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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

#61

Post by mockingbirdy »

maddening wrote: post #53

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 "shoul…

Try keyword research tools like https://kwfinder.com and others to get a feeling for the search volume and competition for a specific keyword.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#62

Post by 3chelon »

Mnlfrgr wrote: post #12
qwerty456127 wrote: post #2

> No one has time to read your article, write the first lines like they’re a TLDR. So true! > For SEO don’t write short articles (>2000 words) So sad!

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

With all due respect, one single article ranking #1 in Google hardly constitutes proof, or turns the argument into a myth.

I am genuinely interested in the answer to this though. The idea that the article has to be longer/more detailed than the competition makes total sense.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#63

Post by baby »

I find this article meh. I've been blogging for something like 15 years so here's my take:

* If you've been wanting to blog, stop pissing around, open a blog on wordpress.com and start writing. That's my first advice to anyone. Don't waste time on the technicalities, just write. You can move your blog to another platform later.

* Be regular. This is hard. I fail this rule most of the time. But a successful blog is a blog that's been going on for ages. I've posted 461 posts since 2013 on www.cryptologie.net and that's why it is working well.

* Do not look for perfect posts. You are not writing a book. A blog is to share knowledge in a quick way, or to share what's on your mind. No hesitation, once you have something, publish it. People might call you out for saying something wrong, fine, that's free publicity and you'll have learned something new.

* Mix short posts with long posts. It's impossible to keep writing high quality content and long blog posts. So write small ones from times to times to fill in between better blog posts. This is what make people keep going on your blog. It's like a facebook news feed, it needs to have something every time people check it.

* Write on trendy subjects. What did you learn recently that could be helpful to other people? What did you have trouble to learn because there was no good resource on the subject? You could be that resource. What is google trend saying? Are there any trendy topics in your field? What are people talking about recently?

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#64

Post by wtracy »

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…

I would be so tempted to write back something like, "You deserve to live free of that kind of anger. If my website makes you that upset, please stop looking at it. I suggest incinerating your computer and stapling your eyes shut to ensure that it never happens again. Life is too short for anything else."

That would probably only bait the troll into doing something worse, though.

I wonder if it would be helpful/cathartic to have a central repository of hate mail that everyone could share their "fan" letters to.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#65

Post by mortivore »

alpha_squared wrote: post #44
startupdiscuss wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idea: a site that collects all the deep dive articles and groups them by topics/tags. Why? Because when you are out researching the next piece, someone else's article is being read. That way you build an audience. Wait, you say. I don't want my content on someone else's platform? That's okay, the "platform" just links back to the long form content. It can even have ratings, which are even more important in long form…

The problems with rating systems for content is they can often lead to brigading to suppress/promote content. At which point, you're on an infinite whack-a-mole marathon to curb that sort of behavior.

That's a good point, but what about a rating system that isn't directly user generated? Imagine that information on the number of times an article/content is viewed, and the length of time that content is viewed was used to generate a rating for that piece of content. There could probably be other indirect factors for "content weight" that could go into the rating.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#66

Post by mockingbirdy »

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…

It depends on your competition and your chosen keywords.

For most niches, it makes sense to write around 6-15 long articles (>6000 words) and then a bunch of 500 word articles that lead to the big article - most of the time a guide (you're doing on-page SEO and target long tail keywords with those small articles).

But people like Brian from Backlinko also show other ways. Strategies like Backlinko's depend on the backlink structure (he writes about it here [1]). If you try to do it without caring about the backlink structure (you certainly should, too), the way I've described is the most economic (basically a hybrid solution).

[1]: https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique-2-0

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#67

Post by baby »

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…

This is not how you get a successful blog.

Look at popular blogs, and when I say popular blogs I mean blogs where people keep on checking your posts, participate regularly in conversations, etc. They are all highly active.

On the other side, blogs that post rarely AND that are famous are very rare. People tend to forget about them. Note that a post that buzzes thanks to a link on HN or reddit doesn't make it a popular blog.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#68

Post by mortivore »

justpassingby- wrote: post #22

Eh, none of this really matters unless you actually care whether or not anyone is reading your content. I've been blogging random thoughts and assorted happenings in my life since 2002, and it's all out there on the public interwebz, but I write for an audience of one - me. If any poor soul happens to stumble across it, then that's their bad luck.

This is interesting. If you're not writing for anyone except yourself, then why post it online? Why not just use a journal or an audio diary?

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#69

Post by heavyset_go »

baby wrote: post #67
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…

This is not how you get a successful blog. Look at popular blogs, and when I say popular blogs I mean blogs where people keep on checking your posts, participate regularly in conversations, etc. They are all highly active. On the other side, blogs that post rarely AND that are famous are very rare. People tend to forget about them. Note that a post that buzzes thanks to a link on HN or reddit doesn't make it a popula…

This is true.

If you run your blog like a business, as in you have a real need for growth and to turn a profit, you will need to pump out content on a regular basis.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#70

Post by freehunter »

maddening wrote: post #53

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 "shoul…

100% agree. I run a network of very focused blogs with small but targeted audiences. Each blog may only have 3,000 views per month, but it's serving a city with 10,000 people, so we've captured 1/3 of the market for the entire city. And everyone who views the site is local. But I still hear companies balking at our advertising rates complaining that the CPM (cost per thousand views) is way too high.

At the average $2.80 CPM, we'd make $9 per month. In a city of 10,000 people, what would get more attention: a cheap Google ad, or your name sitting at the top of the only digital media outlet in the city? That's worth a $10 CPM, I think.

It's about the percentage of the market captured, not raw view numbers.

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