I feel totally lost and don’t know where my blog is going because a lot is going on in there. I love reading your articles. Good luck and keep posting!

Having a site is like owning a shop. What feel would you like to convey? Positive and inspiring or negative and off putting? Many times, I have left sites in a split second, that are filled with too much profanities and anger against the whole world.

Evelyn

The merits and demerits of a complainablog can also depend upon the subject matter – if the blogger is complaining about serious issues that need complaining about, they will carry their audience with them. On the other hand if its just one long moan about nothing, readers will quickly depart.

A program appeared on TV here in the UK called “Grumpy Old Men”, which was closely followed by “Grumpy Old Women”, which consisted of a lot of middle-aged-ish sort of people complaining their little hearts out over very minor things. It was enough to make me want to chuck a brick through the telly. But I guess some peeps like that sort of thing?

I try when writing any post to ask myself, “Is this at all inspiring or more on the whiny side?” I try to stay away from whiny and being too judgmental. I have two kids, they whine enough. :)

I try when writing any post to ask myself, “Is this at all inspiring or more on the whiny side?” I try to stay away from whiny and being too judgmental.

I wrote a blog recently – “what beading can reveal about your personality – take the test”

The blog was supposed to be a joke. But I think my style of humour is perhaps not cross-cultural or something…I don’t know. I’m worried it has turned out to be a negative blog – when in fact its supposed to be funny. I’d hate to think that I offended people.

jess

When you look at mainstream reporting of music/concerts, both in print and online, so much of the time there’s a real lack of critical assessment and way too much fawning. I prefer personal blogs where bloggers take the time to be constructively critical and try to justify their views, whether the liked something or hated it. As such I don’t see negativity as a bad thing and think that it can show real passion for the blogger’s topic/niche.

It can also be really fun to write an angry post, let it sit, then pull the key points into a more proactive post. All of the passion, none of the whining.

I think negative blogging even if taken to an extreme can be quite successful. The best and meanwhile ‘worst’ example probably is Maddox with his “The best page in the universe”. Going strong since the late 90′s and belongs to the top 7k most visited sites on the net according to Alexa data.

It really comes down to the way you present it whether it’s a bad thing or not. In Maddox’ case I really couldn’t imagine him taking that 30 foot log from up his arse and start blogging positively, it simply wouldn’t fit his style and definitely would lose my interest for his writings or shall I say ramblings.

Next to Maddox there’s multiple other great negative bloggers out there as well on various subjects, whether it be life, politics, entertainment, etc.

It does depend greatly on the genre though, if you belong to the many blog about blogging type of bloggers it’s practically impossible to blog negatively. You’ll lose your current readers as the style changes and new readers will think just one thing: “why still blog if you hate it so much?”

Begin writing on how much politics within your country suck though and you can pick up quite a solid fanbase, depending on which country you live though you can end up arrested for it as well as seen with various bloggers in countries like Saudi, Egypt, China, etc.

Write on entertainment and have most of your entries be ratings of music, movies or games good for you you’re writing negative! People who rate movies like 10, definitely a 10!!, 10++, 11/10 like best movie ever!! all the time on their blogs simply suck to read. No not every movie, album or game is perfect, there’s an obvious lack of negativity present on blogs like that.

I am a positive person. You can tell by reading my blog posts. But not everything is positive. A healthy dose of negativity at the right time can help.

The Masked Millionaire

I do get your point. For example, I love Twitter and devote a blog to it. So when Twitter is down or seems poorly managed, it’s hard to take a stick to it. But tough love is sometimes necessary.

Passion will keep your blog alive, whether or not it’s positive. More important than trying to keep a positive spin is to stick with the basics that you have previously so well articulated on Problogger: keep posts timely, to the point and relevant. And above all speak from the heart.

A blog where comments are basically nothing but ‘good job’, ‘good post’ etc – becomes boring and an obvious attempt to kiss up if it is done constantly.

Also angry blogs are vexing and really and will usually get the types of people that comment on Digg or Slashdo – angry and unintelligent!

Usually the best bloggers are the really intelligent ones who seem to attract learned comments:

Two examples would be the Radar oreilly blog and SEO by the Sea and to smaller degree Techcruch (depending on the reader)

Contrary to this post, the majority of the comments are usually supportive of what I’m saying or at the very least constructive debates. Only one or two posts have really brought on commenters lashing out – and those posts being ones that have drawn in non-industry readers through search who didn’t understand the context of the posts.

The blog has also helped to build my reputation among colleagues – not hurt it. And it’s become my highest-traffic blog, a decent earner, and has a constantly growing list of subscribers without a lot of unsubscribing going on.

As for passion, being snarky keeps me passionate about this blog, and is the reason I didn’t call it quits for good a few months back when I considered it. I’m passionate, because I know that I can say what others might not, because I don’t have to worry about a boss or prospective employers looking over my shoulder. I’ve even gotten quite a few clients because of the blog, where they’ve told me outright that they love tell-it-like-it-is attitude because it’s refreshing.

I’m not saying I’m the norm – I know I’m probably the exception. I blog on the PR industry, so I can understand how pushing away from the kiss-ass hyped-up tone can be appealing to a lot of readers. It’s not the same for every niche. But I think saying it’s going to kill a blog is a bit short-sighted, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone be discouraged from blogging in a way that fits their niche, audience, personality, and their own blogging goals.

That’s different than having a bad attitude of “everything sucks, you suck, this blog sucks, the world sucks” type posts all the time. No one wants to read a depressing blog on a regular basis.

So, if you’re going to be negative, I’d suggest setting it up as a common enemy type play, rather than just ranting and raving like a maniac.

Because of that I lost interest.

But it can be entertaining!