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Top Ten Reasons why ProBlogger has Slowed Down

Posted By Darren Rowse 20th of September 2005 ProBlogger Site News 0 Comments

A number of readers have noticed that my posting frequency has slowed here at ProBlogger over the past couple of weeks and have asked if everything is ok.

Thanks for your concern – I appreciate it a lot but please don’t be worried. There are a number of reasons for the slowdown – some of them I can talk freely about, others will become apparent in the next day or two.

Tapping into my recent posts on blogging with listshere’s my Top Ten Reasons why ProBlogger has slowed down:

1. Post August reaction– posting frequency HAD to slow down after the frenzy that was August’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog. In August I posted 204 times here – so far this month I’ve posted 71 (still not too bad in my books at over 3.5 posts per day). I never intended to keep up the pace of Ausust but have perhaps found myself with slightly less to say as a result of saying so much then.

2. Offline Work – as I’ve mentioned I’m in the final stages of a two day per week research position that I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. Deadlines have meant less time for blogging. October 3rd is the next and almost final deadline.

3. Six Figure Blogging – the course on this topic that Andy and I have been working is in its second week and I’ve been putting my consulting efforts into this. So far it’s gone really well – we’ve got an amazing and very talented bunch of bloggers signed up and I’m really enjoying our interactions.

4. New Projects – those of you who subscribe to my newsletter will have just received an email with a sneak peak at a new blog project that will go live in the next 48 hours. It’s take a bit of time to get off the ground. It is not the only new thing I’ve got on the go with negotiations on other online and offline projects under way.

5. Admin – the admin of running a growing business takes me away from my first love of blogging at times. This week has been one of meetings with accountants, book keeping and strategic thinking about companies, trusts, business names and what not. I don’t particularly enjoy this side of things but it’s a neccessary part of what I do.

6. Expanding the Team – I’ve had the realization over the past few months that to continue expanding my blogging business that I’ll have to either clone myself or learn to delegate. As a result I’m very slowly moving towards adding new writers in a paid capacity to some of my blogs. The way forward as to how to structure this is a little tricky and I’m taking my time on it – but am in the final stages of adding a great new blogger into the mix on one of my blogs. Hopefully in time there will be scope to add more as we work out how it might function.

7. Re-visioning ProBlogger – while I’m still totally committed to the overall vision of ProBlogger.net to ‘help bloggers earn money’ – I’ve had a number of growing concerns about what I do here that I’m still working through how to process. I’m committed to the idea of offering free advice and sharing my knowledge on ‘how to’ blog for money but am wondering how the best way to deliver that information is. A number of factors are at play here including the increasing number of requests that I get for consultation work (normally freebie work) and attempting to make this blog viable on a commercial level (it’s still barely earnings $5 per day which isn’t great considering the hour or two I spend on it each day). I’m yet to find the best delivery method for achieving my goals for ProBlogger and have been toying with some different models this past week or two.

8. Disillusionment – I hesitate to mention this here – but I believe in transparent blogging so I’ll give you a glimpse of my thought processes. While 99% of the time ProBlogger is a joy to run, there have been a few times recently where I have been a bit disillusioned by it when I see the way in which a small number of readers are using the information that I write. For example this week someone emailed me a copy of an e-book which indirectly uses me and this blog to promote Blog Spam. They don’t anything illegal or use my content – but point readers to my blog to learn principles to help them in their spamming careers. This is the second time I’ve seen this happen. Similarly I’ve seen readers take many of the principles that I talk about and use them in ways that either are pretty unethical or explicitly competing with my own blogs. I want to keep all this in perspective of course – ProBlogger continues to be something that I love and the disillusionment is still a very small part – but I’ll admit that it has been growing a little bit lately and perhaps is impacting my posting frequency.

9. Intentional Slow Down – A number of readers have reflected back to me over the past few months that the posting frequency was so high that they just couldn’t keep up. I decided at the start of September to reel back my posting levels as an experiment to see what would happen. The result has been interesting. Traffic remains at a similar level to August (in fact it will be up) but the numbers of comments being left on posts is dramatically up. I don’t have any figures at hand – but last 20 or so posts have been more commented upon posts than I’ve seen in a long while on any of my blogs.

10. Real Life – I am increasingly aware that I need to take time for ‘real life’. Fun, friends, family, rest recreation and relaxation – all these R and F words and more! As a result I’ve started a vegetable garden (and have resisted starting a blog to document it), am walking more and have decided to lighten up on blogging schedule on weekends. I realize that if I want to expand my business that I’ll only ever sustain it if I’m looking after myself.

So there you have it – my top ten reasons for not posting as much. I write them both to keep everyone in the picture of what is happening here at ProBlogger – but also because hopefully it shows some of the things that a full time blogger works through over time. It’s not just about sitting around in your Pajamas all day randomly writing stuff!

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Honestly, with you not posting as much, I don’t feel as bad for not getting to read it all every day. Even 3.5 posts/day seems remarkably high to me, but perhaps I just have my sights too low. I, for one, don’t think any less of you for posting less.

  2. Good for you for not falling into the trap of becoming your job!

  3. Darren – don’t get disillusioned. When you are good at what you do and you are prepared to share your techniques with others you will always find the people will copy you.

    Those who do copy you won’t last long simply because they fail to understand that this is definitely not fast money so don’t let those fatherless so and so’s grind you down. They’ll be here today and gone tomorrow and won’t have troubled the scorer at all.

  4. Top Seven Reasons why I read ProBlogger.

    1) Darren’s work allows me to continually improve my work.
    2) The commentators replies allow me to continually improve my work.
    3) I’m continually reminded how much work I have to do if I hope to improve:-)
    4) The posts have slowed down – allowing me to digest the information.
    5) The author is honest and transparent.
    6) The author has an open mind.
    7) The author embraces change.

    Thanks Darren (and commentators)

  5. Quality over quantity, take whatever time you need to make each new post as valuable as the past posts have always been. One thing to always remember is work-life balance… don’t let one overcome the other and be sure to enjoy both. It’s obvious you enjoy the craft, it’s evident in your writing, and the last thing any one of us wants is to see you leave the space.

    As for disillusionment, it’s not within your control to prevent others from abusing your good faith suggestions. Ebay won’t (and shouldn’t) shut down because there are scores of phishers and scammers out there trying to take advantage of the unsuspecting, don’t let a few bad people shut down a great thing.

  6. Uh oh … disillusionment and re-visioning and looking at a suitable model to earn some revenue … it sounds like you’re totally burnt out by Problogger (maybe you’ve said all that there is to say) – me get the whiff that you’re going to radiacally change this blog if not even do away with it to some degree.

    Sadly, I’ve sen this happening all too frequentlyover recenttimes – pople slowing down their bogging to work on their businsses.

    Remember, you are in it for the money (we are all in business remember people) – those that seek free consultation should take a good look at themselves and Darren, you’ve got to learn to burn these people off as nicly as possible.

    Don’t worry about the amount of posts – remember quality over quantity – when you talk like 3.5 posts a day as being just suitable I sense that you are driving yourself unneccessarily.

    I’m just as happy and doing well with 1 post a day.

    I’m keenly interested in where ProBlogger is heading with the revenue part as I’m always on the look-out at how infoproducts such as this one can moneterise (spellcheck??) itself.

    Anyhow, take it easy, Darren, and do what you gotta do .. and don’t look back.

    Maybe blogging for bloggings sake (ie: making money purely from blogging isn’t going to work) – maybe use blogging as a marketing arm of your main products/services (be they epublications, semninars, cources, services …)

    Is this the end of Problogger as we know it ???

  7. Vegetables grow in Melbourne? is there enough sun that far South :-)

  8. Duncan, hehe! all the vegetables i grow in my part of bleak city tend to die pretty quickly although my Italian neighbour grows the best batch of veggis I’ve seen … so I guess it’s just my shoddy gardening skills ;-)

    btw, sorry for typos in my previous post (#5) – ever tried to use a keyboard from a cheap intrnet cafe using those flimsy (very floppy) keyboards!!!

  9. Martin – up here you can grow tomato plants outdoors all year round – and typos grow on trees. :)

  10. Stuart – wo needs tomatos all year round, isn’t that what canned tomatos are for … for us city folk. ;-)

  11. lol Duncan – I guess I’m about to find out if they grow here. I did see the sun here for a bit here today.

    Martin – its not quite that dire. I don’t think you’ll notice too many changes to Problogger – not unless I go at it with a hack saw (or weed it to keep the vege garden metaphor going) when I’m in one of those 1% disallusion moments :-)

  12. I think I might have to start a blog call ‘interstate rivalry’…

  13. Laughed when you said : “As a result I’ve started a vegetable garden (and have resisted starting a blog to document it), “. Bloggers, like most writers, are self-referential. They look at life as an opportunity to write about it. The smart writer looks at blogging as an opportunity to expand their life experience.

  14. * Mental Note: see if domain is available: j/k hehe

    But, if you do start another blog about interstate rivalvry, you need a good name – naturally.. lessee …
    “Slam DUNC”? “Getz sMARTIN”? “Don’t Go DARR”? (

    (sorry – I don’t get out much – as you probably can tell) :-D

  15. havn’t met too many bloggers who do get out much…

  16. I read 20-30 Blogs and I have to say that your posting frequency in August was a little to high for me, so that I don´t read all postings. For me are 3 postings per day the perfect number, but not more.

  17. Darren I don’t think that the number of posts import too much, since you still write “quality posts”. And anyway august was very “special” !

    About disillusionment and spammers hope it don’t really influence on posting otherwise we’ll just cross hands and watch them working :-) And professionals are taking serious steps against “spam” so you can just ignore them

    good luck ;)

  18. Yeah.I noticed that but figured that you were occupied doing something else :D . Besides the wealth of information here is enough to bring people back over and over just to use as a reference even if there aren’t any newer posts.

    You’re doing an awesome job and the quality of your posts remains very high and very consistent :D

    cya!

  19. I think you deserve a weekend break or the cut down in frequency since you’ve really done good with the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog. I place no expectation for you and have tried to understand few of the pressures you might be experiencing being a problogger.

    That said, it’s always important to have time for the ‘real life’ and not live life on the Internet. In addition to that, I don’t see myself as a fan but as a fellow friend or companion who is also a blogger. :)

    Cheers.

  20. > barely earnings $5 per day

    that seems to be incredible low. is the sitemeter accurate? round about 2000 visits a day? but more interesting would be the number of real visitors and the number of frequent visitors.

  21. “that seems to be incredible low”

    I think you need to take into account the target audience for this blog. These are people who are interested in pro-blogging, and probaly know a lot about adsense and such. They’re aware of ad placement and are less likely to click on them. Moreover, a lot of the ads on this site are rather generic ads from the blog-category that we’ve all seen a couple of thousand times already.

    Of course, saying that this blog earns $5 a day probably doesn’t include the indirect revenue streams this blog generates. The Six Figure Blogging-thing probably wouldn’t be as succesful without this blog.

  22. Very true JeroenR – there have been some amazing opportunities come my way as a result of this blog which makes it all worth while.

  23. You are not just a ProBlogger you’re also human.

  24. Interesting point, #9. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I now realise that I do look forward to many of your posts at least as much for the comment stream as the initial post.

    I guess your posts are sometimes just timely catalysts for things a lot of us have been mulling over.

    It’s a good way to get your feed subscribers back to your site on a regular basis..

  25. Okay, this is why I read ProBlogger every day: it’s either that or read a hundred blogs to get the same information. As long as Darren provides such a service, I’ll read; but I don’t kid myself that he’ll do it forever. Constant change is here to stay.

  26. Not to belabor the point, but take it from one who knows firsthand…you want to spend as much quality time with your loved ones as possible. The internet will always be here when you get back, and the incredible amount of work you’ve put in already will more than likely keep your blog-income churning away, even while your taking a well-deserved break on the weekend.

    I personally prefer a Darren who is well-rested, happy and enthusiastic : )

    I’m sure you do, too!

  27. “and resisted the urge not to blog about it” LOL, good for you.

    You are also right about the posting frequency being to much to handle. I can only spend so much time reading and commenting on other’s blogs because I have to write on mine. Now I don’t read all the comments. Sorry if this was said before.

  28. I’ve really appreciated all the work, quality content, and thoughtfulness you’ve put into this site – and I’ve wondered how in the world you can keep up with it all!! I generally read emerging church and mama blogs: this site is one of the first “practical” sites I subscribed to. Thanks for sharing your passion with us; have fun with your others projects; and rest – enjoy life.

  29. Darren, you have been an inspiration to me and I would hate to see the end of Problogger, so I hope it doesn’t come to that. You have such informative and well thought out posts and I look forward to them each day. I used to be a casual reader of your blog, but have come to be a daily reader.

    There will always be times of self-doubt and disillusionment, but take a look back at your old posts and please take some of the advice you have given to us during this time. You are great at what you do!!

    As far as less posts are concerned, I’m with Mike Sansone, it gives me more time to digest the valuable information you offer.

    Thanks for your work!

  30. Regarding #8:

    No matter what you create, it can always be used for evil. That is the danger in creation, but don’t let it stop you.

    Regarding #9:

    When you post as much as you did last month, I pretty much just scanned the entries instead of reading each one. There was too much. Sometimes one good entry is better than ten good entries because at least the one entry will get read and noticed.

    Keep on truckin’, man! You’re doing great!

  31. If they are not copying you, you’re doing something wrong ;)

    It’s hard in this business knowing when to stop, I am experiencing fantastic success with my websites which I have been plugging away at since 1999, and I know how it can consume. But having laser vison obsession helps if you want success.

    Anyway Darren, great site, learned a lot from you. You could walk away now and know you’ve made a difference, so it’s all good. I grow peppers to help my sanity, hope your veggies grow well.

    BTW anyone going to the London ADTECH next week?

  32. Thanks goodness you’re slowing down. I can’t keep up with all the great posts as it is.

  33. As a former newspaper reporter,
    I’ve seen my words get twisted also.
    (Taking just snippets of quotes are the worst)
    It’s part of the business
    and the only way to stop that from happening,
    is to get rid of our readers.
    And who wants to do THAT?

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