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Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

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Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#41

Post by viraptor »

HurrdurrHodor wrote: post #33

Am I the only one who thinks it might have gotten harder simply because so many more people are producing content these days? That's why other commenters say they get their traffic from r/programming or HN. You are a blog in a sea of blogs and other crap.

I'd say more specifically - things that need explaining are created slower than blogs explaining them. The are still great writeups about many things, but unless you're writing about new web frameworks, it's just not that easy to find a topic in a popular development area.

Of course you can still post about something you learned and bring some new traffic, because you explain it in an accessible way. Or you may write about something on a company blog. But if your aim is to create new, unique tech content, the chances are there's already another blog post, 2 SO answers, and a few relevant mailing list posts on the topic. We're constantly accumulating tech knowledge and mostly we're running into the same problems.

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#42

Post by jasonvorhe »

arca_vorago wrote: post #39
parhurs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading these comments makes me think of a crazy conspiracy theory: Google killed Reader to promote search.

I think you may be on to something here. I bet it was a data based decision...

Reader didn't have enough active users to keep it running.

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#43

Post by personlurking »

vpslab_sk wrote: post #36

Well, here is my take on this topic, as a non-blogger(iow, consumer of sorts). Please excuse this not-that-well-written rant in advance. What do people - in my opinion - search for: #1 Help & advice on a specific topic (like, how to disassemble a vw golf 1.3 '87 petrol engine) #2 Specific information (list of vw engines) #9 Opinions (compatible with their views / controversial, ideally from people they like or hate,…

As silly as it may sound, my problem might be due to writing about my own interests. I'm not offering help or advice, I wouldn't even say I'm offering specific info (since what I do is more exploratory), and I generally leave opinions out of it.

If I had to explain it, I'm like a somewhat randomized, editorialized Wikipedia for a specific topic. I want readers to click around as if on Wikipedia, so they can gather a wide-ranging, hopefully in-depth view of the topic (in this case, a major city and its cultural/historical context).

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#44

Post by wodenokoto »

parhurs wrote: post #35
teh_klev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have ~100 blogs I followed in Google Reader, then when Reader was killed I drifted away from many of them. I wonder how many authors lost large numbers of readers because of that sad event.

Reading these comments makes me think of a crazy conspiracy theory: Google killed Reader to promote search.

The common theory is they did it to boosts Google plus. They wanted you to follow blogs interest on G+ rather than more directly via Reader/RSS.

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#46

Post by WA »

> Is the only option these days to be cross-posting?

No, it's SEO. For me at least. I don't follow blogs, but I find the same blogs over and over again, when I search for specific keywords.

The thing with blogs is: Usually, I'm looking for specific information right now. I need answers. I'd never sign up for a newsletter, because in a few weeks, I might've grown beyond this already.

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#47

Post by paki123 »

Blog Posts have almost no quality. A lot of those early blog guys cashed in, like ZenHabits, Ramit Sethi, etc. They are charlatons, who offer nothing of substance and charge 1000x for products becuase people like a certain post, and then binge all their other shit. It's just marketing bullshit. I have yet to find quality posts that aren't from intelligent people like Paul Graham, or Norvig.

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#48

Post by discreditable »

guycastell wrote: post #40
discreditable wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm another wall talker. Having managed forums in the past, I don't want to have to manage comments ever again. I blog for myself when I want to scratch that itch. When others find it useful to them, that's awesome. I don't run analytics other than Cloudflare, so I can see that people are hitting the site, but not what they're hitting.

Yeah, not a fan of comments either as they usually (on blogs at least) tend to be of very low quality (or spam entirely). It's not about feedback at all, it's that someone, somewhere, for who knows what reason, actually reads the stuff. I use self-hosted Piwik for analytics. It's pretty cool.

For feedback I have an email address (web@domain) as the author on all of my posts. To my surprise I really don't get much spam. However, I have received some useful comments and feedback thanks to it.

Re: Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

#49

Post by vpslab_sk »

personlurking wrote: post #43
vpslab_sk wrote: post #36

Well, here is my take on this topic, as a non-blogger(iow, consumer of sorts). Please excuse this not-that-well-written rant in advance. What do people - in my opinion - search for: #1 Help & advice on a specific topic (like, how to disassemble a vw golf 1.3 '87 petrol engine) #2 Specific information (list of vw engines) #9 Opinions (compatible with their views / controversial, ideally from people they like or hate,…

As silly as it may sound, my problem might be due to writing about my own interests. I'm not offering help or advice, I wouldn't even say I'm offering specific info (since what I do is more exploratory), and I generally leave opinions out of it. If I had to explain it, I'm like a somewhat randomized, editorialized Wikipedia for a specific topic. I want readers to click around as if on Wikipedia, so they can gather a…

First, OT, I'm unable to edit my comment so sorry for the typos, my spell-checker was apparently on holiday. Now, to address your reply, people _are_ opinion-forming beings, its our human nature. We do have opinions even if we try to convince our-selves we don't. Writing a blog without exposing your opinion just so you won't offend anyone is an intellectual humanity-denying crime. Its a form of self-castration in my eyes. If you insist on writing dry, soul-less pieces of wikipedia-like information, maybe blogging is not the right format for you. Opinions are the "sauce" of an article. We are all humans, no-one remembers that colleague who never had an argument about anything, but you do remember that one ahole who always meant trouble, his opinions and world views. You may even miss that ahole once in a while ("yeah, I'm sure would have said something to that manager")
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