Top 5 Lessons in Blogging
Firstly let me say I am no blogging expert. This site has been running for two years and has offered a really great learning experience on how blogging actually works.
I think I have managed to make every mistake possible, from themes, style of posts, to running the wrong type of ads. Looking back over the last year in particular I have decided to list the top 5 things I have learned and I unfortunately I am learning the hard way.
1. Publish Articles Not Press Releases
Probably the biggest tip gained after two years of blogging is to avoid the easy content. You receive an email, a press release supplied with images and all you have to do is copy and paste.
Don’t do it. Yes it is easy content and a blip of extra traffic but visitors can spot a press release from a mile away and lets face it, how do you feel when you visit a site with a press release verbatim ? Press releases won’t grow a blog, sure lift paragraphs or quotes but you also need to add your own value.
2. Banners that don’t yield don’t stay
I have read dozens of posts from bloggers who are making serious revenue from their blogs. One of the best resource sites for bloggers has to be Pro Blogger. A recent poll of earnings in Oct demonstrated the range of revenues gained from blogging and the results were quite staggering although sadly I fall in the non existent level. Read the full article here.
Having Experimented with graphical banners in the header, footer, sidebar and more or less anywhere else they would fit I soon realised for the amount of real estate they were taking up, and the amount they were detracting from the site there was no point in them being there. For me they simply were not earning.
Most graphical banners don’t earn per impression but are on a commission and over the course of a year they had failed to actually yield an income. People don’t spend large amounts of money on income and a small percentage of a small purchase is pence rather than pounds. If your site is still growing then perhaps you need to hold off on ads until you can be sure of large amounts of these small commissions.
If you don’t run graphical ads on your site but still need to cover costs then services such as Textlink Ads / Inlinks offer a service that adds hyperlinks to keywords in your posts which is certainly an attractive alternative to 468×60 banners.
The point is most blogs exist not to make money but to share content. One gem of advice I have gained from the Pro Blogger site is focus on traffic and when you are busy think about revenue (if you actually even need it).
3. Have a Forte or Interest Area
For a year this site covered a range of topics and areas, including music, film and technology. It was clear from the statistics that some articles were popular and others were distinctly unpopular. It wasn’t that they were bad posts they simply were not of interest to the regular visitors.
A more focused approach to content, and restricting posts to one area actually builds traffic. I assumed that having three areas of interest I would gain music traffic, film traffic and ICT traffic the result were actually the reverse. No one subscribes to ‘blog soup’ they need a site to have a focus before they click the RSS button.
I also think we all have areas of expertise that we could blog about for hours on end, these should be the topics on our blogs.
4. Link Articles are for Twitter not your blog
In the past I have been guilty of posting a 3-4 sentence post, a single image and a link to a webpage I have just discovered. Yes people found these on the search engines but the result was they came to this site and instantly left again. For me such posts are a thing of the past. If you find a good website or resource then tweet it don’t blog it.
5. Blog because you enjoy it
This has to be the most important lesson. Add content to you blog because you enjoy blogging and enjoy seeing your site stats grow, your RSS readers group or your Twitter followers increase. Personally one of the biggest benefits of blogging is it offers the opportunity to get to know the profession and industry I work in.
Companies email you their latest offerings, the people I follow on Twitter post the latest educational resource site they have discovered. The enrichment gained by blogging to my own job has been massive, it really does offer an increased awareness of what is going on out there.
Personally the best bit is meeting targets, aiming for X number of RSS followers and meeting that goal. I predict this time next year (if I make it) I will have five new lessons to share, I am just hoping these five boost the readership this year.
3 Comments
Excellent Post! Very clear, concise and easily read. Has taught me a thing or two.
Thanks for this.
[Reply]
I disagree that links have no place on a blog, as long as the commentary provided with the link adds to it in some way. For example, posting a link, the providing a brief description would be completely boring. But, let’s imagine that you’ve just written something about NetNewsWire, then later find some new information. Rather than write more than what your readers need (or want) to consume, give them a link and tell them why you’re sending them there.
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DigMo Reply:
January 24th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Fair point Gavin. Perhaps a link and a paragraph of the benefits and to why that link is on the blog makes sense.
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