree with all of your points. In particular, over-monetization turns me off so quickly. I’m usually outta there when I feel like there are ads and promotions everywhere.
Looking forward to more!
I totally agree with each item. The thing that made me read more of this article was #1. I don’t know how many times I checked Sitemeter, Statcounter and Google Analytics today to see all the traffic rushing in from being mentioned on Lifehack. I was just surprised to get that exposure.
Oh yeah, I’ve been clicking my adsense toolbar to refresh every 20 minutes or so. I have 7 times the normal impressions (partly because I added some more ads). I need to stop looking at my stats. I’m not guilty at worrying about others though.
Since I write more about things that are offline (marriage, home, etc.), it’s definitely best for me to get away from the computer. However, I read other blogs to see design, voice and methods. I’m still trying to perfect my site design and layout, and I’m seeing how more successful blogs do it. I want to keep my own voice, though, so I’m not emulating any one blog too much.
Thanks for the tips!
JD - Silly me. I didn’t realize you wrote this until #9. Great post with very sound advice.