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What I learned in ten years of blogging

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Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#51

Post by pjc50 »

rchaud wrote: post #36
AndrewStephens wrote: post #20

This is good stuff. I blog for fun and I agree with almost everything here, especially the stuff about advertising. I am not against advertising in general but putting ads on your page is an acknowledgment that you care more about money than writing what you want. There is nothing morally wrong with this, but it turns a hobby into a job. Lastly, I encourage everyone to publish blogs or articles. Each blog post on an…

I agree with your last sentence about "each independent blog post". But you must realize that hosting content isn't free. If you want a blog that doesn't end with .wordpress.com or blogspot.com, you'll have to pay. Otherwise, you publish on Medium, which IMO is just as bad in terms of handing over your IP to content farms.

Github pages? (Rather steep learning curve though)

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#52

Post by pjc50 »

paulpauper wrote: post #28

I’m 21, but I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years. wtf..mindblown.. His IQ must be off the charts. no wonder he is so successful.

Livejournal was full of bloggers that got started as teenagers. These days the cutting edge is video, but internet text culture is not going away.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#53

Post by maddening »

Personally, I think giving numbers (like 0-12k/month in 7 months) is useless if it is not put in some context.

Several times I googled what should be expected amount of visits to see if I am doing ok or not. Result? It is kinda disheartening to see that after pouring a lot of love, getting rather nice feedback about articles etc, you see that you are getting e.g. 2k visits a month, while someone states that is "should be about 1k visits... a day". And you put some effort into marketing your content!

Thing is, if you look at the amount of searches of the topics you cover, you might find that the person who posted such advice caters to 20x as large audience as you, so that 2k/month might be a really good result! But to see that, you have to put the numbers in some context instead of looking at the absolute numbers. If we applied this to e.g. youtubers we could conclude, that random gameplay streamer does a several times better job than a science channel author.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#54

Post by ghaff »

SonicSoul wrote: post #17

One well researched article is better than a lot of mediocre content I remember similar advice on patio11 (Patrick McKenzie) blog that i really took to heart. something along the lines of "it's better to have a few laser polished articles, than a ton of content". so to this date i start writing posts and quit half way through to keep only my favorite ideas up there.. there is another camp i.e. Seth Godin who write a…

Like most things, it almost certainly depends. It's easy to get into a mode where you allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good and hardly ever publish anything because it's not just right.

(And, half the time when you do publish that perfect piece, it lands with a thud because others apparently didn't think it was as great as you did. I've had pieces I've tossed off in a few hours get tons of traction while other pieces I've spent a few days polishing don't attract readers at all.)

On the other hand, I wouldn't counsel putting out a lot of crappy 500 word posts even if you don't have anything fresh to say.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#55

Post by toyg »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #31
SonicSoul wrote: post #17

One well researched article is better than a lot of mediocre content I remember similar advice on patio11 (Patrick McKenzie) blog that i really took to heart. something along the lines of "it's better to have a few laser polished articles, than a ton of content". so to this date i start writing posts and quit half way through to keep only my favorite ideas up there.. there is another camp i.e. Seth Godin who write a…

I started a website in 2005 that is still in operation today. We started out posting 1-2 articles per week, I had a lot of spare time then. But that rate was unsustainable with our small team and small budget, and we reached a point of burnout, and had to decide whether to slow down or shut down. After a hiatus to mentally recuperate, we opted to continue writing, though publishing less often and digging deeper into…

Is anyone selling “hate mail as a service” yet? Because if there is a market for fake love (like-farms etc), surely there must be a market for fake hate. Maybe it’s just my misplaced faith in humanity, but couldn’t this sort of unreasonable hate be a product of dirty commercial tactics from your competitors?

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#56

Post by ghaff »

ta3216 wrote: post #30

I thought I read somewhere that ads make a blog seem more authoritative so I disagree about not having ads.

I really question that. I can't believe that in this day and age anyone thinks that having AdSense on a blog site is some indicator of superior quality. And affiliate links at least raise the possibility of conflicts of interest.

Way back when I experimented with ads and links but I came to the conclusion that the money was pretty trivial in the scheme of things and it took away from the otherwise non-commercial nature of my site.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#57

Post by toyg »

paulpauper wrote: post #29

For SEO don’t write short articles (>2000 words) Just more vague tips that maybe worked for him and won't for most. i have several articles on my own blog/website that are over 4000 words and all original content. Want to guess how much search engine traffic they get? Z-e-r-o

I have the opposite “problem”: my posts get weird traffic because of higher rankings than they would deserve. One thing I noticed is that titles matter: a “how to do X” is more likely to emerge than clever puns or artistic sentences - which is typically what one tends to use after writing longer essays.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#58

Post by mockingbirdy »

paulpauper wrote: post #29

For SEO don’t write short articles (>2000 words) Just more vague tips that maybe worked for him and won't for most. i have several articles on my own blog/website that are over 4000 words and all original content. Want to guess how much search engine traffic they get? Z-e-r-o

It works. The content should be SEO-optimized, though (it isn't "normal" content, it targets certain keywords). Your domain ranking, on-page SEO, link structure, even title formatting and other stuff is also relevant.

As someone who has 50k+ views per month on one site I know a thing or two about this.

I also write a personal blog where I don't do SEO and only get around 300 views per month. I could optimize that, but I just write about things that I find interesting (without doing keyword research, doing A/B tests, ...).

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#59

Post by toyg »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23
AndrewStephens wrote: post #20

This is good stuff. I blog for fun and I agree with almost everything here, especially the stuff about advertising. I am not against advertising in general but putting ads on your page is an acknowledgment that you care more about money than writing what you want. There is nothing morally wrong with this, but it turns a hobby into a job. Lastly, I encourage everyone to publish blogs or articles. Each blog post on an…

I like the current trend of being able to support e.g. bloggers (or youtubers, or whoever) via Patreon; I do believe there should be multiple providers of the same service because right now Patreon has too much influence / mindspace, but it's a good alternative for advertisement - not as scummy, and much more reliable. $1 / month / fan is nice. I follow one youtuber (and not the annoying screamy meme type) who seems…

I wish there was a way to do it with microtransactions though. I am never going to commit to yet-another-sub-that-I-will-forget-to-cancel-for-months, but I’d like to throw a couple of £ towards an individual post that I randomly find on the web.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#60

Post by 3chelon »

josefresco wrote: post #26
Mnlfrgr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That long articles are necessary to rank in Google is a myth. https://twitter.com/mnlfrgr/status/1074653395997388800

2000 words has never been the SEO optimal or standard length for articles. I've been involved in SEO for many, many years, 500 was always the standard.

Interesting. I know 500 was the standard. But my understanding is that the big Google updates (Panda et al) put paid to that model in favour of the "authority site" model, hence you're supposed to rank better for longer content.

I wonder if it only applies to new blogs though? Perhaps if you have good DA/PA/TTF metrics already then it doesn't actually matter about your content length.

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