Think Your Blog is Fine, Think Again!
It’s easy to notice the trend with bloggers these days. Let me tell you how things start. First a blogger starts a new blog. Then he would put up some nice content with it, dress the blog with a cute design, hire someone to customize the logo and so on. Then the blogger would start promoting. Forum interaction, blog commenting, guest posting and many more. After some months, the blog now averages over 100 uniques a day, with 10+ comments per post and some 50+ feed readers. Then the next more months, it doubles. So what’s the wrong there? Well there’s no wrong except for the fact that after it, the blogger thinks his blog is already popular. By saying popular, it’s like he can put up couple of posts a week, take a coffee, sleep, then still get a heap of traffic, subscribers and responses.
That is probably one of the bigger misconception in blogging. Of course when starting out, you really have to put ton of effort to get noticed. Yaro Starak calls it “sweat work” wherein you have to go to as many places as you can just to stamp your site or blog. While you don’t need to exert that same sweat when your blog starts to become popular, it doesn’t mean you have to stop working. Today I summarize some of the things that you should probably think about, before you choose to make the same mistake.
It’s Easy to Lose Readers
Let’s face this fact, bloggers comment so they can get notice and hopefully someone could get back commenting on them as well. With over hundred thousands of blogs in this niche (blogging, internet marketing), it wouldn’t take long for someone to forget you easily. I’m not saying that you should always comment to those who comment to you but you see, blogging is all about interaction. They say it’s easy to lose readers when you write something crappy. I say its easier to lose one when you don’t care about getting your content into them.
It’s EASY to SLIDE down
Well I always thought blogs are like offline property. The value decreases so fast if not properly utilized. Every blogs are always associated with other online stuffs such as Alexa, Technorati, Pagerank and so. I’m not saying those are super duper important stuffs. What I want to say is that things change so fast and we could say that sliding down is easier than going up. Losing money could be easier than earning as well. Think, every blogger is working so hard (and smart) just to get themselves and their blogs up. I don’t care what your blog is (and how famous it is) but I’m pretty sure that it could easily slide down if you are so quick to start thinking it’s famous.
EASY to lose advertisers
I mentioned it in my blog in my post about failures. When my blog started receiving 20+ comments and traffic stats were really so high, I thought I don’t need to maintain it any longer. It’s silly but I thought my blog was already like ones I’ve been seeing on top 10 make money online blogs. It happened so quick, the advertisers immediately unsubscribed to me and I just lost 3/4 of them the next month. What most bloggers don’t realize is that advertisers always check things. They review what sites are giving them a bad ROI, what sites are giving them poor click-through rates and etc. It’s more than just purchasing an ad space, and getting their banner up to your site.
It’s NOT easy working your way up again
I’m not sure if you would agree with me about this. In my experience, its not easy to gain something that you lost before back. I was notorious for spammy posts in forums before (long time ago) and so I had a bad rep around it. People there have always thought I was not genuine, even though I was starting to become sincere. It works the same way with blogs. Some of my daily read blogs before who started turning their site into an affiliate promotion blogs have lost me as their reader. I’m sure people have their own list of blogs-to-read. If you know your blog is in their list, then make sure your blog would be there forever.
I know some of you may not agree with those things I listed there that’s why feel free to give your feedback. I know it’s somehow ridiculous to exert so much effort on just a blog, after all it’s just a blog. But I’m pretty sure you always cared about your blog and how it can be improved, hence why you are reading Balkhis blog. Just be sure not to overthink about your blog’s accomplishment in the earlier period of your blog.
This article was a guest post by Melvin. Melvin is an 18 year old entrepreneur who blogs at MelvinBlog.com. He specializes in affiliate marketing, SEO and blogging where he aims to share his experience with people on his blog. Feel free to subscribe to his feed.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
A very nice post from your guest Syed. Makes sense. Another pitfall that most bloggers fall into is in making the blogs very complicated. Keeping it simple makes it easier to keep posting also.
Well I like the last point. Working your way up again is hard. In our industry for example. Clickbooth started out rough and they were scrubbing so many leads when they were just starting. Guys from wickedfire flame them out so what happened since then is that clickbooth had a tarnished rep around the industry.. Sure, they were proven to be legit but its pretty hard for them convince now.
Btw, great post
Really enjoyed this post! Constantly working hard on your blog day in and day out is something a lot of bloggers start doing but then let up as time goes on. However, in order for your blog to really succeed, you need to constantly put in a lot of time and effort and do it consistently! If you don’t, you will lose readers, advertisers, search engine rankings, and traffic all together. So keep on it!
I think that one thing all bloggers should continually look to do is to build relationships with their readers. Now and again, just put aside getting more visitors and more subscribers, and just focus on building a closer connection with your current audience.
Cheers,
Glen
I always hear people saying how easy it is to reach the top, but how difficult it is to stay there… so true.
-Josh
This isn’t as bad as bloggers who start monetizing the very first day they launch the site. Then these people quit after a week because they didn’t even earn a penny.
Yep, so true…
And also the danger of starting another blog, since the first one is doing well, then finding yourself failing on both of them.
I am a first time visitor, and quite like the posts here
I am glad you like the posts here and hopefully you will stick around
Very good article, thanks. Very important for us to remember to never stop working hard at our blog, even after it gets popular. It can only get bigger and better.
Absolutely agree with the top-reaching idea,the next step is going down,but it is not sad at all,there are many tops to climb.
I’m glad you guys liked my posts here. If you want to have clarifications or something to suggests, just leave your comments here. You could also visit my blog and I’ll try to reach you out as much as I can.
I agree completely. Internet marketing is a lot of “sweat” work. You just got to keep on going and not give up.
Nice article, you are right it’s important to remember that success is not going to stay forever, you need to work even harder when you reach it
[...] Think Your Blog is Fine, Think Again – Melvin from Melvin Blog.com wrote a guest post at Balkhis sharing his experience in the industry. Very inspiring post which you should read. [...]
Yes, You are right. I also thought my blog is fine. I don’t check new visitor last some months for my site. Thanks for good information.
Nicely written, Melvin, and absolutely accurate. One has to always maintain their blog, and of course keep some kind of schedule. I have backed off somewhat on the daily post, trying to give people a chance to catch up with more posts, but I have to say that I do miss not having something every single day. But it’s not always about us, but our visitors.