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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

#81

Post by cominous »

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'm deeply sorry, that you have to read those disgusting words in your mailbox. To be honest, it even hurts me.

There are tons of people like this, I observe this behavior more and more these days. Go and talk to a random youtuber/twitch streamer how much hate they have to deal with for their "free" content.

I once thought its the German culture (doing business and earning money is almost a nono-thing in Germany and makes you an easy target), but I guess some humans are just like that...

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#82

Post by paulpauper »

patio11 wrote: post #40
DamnInteresting wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's tough to win the "I hope you die of cancer" demographic regardless of your actions, so why bother trying? (I have particular interest in this because geeks often cite them as the rationale for why not to price aggressively, because they complain about prices at every price point, including free. )

many years ago in a an online disagreement someone wished testicular cancer upon me, which was flattering, because if he really wished ill upon me he would have hoped for something that is far worse like stomach cancer (few survive that).

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#83

Post by munchbunny »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #50
alpha_squared wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first reaction was, "wow, what an unbelievably terrible message to get about something you've invested time, effort and emotion into." That's a terrible message to receive and I'm sorry you have to deal with that level of hostility. My next reaction was that those types of people exist and feel entitled to access content/entertainment. This should not be a deterrent from continuing to produce what you're already d…

What makes it worse is that the "nag" the sender refers to is our call for donations, which we use quite sparingly. It is only shown to readers after they have viewed 5 articles, and again at 10, 15, and so on....unless they click the "no" button, which mutes it for some time. So this is a person who has read at least 5 of our articles, and to me that means that they must be enjoying our work; why else would they kee…

I think it's the same entitlement mentality that leads to "I want to use my ad blocker but I also hate your paywall." Yeah, I get annoyed by ads too, which is why I pay a few subscriptions.

The New York Times concluded years ago that those people would never pay you anyway, so why bother giving them access?

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#84

Post by 8bitsrule »

Some very useful tips in there. Especially the first one: "No one has time to read your article, write the first lines like they’re a TLDR." Not a good idea for fiction! but it's essential to save a reader's time. If the main topic is buried 3-4 paragraphs down, I've already left.

Note that this one person is getting significant attention writing about a specialized topic (EDM). That probably characterizes most blogs that attract much attention.

A few people managed to be 'generalists' in the early days (e.g. Kottke), but you're probably better off trying to find a congregation that feels under-represented online and is looking for a home. (It's not a blog, but, e.g., deviantart.)

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#85

Post by SonicSoul »

baby wrote: post #63

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…

hmm.. from OP:

I’m 21, but I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years.

I grew up doing this.

What I’ve written on the internet has reached millions of people. Most of what I’ve written is in Italian, but I was also quite successful when writing in english. My Quora profile, reached 400k people in three months.

i feel like these are reasonable qualifications to give blogging advice. Your advice sounds good, but are you speaking from experience or is it just something that makes sense to you? what exactly do you find meh about his advice and why?

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#86

Post by SonicSoul »

justaguyhere wrote: post #46
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…

Seth Godin is an interesting example. Do you know if he started publishing one short post a day before he became famous or after? I guess once you have name recognition, then different set of rules apply. One another example is backlinko's Brian Dean. He writes really long articles and doesn't post often (but updates his older articles when relevant). He too seems to be doing very well

it was almost certainly after he was famous and i have no idea how successful his blog is. but he seems to think it's been great for him according to last interview i heard him on Tim Ferriss

as another example Casey Neistad said that his vlog took off after he decided to produce content daily.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#88

Post by dhimes »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #19
martimatix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to the day that a recipe doesn't come with a life story prepended to it.

With video advertising, sites have started to optimize for length of stay on the page rather than hits and I hate it. The recipe format was perfected in the middle ages - a simple list of ingredients and a description of the steps required. But the sites that capture the first page of search results for even the simplest recipe are all designed to keep you on the page long enough for the video ads to play through. Li…

So, I have a question: I'm seeing lots of videos on social media that are very long. They're cute or funny or amazing or something, but they seem like they are artificially long, like they are trying to keep me in the act of viewing them. If they aren't an advertisement themselves, then why is this the trend? What is the reward for engaging a viewer in a sight gag for several minutes? Are they gaming the ad companies by padding some "average view time" or something?

It sure smells like shenanigans, I'm just not sure why.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#89

Post by PavlovsCat »

mortivore wrote: post #65
alpha_squared wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would prefer manual curation. That doesn't scale, I know. But for people to learn to do it efficiently together, they need to learn to do it individually first. And only, after we scaled it with humans, we could begin to think how to automate anything.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#90

Post by iamthirsty »

SonicSoul wrote: post #85
baby wrote: post #63

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…

hmm.. from OP: I’m 21, but I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years. I grew up doing this. What I’ve written on the internet has reached millions of people. Most of what I’ve written is in Italian, but I was also quite successful when writing in english. My Quora profile, reached 400k people in three months. i feel like these are reasonable qualifications to give blogging advice. Your advice sounds good, but are you sp…

> i feel like these are reasonable qualifications to give blogging advice.

I don’t. As a 21 year old, 21 year olds are terrible at giving advice. There’s also the successful-bias problem, where you think you’re successful because of whatever you did, and that there aren’t other ways.

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