It’s time to ‘get something off your chest’ about blogging.

I listen to a sports radio station here in Melbourne and every Wednesday morning while I’m dropping my son off to his Grandma’s house for the day a segment comes on called ‘get something off your chest’. In the segment listeners are asked to call in to share something that they’re frustrated about, something that they dislike etc. They get about 30 seconds each to say their piece.

It’s a great segment for a number of reasons.

• Firstly it’s fun to listen to people rant.
• Secondly it causes some interesting debate.
• Thirdly it leads to solutions to problems (quite often questions are asked, confusion is clarified or problems are solved).

Every time I hear this segment I wonder how it would go to do it here at ProBlogger on the topic of Blogging.

So lets give it a go.

Here are the ‘rules’:

• Tell us something that you’ve been wanting to get off your chest about blogging.
• It could be a frustration, a problem you have, a concern you’ve been keeping to yourself – really anything that you want – just try to keep it to the theme of blogging.
• Attempt to keep it to 150 words of so maximum (I’m not going to police this – but it’d help us all to digest everyone’s comments if they were shorter than longer).
• No personal attacks please – while I don’t mind if you critique things or even others – try to keep things civil and don’t get too personal in bringing others down.

Hopefully this won’t be too negative (crossing my fingers) but can actually be a constructive experience and lead to us learning something about the medium of blogging.

PS: in a sense this is similar to my previous What’s Wrong with Blogging? posts from last year and the year before which led to some interesting discussions.

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Last week I asked ProBlogger readers this question:

How Many Unique Visitors Does Your Biggest Blog Get Per Day?



Considering that a previous poll found that over 50% of my readers have been blogging for less than a year the following results don’t surprise me (as it generally takes 2-3 years to build a blog to it’s potential).

2144 readers responded and 35% of respondents get less than 100 visitors a day.

Here’s the percentage breakdown for each category:

0 – 100 – 35%
101 – 250 – 16%
251 – 500 – 12%
501 – 1000 – 10%
1001 – 2500 – 10%
2501 – 5000 – 6%
5001 – 10000 – 3%
10001 – 20000 – 2%
20001+ – 5%

While these statistics may be a little depressing – I think they are very worthwhile knowing for a number of reasons:

1. If you’re a PreBlogger (or a new one) – it’s worth knowing that building a blog with thousands of readers is not something that is as simple as signing up for a free blog tool, writing a few posts and expecting people to show up. Blogging takes work – time on a daily basis and time in terms of months/years of consistent blogging.

2. If you’re a blogger who is feeling discouraged by blogging and having a lack of readership – you’re not alone. Many (if not most) bloggers struggle to grow a blog’s readership.

3. There is hope – 5% of you have blogs with over 20,001 daily visitors. While this is a relatively small group when compared with other categories – it can be done.

One Last Thought

As I look over the above chart it strikes me that together as a community we have an enormous reach. I just quickly calculated an estimate of our combined readership by multiplying the number of recipients voting in each category by the mid point of that category (and by multiplying the 117 form the top category by the minimum value).

Using this calculation we have a combined Daily Visitor reach of 4,846,375. Considering that this blog is read by considerably more than the 2144 people who actually voted in this poll (we have about 15 times that many RSS subscribers) the numbers of who we reach each day is quite staggering.

I’m not sure what to do with that knowledge – but it does make me think that we should be working together more to support and build up one another in our readership. Food for thought.

Last week’s Poll of the week asked readers whether they use Full or Partial feeds on their blogs (or whether they offered readers the option of both).

The results were very clear with 75% of ProBloggers preferring to offer Full Feeds.

Here’s the breakdown of the results.

Don’t forget to respond to this week’s Poll Question – How many unique visitors does your biggest blog get per day?

Reader question time – can a blog get too much exposure?

I was over at Techmeme earlier today and after scanning through the latest stories there realized that TechCrunch is mentioned over 60 times on the front page. I did a keyword density test on the page and the word TechCrunch was the most common on the page with a keyword density approaching 3%.

Of course, this is partly because the TechCrunch40 conference is going on at the moment so there’s more than normal buzz going on – but I guess it’s made me wonder whether a blog can suffer from overexposure in a niche.

Another brand that could have suffered from this over the weekend was BlogRush which had so much buzz in this niche of blogging about blogging that I saw numerous bloggers complaining that it was being covered too much.

This isn’t a post bashing TechCrunch, Techmeme or BlogRush (I’m a fan of them all) – but rather just me wondering out loud whether there comes a point where a blog can dominate a niche too much and begin to harm it’s brand as a result of it’s over exposure.

What do you think? When does exposure tip into overexposure for you?

Two weeks back I wrote a post asking whether readers Use American English, British English or do you Swing like the Canadians? – the resulting conversation was a great one with a variety of opinions offered.

It’s time for a new but related question – this time it’s directed at bloggers for whom English is a second language.

Which language do you blog in?

This question is a real one and one that I get asked quite a bit by people looking to start blogs. Here’s one question that arrived in my inbox today from Alonso (no URL as he’s yet to start his blog).

“Hi Darren, thank you for your blog. It has helped me greatly in preparing to launch my own blog. I do have one question thought that I am stuck on. I am from Argentina and speak Spanish as my mother tongue but in researching the topic for my blog have been wondering if I should write it in English to make my potential of greater size. Spanish is spoken by many people but it seems that blogs are read more by those speaking English. What would your advice be Darren?”

Alonso’s question is not isolated – in fact I get asked it every week. I’d be interested to hear what ProBlogger readers think and do? I’m particularly looking for the feedback of those who have English as a second language and who have been confronted with this choice.