2009 July : @ProBlogger

Written on 7/17/2009 at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers

My youngest boy will take his first steps any day now. He’s been watching his older brother (and his mum and dad) run around the house for 12 months now and you can just see in his eyes the desire to be up and doing it too. This week he’s started pushing around the block trolley (right) and is practicing his standing up without the aide of anything to pull him up.

It’s not been a fast process and by no means do I expect to see him running around the house soon but he’s almost ready for his first steps.

Many bloggers start blogs these days with the dream of millions of readers and making large amounts of money.

While it is possible to build blogs that are widely read and profitable and there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big – the reality is that it takes time and a lot of work to build these kinds of blogs.

New bloggers would do well to spend more time thinking about their ‘first steps’ than just the big picture dreams and goals that they have..

Yesterday while chatting with a brand new bloggers who had some very lofty goals for this blogging I reflected back to him that I felt that in addition to the big dreams he had that I wondered if he might also benefit from having some realistic goals for the short term.

Here’s a list of 9 first step type goals that I suggested to him that might be a good place to start:

Publish 10 Posts
Getting your first comment from someone you don’t know
Get your first link from another blog
Build your readership up to more than 20 readers a day
Hit a level of 20 RSS subscribers
Getting your blog indexed in Google
Get your blog earning $1 a week (update: only if making money from your blog is one of your goals – it’s not for everyone
First guest post on another blog
Having someone (not you or your mum) tweet about your blog

Note: Others goals might include goals more to do with setting up your blog including those related to design, platforms, setting up metrics/stats etc.

To someone who has been blogging for a while these kinds of goals might seem rather small and insignificant – but for a new blogger they’d be where I would start.

For new bloggers these goals might also seem a little insignificant also (in fact the blogger I was talking to told me I was thinking too small and dismissed my idea) – however I’d argue that to get to your big dreams there is a lot of steps in between – many of which might not be glamorous or as fun to think about. However sometimes it’s helpful to visualize the very next steps that you need to take in order to move towards your goals.

Tangent: I once had opportunity to meet a guy who had travelled the world climbing some of the highest mountains. When I said to him that it must be an exciting thing to do he told me that there are moments of exhilaration and excitement but that the reality is that much of what he does when climbing a mountain is pretty boring. It’s one foot in front of another type activity through foothills, carrying a heavy pack and not feeling like you’re making much progress. Of course once you make it to the top or conquer challenges along the path you have moments of excitement but it all starts with setting out from base camp and with the goal of getting to a point where the climb starts in earnest.

Once you’ve achieved these first goals start to increase them. You might want to double the numbers for the next step (although for different bloggers the numbers will no doubt be different) – then double them again and so forth.

What other ‘first step’ goals would you suggest to a new blogger just starting out? If you’re a new blogger what are your first goals?

Written on 7/16/2009 at 12:28 am by Darren Rowse

How to Improve Your Blog – Learn to Take Criticism Well

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

This comment from Jannie Funster caught my attention earlier in the week on my ‘best and worst’ post:

There are many attributes that go into becoming a successful blogger but this one is key – taking criticism well.

There’s nothing more disheartening than getting a comment telling you that you’ve done something badly – but it’s also an opportunity to improve your blog and make an impression upon your readers. Nice work Jannie!

Struggling to deal with criticism? Here’s a few posts in my archives to dig into:

How do you deal with criticism?

Written on 7/15/2009 at 12:20 am by Darren Rowse

6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It]

Filed Under: Blog Promotion, Featured Posts

declining traffic.png

Over the last few days I’ve read a few comments here on Problogger from bloggers who are feeling low because they’ve noticed a plateau or even a decrease in the traffic coming to their blog.

While we all want to see our traffic rise the reality is that every blog has days, weeks and even months where traffic levels out or even decreases. This can be quite distressing for bloggers who have big hopes and dreams for their blogs.

Today I’d like to look at some of the reasons a blog’s traffic might decrease and suggest some ways forward for each of them.

1. Seasonal Traffic

If you’re still in the first year of your blog you are yet to see what a full calendar year looks like in terms of traffic for your niche. Most niches have natural rises and falls in traffic.

For example (see below for a chart of visitor numbers) on my photography tips blog we see spikes in traffic in December and January. December’s traffic boost is generally to do with people researching new cameras to buy and January is generally associated with people working out how to use cameras that they got for Christmas. On the flip side we often see dips in traffic over August to October.

What to Do: The first time you see a seasonal rise or fall in traffic it can be quite confusing – however the key with it is to not panic when you see a dip but to identify opportunities to maximize the rises and to minimize the falls.

For example it might be that you need to tailor your content for certain times of year and what people are doing in relation to your niche.

For me on my photography blog this meant writing content in November-December on how to buy a digital camera (to capitalize on the Christmas buying trend), writing beginner photography tips in January (to capitalize on the trend of people looking for tips on how to use their new cameras) and during low seasons (like July when it’s summer in the US) writing topical tips like Beach Photography Tips or How to use a camera in the Bright Sun.

Another Tip – one great free tool for looking at seasonal traffic is to use Google Trends to analyze what people are searching the web for. For example if I type in ‘digital cameras’ I get this chart:

There’s lots of interesting stuff in this (the downward trend for starters) but it clearly shows what I’ve observed above – more people are searching the web for that term from November-December each year. This information could confirm a suspicion you have or help you identify a trend to capitalize on in your niche.

Further Reading: Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture it for your Blog.

2. Topical Interest

At other times of year traffic events can be triggered by other current events. For example I know one music blogger who has had a lot of traffic this past few weeks simply because they’d previously had a lot of content that ranked well in Google on Michael Jackson. Of course in coming months as the news of Jackson’s death subsides it’s likely that they’ll see some declines in traffic.

What to Do: The key with topical rises and falls in traffic is to try to capture as much of the rush of traffic as you can so that when the decline comes you’ve got new subscribers/readers to your blog (see further reading below on ‘sticky blogs).

It’s also important to be aware of upcoming events in your niche and writing content in anticipation of that. This can be hard in predicting the death of a mega pop star like Jackson but in different niches it’s possible to predict events.

For example - before the Athens Olympics I was involved in running a blog where we wrote a post in advance of the Olympics for every single event in the games. The posts included athletes names and any information we could get on the events. We updated the posts with results once they events had been run. As a result we were consistently ranking very highly for ‘Event name Results’ when people were searching for winners of events in Search Engines.

Further Reading: How to Create a Sticky Blog

3. Posting Frequency

One common reason for lulls in traffic is that a blog has had a lull in new content being published. I saw one blogger writing a post recently about how their blog was failing to gain traction and in the comments of the post a reader pointed out that the blogger had hardly been posting. The reality was that the blogger had produced very little to be read and so people were not visiting.

What to Do: Posting more doesn’t guarantee extra traffic but it can be a factor to consider. Chart your last few months of posts and see if there’s any correlation to rises and falls in your traffic – you might identify a trend!

Worth noting is that some bloggers report that when they post LESS that they actually get more traction with readers. I know of one blogger who was posting 10-20 times a day and when he dropped things back to 2-3 posts a day he noticed not only increases in comment numbers per post but that his posts were being shared more on social media sites. At 10-20 posts a day posts were coming off the front page of his blog so much that readers hardly had a chance to read and share them.

Further Reading: What is the Ideal Post Frequency for a Blog?

4. Shifts in Search Rankings

Many blogs see the way that they are ranked by Google (and other search engines) rise and fall over the years.

A Personal Example – Back in 2004 (just before Christmas) I woke up one day to find that my main blog at that time had all but disappeared from Google. I’d not done anything to the blog that wasn’t allowed by Google and hadn’t made any major changes to the site – I just disappeared. My heart sank (actually I felt quite sick) because that blog was the main source of income from my blogging and 75% of my traffic had vanished.

The lull in traffic lasted about 6 weeks before it magically reappeared. In that time I got myself another job and diversified my blogging and learned a lot.

What to Do: Sometimes search engines change their algorithms and occasionally they seem to lose sites from their rankings for no apparent reason. The key with this type of loss of traffic is to not panic, make sure you’re abiding by Google’s guidelines (not selling text links or doing anything else considered to be black hat) and then apply for re-inclusion using Google’s webmaster tools.This has happened to me a couple of times over the years and each time the traffic came back – it wasn’t quite as good as when it disappeared but things seemed to right themselves.

Further Reading: Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers

5. Poor Quality Posts

Of course another factor to consider when looking at the traffic to your blog is whether you’re actually building a valuable site for readers and producing high quality, engaging and useful content.

This one can be a little confronting to think through and might take you getting an outsiders critique or feedback (sometimes it’s hard to be objective about something you’ve put so much work into). As I look back on my own blogging I know there have been definite times where traffic has suffered when I’ve struggled for inspiration as a blogger and where this has impacted the quality of what I was able to write.

On the flip side there have been times where I’ve been inspired to write series of posts that have connected with readers and helped them in practical ways which has driven a lot of traffic to my sites.

What to Do: Ask yourself (and others around you):

Are You Being Relevant and Useful to Readers?
Is your blog helping your readers by providing them with value, solving their problems, entertaining them or giving them a sense of community?

If the answer is no then it is likely to impact the number of people reading it.

Further Reading: How to Write Great Blog Content

6. Promotional Activities

As I look at some of the rises and falls in traffic to my blogs I know that some of them can be directly tied to my own marketing and promotion of my blogs (or the lack of promotion that I’ve done).

Writing great content doesn’t guarantee a blog’s success. You can’t just build it and expect that ‘they will come’. Sometimes you need to get out there and promote yourself.

Perhaps the lull in traffic on your own blog is partly to do with taking your foot off the accelerator in your own marketing.

What to Do: This means different things for different blogs but could include investing into social media sites like Twitter, promoting your posts to other bloggers, networking with other bloggers, running a competition on your blog, leaving comments on other blogs and forums, guest posting on other sites, doing promotions in main stream media, doing some giveaways….. etc

Further Reading: How to Find Readers for Your Blog.

Keep Moving Forward – Don’t Give Up

There are many other potential factors that could be at play (I invite you to share others below) but the key is to not be paralyzed by the declines and plateaus in traffic that you experience but to spend a little time trying to identify the reasons and then keep on motoring on with your blog.

You can see from the first chart above that my photography blog has had quite a few months where traffic has plateaued and dipped – but I’ve kept to the vision that I have for the site and continued to keep working. A decrease in traffic from one month to the next is not pleasant but it’s not the end of your blog. If I’d allowed the dips to determine whether I’d keep blogging or not I’d probably have lasted 2-3 months on that blog and failed to see it grow to the point that it has.

Written on 7/14/2009 at 11:11 am by Darren Rowse

Elite Retreat 2009 [NEW YORK] – An Exclusive Learning Experience

Filed Under: Other Income Streams

I hesitate to promote this due to the price tag but it’s one of the best high level online training experiences that I’ve had – Elite Retreat.

In 2007 I spoke at this event in San Francisco (although got as much out of it as any of the attendees) and it was a fantastic experience. A very small group of attendees and some true experts in a variety of different online disciplines. To attend you apply and then are hand selected to attend (to ensure the most suitable people come).

This year it is happening in New York and the speaker list is again excellent. In fact as I just said on Twitter I’m very jealous not to be a part of this one because keynoting and heading up the speaker list for the event this year is Seth Godin. Also speaking this year will be:

Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney and internet marketing guru), Neil Patel (social media expert), Andy Liu (CEO of BuddyTV), Chris Winfield (social media and search marketing), Kris Jones (affiliate marketing expert) and Stephan Spencer (SEO expert).

Again – this isn’t cheap and nor should it be.

At the event I attended the ratio of attendees to speakers was low and there was plenty of face time available with each speaker. There were also opportunities for interacting with speakers over meals as well as the opportunity to network with other attendees (actually some of the attendees were doing some amazing things too and I know that for a few that attended the event profitable partnerships began).

Only 35 attendees will be accepted and they’re not accepting the first 35, it’s all about choosing people that they believe ‘fit’ what they’re on about so if you do apply put some time into your application.

The other thing about Elite Retreat that made it special was the lack of ‘pitches’ from speakers. The sessions were pure content/teaching, pitches were not allowed and there was ample time for question and answers as well as looking at the sites of those attending to help them optimize them.

If you have the money to invest into your online business I’d highly recommend checking out Elite Retreat 2009.

Written on 7/14/2009 at 12:48 am by Darren Rowse

Why Did Your Last Blog Post Fail? 13 Questions to Ask

Filed Under: Other Income Streams, Writing Content

Have you ever had a blog post that you put a lot of time, energy and thought into – that completely flopped?

Nobody comments on it, nobody bookmarks it on Digg, nobody tweets a link to it…. it’s almost like it was never written.

If so – here’s a few questions to ask yourself about the post to help you learn why it might have failed and to help you improve for next time:

could the title have been improved?
did the opening lines of this post draw readers in to read more?
could I have added an image to give the post a visual point of interest?
could I have added a question to draw readers into discussing the post?
was the topic relevant to my readers?
did I promote the post to other bloggers or my network?
did I publish this post at the right time (of day or the week)?
could I have called my readers to perform some kind of action?
was this post useful – did it fulfill a need or solve a problem for readers?
did the post have sufficient depth? – could it have been more interesting with examples, illustrations, opinions, stories, quotes etc?
was this post unique or just a rehash of what others are writing?
did the formatting of this post help readers to read it easily?
was the post concise or could it have been too long winded?

Of course it is also worth saying that sometimes posts just don’t have the success we hope they will and that there’s no real reason for it. Conversely other posts which we don’t think will really work can soar like eagles!

That’s the way the cookie crumbles some days!

Further Reading: Many of the above questions are fleshed out with tips on how to make them a reality in my series – How to Craft a Blog Post.

Written on 7/13/2009 at 12:40 am by Darren Rowse

What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?

Filed Under: Reader Questions

What was the best and the worst thing that happened to you in your blogging this week?

Image by hebedesign

I was reading the blog of fellow Aussie blogger Mia Freedman this week and saw her weekly post ‘Best and Worst of the week‘ in which she asks her readers to share the best and worst things that happened to them during the week (as well as sharing hers).

I thought it was a cool idea and thought I’d give it a go here at ProBlogger – but with one difference. While Mia’s readers write their best and worst things from all areas of their lives I thought it’d be more helpful to everyone if we kept it to the topic of the best and worst things that happened to us as they relate to our online activities/blogging/social media.

I’ll share mine below and look forward to reading yours. Hopefully though this we’ll all learn a thing or two from one another about what works and what doesn’t work in building blogs.

So tell us your best and worst. I’m particularly interested in hearing what you learned through the best and worst of your week.

My Best – Forum Traffic

the best thing to happen to me this week was some big days of traffic on my photography site, particularly the photography forum area of it. Friday in particular was a great day with visitor numbers 3-4 times normal levels. The reason? Actually there were a few:

1. Friday is newsletter day – Friday is normally a good day (usually about double the traffic of other days) because it is the day I send out my weekly email newsletters to readers. The newsletter not only contains the latest posts from the blog section of the site but also hot threads in the forum. But that was only part of it….

2. Twitter – this past week I decided to expand what I was doing with the DPS Twitter account and not only promote new posts on the blog but highlight key threads in the forum. The result has been really promising with a definite bump in traffic from it (I’d say it’s accounted for an extra 10-20% in traffic depending on the day).

3. SEO – just over a week ago I installed VBSEO – a plugin for VBulletin (the platform I run the forum on) that optimizes the forum for search engines. By default and out of the box VBulletin is pretty horrible for SEO so this plugin is one I’ve wanted to install for a while. The results were very quick – within 3 days we’d seen search traffic up by between 25-40% (it varied a little from day to day).

What I learned? I guess there were a few fairly obvious lessons. Twitter and newsletters can be great for driving traffic, VB sucks for SEO by default etc.

The other thing that I relearned is about forums – while the DPS forum gets a lot less visits per day it drives a lot more page views per visit. For example in June the forum area of the site had only an eighth of the visitor numbers that the blog area had – but had about 60% of the page views. ie: Driving one person to visit a blog does not equal the same as driving one person to visit a forum.

My Worst – Comment Spam

This goes back beyond the last week but as a result in an incredible rise in comment spam I’ve switched comments off here at ProBlogger on any post older than 90 days old. I know this inconveniences some but it was the result of massive increase in comment spam getting through the filters/plugins that I was using. The filters were catching many thousands a day but hundreds and hundreds were getting though and it was taking quite a few hours a week to go through them all manually.

As most of these comments were hitting old posts and because 99% of the genuine comments here on ProBlogger were on new posts I took the decision to switch off comments on old posts. I’m hoping that this is a temporary measure and have the tech team at b5media working on some solutions.

So there you have it – my best and worst of the week.

What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?

What have been the best and worst things that have happened on your blogs or online experience in the past week? What have you learned? What will you do again? What will you do differently?

Written on 7/12/2009 at 12:36 am by Darren Rowse

How to Build Credibility

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

How do you rate when it comes to credibility? But more importantly, how do you go about getting credibility if you don’t have any or not much of it? Important question for bloggers – Andrew Rondeau from We Build Your Blog shares some tips on building credibility as a blogger.

There are some interesting theories around this topic. One such exponent of a theory is Graham Jones who writes about the credibility pyramid.

This pyramid is made up of four key elements.

1. Knowledge (10%) – At the bottom of the pyramid is a band of knowledge. Although this only represents 10% of a credibility score, it is nevertheless the foundation. If you don’t know what you are talking about, you have no credibility no matter what else you might bring to the mix.

Focus (15%) – The next level up according to Mr Jones is focus which constitutes 15% of the total score. Focus describes the process wherein people do not deviate or go off at tangents. This is when we come across people who seem to be single minded in their opinions, approach and knowledge.

This does not mean that you need to bombard other people with huge amounts of details and information in order to be considered credible. It is more the clarity and enthusiasm as well as the consistency of the information that is being presented that allows people to assess the credibility factor.

In some instances it is even possible that providing far too much information can undermine the credibility score. Perhaps this is where the popularity of the ‘elevator speech’ comes into play. You have two minutes to present your information. You have to be focused and only provide the most important points.

3. Enthusiasm (25%) – The next component on this pyramid of credibility is enthusiasm. This has an allocation of 25% which is fairly high. We probably call this passion more often than not. We view enthusiastic people as being far more credible than those who are not.

Perhaps it is because we feel that if the person can’t be enthusiastic about their own topic then he can’t be believing in his own words. Of course this can be unfair. There are some people who are too shy to speak up never mind appear enthusiastic.

4. Care and Concern (50%) – Possibly the most surprising component of credibility is the top part of this pyramid. It shows that 50% of your credibility is associated with your care and concern. If you show that you care about your audience you will be able to gather up half of the score towards a strong credibility rating.

This means that when building up your online credibility you have to show a huge amount of caring and concern for the interests and well-being of your audience. No matter what you are trying to do online, whether build a blog, communicate with readers, sell a product or even just hold a conversation on a social media platform such as Twitter or Facebook, if you care for your audience you build credibility.

It seems that a small percentage of your credibility is knowledge, add to that focus and enthusiasm and you only have half of what makes up your credibility. The other half is all about caring and concern for the other person’s well-being.

That could almost sound right.

Written on 7/11/2009 at 12:57 am by Darren Rowse

Don’t Let your Blog Become Like My Sock Drawer

Filed Under: Video Posts

Got a messy sidebar on your blog? It’s time to clean it up (like I cleaned up my sock drawer today).

Note: You’re more than welcome to share this video and embed it on your blog/site.

Check out the full sized version of this on YouTube, MySpace, Blip.tv and Viddler.

Written on 7/10/2009 at 6:30 am by Darren Rowse

51 Minutes of Video Streaming Q&A on Blogging

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

Over the last few days I’ve been running a number of impromptu video streaming sessions on ustream (on my ProBlogger channel). The sessions have largely been Question and Answer times with a lot of the questions being the kind of questions I get asked a lot – so today I thought I’d record the session and make it available to others who were not on the live stream. Here it is (I hope Ustream is able to keep up with the demand – it’s been a bit slow for me today and I’ve heard a few others say they’ve struggled to see it):

If you’d like to know when I do these Ustream sessions I tend to announce them on my Twitter account – alternatively follow me on Ustream and I’ll hopefully answer your questions next time.

Update: Apologies to those not able to view this. For some reason Ustream’s ability to play this video for quite a few people is compromised – I’m not sure what the problem and feel your frustration – in fact I’m not even able to view it myself. What’s the problem Ustream?

9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers

How to Improve Your Blog – Learn to Take Criticism Well