An Increasing Trend - ProBlogger Included

[Aequitas]

So just so everyone knows this is nothing informational and its just me tossing out some shit because I'm board.

Anyway every once and awhile (mostly when I'm board) I go around and have a look at some of the more popular blogs out their, one of the more popular ones is known as ProBlogger, this individual (based upon his site stats) has just over 20,000 people leaching off his feed and I still cannot get my head around why or even how he's managed to hold onto so many viewers.

He does write good information and you can find good past information but in essence he is not very informational (Confused Yet), what I mean by this is he is very vague in what he is writing, he doesn't go into a lot of detail on how to do things, mainly he just suggests things that have previously worked for him but leaves a ton of blank space for you to fill in by trail and error.

More and more I see this type of reader interaction with major blogs, there are very few who actually take the time to sit you down and go over an in-depth way of doing things, now you would think that these more in-depth blogs would be getting a ton of traffic (If their information is true and good) but that is not the case.

So it brings me to a thought that people don't necessarily want to know everything about a particular topic, maybe they just keep reading in hopes these bloggers will fill in the blank spaces for them, maybe the readers are experienced enough to already fill in the blank spaces, who really knows.

But it confuses me sometimes to see a vague topic outrank an in-depth discussion. Well ok it doesn't really confuse me it's more or less just they way I think things through, I'm not a simple person, everyone I know tells me this I almost feel incapable of making things simple, I always want to explain more, I always want to teach more in-depth topics, I always think that a vague introduction to something that has a lot of blank areas would not do very well.

If your like me and continue to think like this (Not to mention you probably think your work is never good enough even though the stats prove you wrong), then you should probably re-align your priorities, have a look at Google's Main page, simple elegant and brings in more users then GOD himself could.

Ok I lost my train of thought, so I'm done typing shit, if you were board enough to read this then your board enough to comment on it. If not your shouldn't be reading this and you should be working.

 

[DirtyB]

My experience with ProBlogger is that, he has a constant group followers who are ready to reply something on all his posts. So, he utilize them effectively by giving thoughts and asking their view. This model works out for him since he has followers but might not be for lot of others.

Since I read lot of his archive posts, I cal tell you that he has lot of info packed content in there. So, he can be lenient nowadays in the way he writes.

P.S: During Olympic in 2004, he wrote 100posts a day. But mostly he averaged 50 posts per day in those formative years. I can hardly go beyond 10 posts per day.

 

[Deliguy]

i agree with you but i also kind of find it odd that you'd point to problogger. I understand your complaint with it but in that right there are a lot worse you could of complained about. A hell of a lot worse. There's a lot you loose when you get to a certain popularity level. I think thus far he's done a pretty good job. Most at his level are just downright annoying. IMO I'd at least classify him as a lesser of a hundred or so evils.

Have you ever considered creating your own blog? Take it as a personal challenge. Write shit that's so fuckin' good the big bloggers can't help but take notice. It may actually turn out to be more fun than you would imagine.

 

[yourweb]

If you got enough users writting things on your blog than others will follow.

 

[Aequitas]

i agree with you but i also kind of find it odd that you'd point to problogger. I understand your complaint with it but in that right there are a lot worse you could of complained about. A hell of a lot worse. There's a lot you loose when you get to a certain popularity level. I think thus far he's done a pretty good job. Most at his level are just downright annoying. IMO I'd at least classify him as a lesser of a hundred or so evils.

Have you ever considered creating your own blog? Take it as a personal challenge. Write shit that's so fuckin' good the big bloggers can't help but take notice. It may actually turn out to be more fun than you would imagine.

Sorry if it seemed like I was targeting Problogger, that was not my original intent, he does do a good job, there is no doubt about it, I was just pointing out that when you read through a lot of his work he only ever gives an introduction to the scene, I guess you can eventually get to that level with enough followers but you would think after awhile you would loose most because no new real information is coming out. (I'm talking value wise)

Its not only on his blog that I've seen it done with, its done on a lot of major blogs, they will write things that are not as in-depth as they could have been and yet people flock to it, I don't know maybe its just personal preference, maybe its because I am picky and maybe its because I'm a little more advanced on the internet then most people but it just appears strange to me sometimes how that works out.

Obviously to get to that level you'll need to start out with enough valuable content to get the people to stay but eventually you've got to take it to the next level (You would think), to continue to educate your more advanced reader base that already knows all the basic things, however this is simply not the case with most major blogs, its almost on a backwards spiral.

As for creating my own blog to write content that cannot be ignored by the bigger blogs like ProBlogger, well I've thought about doing it, I've thought about creating an internet marketing/making money blog but my biggest problem with that is the amount of people that simply don't want to learn, they've become so twisted with eBook scams that when they read quality information they skip right over it and think its just a scam.

I've been saving some of my more quality written work from some of my current blogs because soon I do plan to launch my own personal blog, not really to target a niche, more or less how Jon has his blog set up, to write and to educate people about what you know, the twist will be when I do get this blog all set up there will be no fucking around, it'll be strictly facts of what I know and what I know works.

I know the most about web development, programming, I know a quiet a bit about how to run a PPC campaign but their is still a lot more I have to learn, same goes with Arbi, and even Affiliate Marketing, I don't claim to be making a full time living off this stuff because I'm simply not, I'm sure I could if I invested some decent cash into it.........Ok fuck I'm getting way off topic now.

Anyway the point to this personal blog will be a full disclosure on some of my own work, a full explanation on some of my campaigns, full disclosure on how to do keyword research, the steps involved, things like that, none of this entry level stuff that you read on the major blogs, I of course won't consistanly write more advanced things I'll start off a little bit easier, have some introductions, but I'll have all my introductory articles pre-written before the blog launches, I hate launching a blog with less then 30 posts (If the blog is meant to hold valuable information and not for Arbi).

How can you tell I've rambled on for way too long already, good thing I clearly stated this thread as of lesser value then most haha, but yeah the next major blog I launch will be a personal/income earner blog to TEACH people what I know.

It still amazes me, I spend a lot of time online with people who are familiar with the internet so sometimes I feel like the majority of people know their shit, this simply ain't true, I mean look at Warrior Forums, 50,000 members I mean come on most of them have got to be getting tired of reading through shit by now.

P.S. If Jon reads this post I'm backing your ass up 100% in your eBook mission, its time to take a stand and fight back against these eBook Guru FUCKS who are continually scamming people by re-applying old CRAP information, those of you who write quality good informative eBooks probably won't be harmed but I FUCKING swear you GURU mother fuckers, your days are OVER.

Second P.S. I don't know where the first P.S. came from. Inner thoughts raging to come out I guess, probably because once upon a time I was the foolish one to read those eBooks (However I was never dumb enough to buy one, except for one time I spent $3 dollars on one, the rest I just eventually came upon for FREE).

 

[lerchmo]

Hey, if you guys are promoting ringtones or email/zip subs you cant knock on Ebook dudes just because your group of buddies are the suckers rather than dumb highschoolers.

 

[Aequitas]

Hey, if you guys are promoting ringtones or email/zip subs you cant knock on Ebook dudes just because your group of buddies are the suckers rather than dumb highschoolers.

Oh yeah hell no I'll never have full intentions to take down the dumb people who buy the books nor will I ever have full intentions to educate all people on the internet about how to make money or how to be a smart shopper.

Fuck we would all be out of business if that happened, we've got to keep around the house wives who spend like crazy on useless junk. (This includes keeping them uninformed but still interested to buy)

 

[Deliguy]

Nice dude. I say go for it. Show 'em how its done.
The net needs more advanced internet marketing resources. I'll tell you first hand its a very under saturated market. There's easy money in newbies but there's big money in experienced marketers. There's lots of them and no place for them to go. If you wanted to go the montenization route there's some good money to be made if you stick with it.

I also think the big bloggers know that first hand, but they've long since converted from an Internet marketer that blogs to an Internet marketing blogger. They are so far out of the game they can't keep up with the content expectations(frankly from my experience with talking to them most of them know barely more than the average newbie). I don't personally montenize my blog(more of a hobby than a profession) but i see no problem with using that as a motivation for others to get started on one. I did once put up a donate button on a small tool, and I still get daily donations from many people who don't even use it. They just think they owe me something. I couldn't imagine if I actually used my blog to sell something of value. So there is definitely money in it. There's no doubt about that, its just a matter of how can I motivate others to take advantage of it so I'm not so fuckin bored when i check my feed reader.

 

[Deliguy]

Another note of interest:
Speaking of Increasing trends with seo blogs...Whats with this new trend of "blogger games." I'm starting to notice that linkbait is dieing and being replaced with bloggers playing little "review me" "link back" "blogger vs blogger" and tons of other little games where they offer to promote other bloggers in exchange for them blatantly promoting them as well. Subscribers are getting traded around like god damn pokemon cards. I read this one popular blog recently and noticed that the last 8 fucking posts were posts designed to try to get readers from other blogs. Where's the value in that? What are you planning on doing with those readers? Are you so far out of the game that you have to remove all the original value in your blog in exchange to "teach people how to gain readers" or even worse "teach people how to blog for a living through example."

*my turn for a rant

It's becoming a big dumb ass fasod thats getting really annoying IMHO. I can't go exploring for new blogs without almost every single one of them having their most recent posts outlining some form of game for the "bloggers that read their blog" to play in exchange for some promotion. I'm not interested in that crap, nor do I intend on playing along. One of two things is happening. Either regular readers no longer have any value, or every single reader is now a blogger themselves. The worst part is, the readers are encouraging this shit by leaving comments saying crap like "what a brilliant way to gain readers." Stop it! Your value is dropping faster than the American dollar!

 

[Aequitas]

Whats with this new trend of "blogger games." I'm starting to notice that linkbait is dieing and being replaced with bloggers playing little "review me" "link back" "blogger vs blogger"

I call these people John Chow Readers haha, I'm sure he didn't start this trend but he sure the fuck influences it and yes I know all about it, in a way its good but in a way it SUCKS DICK.

Its good because personally I cannot stand having a huge fucking blogroll on my blogs, the 3 blogs in my sig have blogrolls on them and I cannot stand them, the reason why their their is to kick start the Google ranks a little bit. The reason why so many more people are playing these blogging games is because some are like me and hate large blogrolls and more people are beginning to understand that standard riciprical link exchanges don't do very much for the SERPS anymore.

Now there is a lot in their that people here won't agree with because why would anyone get rid of a riciprical link exchange on their main pages only to have lesser value pages link back to them, it makes no sense what so ever and yes I know that, it doesn't make any sense, I think were leaning towards newbies here.

The large majority of bloggers are younger people who don't know dick shit about this and that, 52 million blogs out their last time I checked (Probably 200 Mil now), but out of those I would easily say the large majority just want to type and in the past blogrolls were a natural thing that evolved, bloggers love to link to other blogs, Google picked up on this when blogging was becoming popular and started to give more weight to the websites that had natural backlinks from Blogs, heck they still do.

I'm not going to ramble on with this a lot because I'm already starting to loose my original train of thought but funny enough this brings me back to something I read on ProBlogger, the statement was.

"I no longer link to other blogs through a blogroll, the reason behind this is because I no longer need to, I write content that people naturally link to, hense backlinks hold more weight then anything else."

Ok he didn't say it in exactly those words but simply put if you write good informative content then people will link back to you, an example of this is last week I did up a list of resources for some of my readers, this list was SUPER basic ways to bring additional traffic to your blog, in two days I got 10 free backlinks from it, I noticed because my Technorati rank wen't from 130,000 to 64,000 in that short time frame.

But I'm with you on that these new blog games that people are evolving into, I think its the next generation of blogrolls, give it some time and less blogrolls will be around and more blog posts will be around, good news for us who know better and bad news for those who don't because soon all these newbie bloggers will only be writing about how good this other blog is and no one will be giving any valuable information on their niche anymore.

 

[Deliguy]

"I no longer link to other blogs through a blogroll, the reason behind this is because I no longer need to, I write content that people naturally link to, hense backlinks hold more weight then anything else."

Thats kind of funny because it reminds me of a prewritten email draft I have for every blog roll link exchange request I get. It says something along the lines of. "Forget about the exchange. I will happily add you to my blogroll without an exchange. All I require is that you email me a link to any single post on your blog that you feel is in the Blue hat spirit. Any blog post that you think truly helps people better their careers online or develops a technique that will help them will do. If your blog offers something like that I'll happily link to you." The odd thing is. Less than 1% email me back with a link, they just add me to the blogroll anyways.

I see no reason in being cocky about a stupid blogroll. Anyone who thinks their content is so supreme I wouldn't want to check their links anyways. I'm not so whitehat that I think a site I own should be all about the visitors, but its motivation enough to create a good blog roll of sites that you read just for the sake of using it as your own bookmark system..haha.

 

[Aequitas]

but its motivation enough to create a good blog roll of sites that you read just for the sake of using it as your own bookmark system..haha.

I should have said I don't hate all blogrolls haha only ones which get out of control, a blogroll of around 10 or so links, still looks good and can help if those return links have a good rank.

Its when people start getting to link to you more and more and soon your blogroll gets into the hundreds of sites and your like holy fuck I've got to fix this mess and then you create a section dedicated to your links, only to recieve a hundred other emails and comments asking why their link was removed from the main page.

What I personally like to do now is leave a small section for my most trusted blogroll, link to the sites that has good quality, trusted content, and then for the sites I'm not 100% sure about but still wish to do a link exchange with I'll create another category called "Link Partners" or something, this has previously solved some of my HUGE blogroll issues in the past.

Even doing it this way I've noticed that the people linking to me are still linking to me from their main page blogroll, I could care less if they had a seperate category like I did because its only fair, no main page link to you can mean no main page link to me.

I still notice that their is a TON of people who don't really know about SEO and this is why they just link back from their main blogroll anyway. People can be funny and confusing creatures sometimes.

 

[cdc]

This is a very good discussion and I'm surprised there aren't more people chiming in.

TBH I've fallen into the trap of these "link to me and I'll link to you" games, but I'm going to put a stop to it now and just focus on building content. I still have a small reader base (110 readers or so) and my goal is to increase that 10-fold over the first year.

My blog is just a few months old and I think the biggest issues for a new blog is getting people to:

1. Visit your site
2. Take the time to digest two or three posts
3. Trust that the information you give is valuable
4. Subscribe to the feed or come back later

The general thought was that by getting a blog with an established user base to link to you will help with 1. and 3. However, I think because these games have become so pervasive people don't even read those posts anymore. I mean, do you really think the 1000 people on John Chow's feed list are sitting there clicking on the links to the 157th "Review My Blog For A Backlink Post"? No, they're skipping over it to read the "This is what I ate for lunch" post.

I think a better way to accomplish the 1-4 from above is to do a guest post on a blog and blow the blog's readers away. If you do that, they'll come back for more. I'm trying to get a new design for my blog and once that's done I'm going to start looking into this (Eli, I will be contacting you).

I agree with Eli that the industry needs more bloggers telling it like it is. The blogs that I really look forward to reading are:

Blue Hat SEO
Earners Blog

and that's about it. Everything else has a 90% noise to signal ratio.

 

[Aequitas]

My blog is just a few months old and I think the biggest issues for a new blog is getting people to:

1. Visit your site
2. Take the time to digest two or three posts
3. Trust that the information you give is valuable
4. Subscribe to the feed or come back later

I agree with Eli that the industry needs more bloggers telling it like it is. The blogs that I really look forward to reading are:

Blue Hat SEO
Earners Blog

and that's about it. Everything else has a 90% noise to signal ratio.

I agree that the 1 - 5 list is accurate for a newer start up blog, getting traffic to your blog is one thing, getting them to stay longer then 30 seconds is an entirely different story, with most new blogs that start up you should notice in your tracking about 50% or so of your first time visitors won't stay longer then 30 seconds, however I think these people eventually miss out and if their interested enough they will come back once you start to get more return readers talking about you.

Yeah I like the two blogs mentioned above as well, there truly is way too many blogs out their that don't tell it how it is, some promote affiliate products, while others are just there, but if were sticking to the internet marketing/ making money type of blogs then I'd up that number to about 94% are all noise, the few that sit back to provide the good stuff are the ones that will succeed in the long run.

I laugh every time I think about some of the crap blogs out there, I don't know if some people just don't know any better or if they are just trying to push out a ton of content and hope for the best. It makes you wonder what is going through their heads, well not really I wouldn't want to be exposed to that way of thinking for too long.

P.S. Its fairly late at night so I'm assuming thats why not a lot of people have been chiming in on this, I'm off to bed now but I'm sure there will be a whole wack of new posts on this topic to read when I wake up.

 

[Deliguy]

I completely agree with both of your points...*boy this is turning into a good discussion* I think people sometimes get caught up in post volume. They think you got to have lots of stuff to read in order to get readers. When the reality is, you got to have lots of discussion to get readers. Close but not quite the same. How many individual blog posts of other peoples can you remember down to the detail? Only the ones you've revisited many times over. For me personally there's only two reasons why I would revisit the same post over and over, sometimes even more than once a day, and that is if it either contains exact instructions on something I need to do; or i posted a comment and I'm hoping for a response.

I think CDC hit the nail on the head with those four factors and I think if you either provide people with some sort of project or something to do than they will not only have to revisit consistently but they will more than likely have questions about it. Therefore you got steps 1,2,& 4 down tight. Once they are that involved 3 is a given. The problem I have is my tendency to ramble and my typical post is extremely fuckin long. I also don't headline my post titles (make them catchy and overrated). Which is disheartening for retaining first time visitors who haven't received a strong recommendation or previous interest in a specific post.

I don't really look that deep into any form of traffic strategy(in fact i really have none) but if you want to analyze it; long posts aren't so bad. When people on forums make a reference they really have no choice but to put a link to the post and strongly recommend the people wondering the answer to the question read the post. It's too big and detailed to just quote. Once they read it its not hard to get hooked and its not so much a nuance to anticipate and read every post after and through the archives.

So my rebuttal to the people Aequatas was talking about would have to be. Make one SINGLE good bragging right post. A post you're insanely proud of. If you got that, loyal readership is easy. Hell, tell me about the post and I'll personally see if i can find you any interested readers. I have faith in people. If i see one post that really captures my attention, theres no doubt in my mind they can't make another one, even if i have to continue reading every low quality post they write for the next couple months.

I also do this sneaky tactic that I'm very open about. Every post I write I try to include a little extra helpful tidbit in the comments. I try to force people to expect it. I try to let people know that there is more information that you will want to know in the comments, because if they read the comments they are not only more likely to come up with something they want to say or add to the discussion but they are also less likely to email me a question that has already been answered.

 

[engaged]

wait, so shoemoney hasnt taught anyone anything since ringtones got max'd out... is that what this is about.

john chow is an ugly link trader?

what what

 

[Muhammad Haris]

I have a simple blog with little information about "proxy sites".

A extremely hard topic to write on since I takes long time to think for the subject of new blog posts.

I have a goal of 20 blog posts per month to generate readership and loyal readers but I think I have to change the plans. From reading the post above, I think I should focus on quality instead of the focusing on frequency of the blog posts to generate loyal readership.

What do you think what should be the frequency of new blog posts? Every 3 days? Every week? Every two weeks?

 

[Aequitas]

I also do this sneaky tactic that I'm very open about. Every post I write I try to include a little extra helpful tidbit in the comments. I try to force people to expect it. I try to let people know that there is more information that you will want to know in the comments.

I like doing something like this as well, I try to encourage my readers to post in the comments there questions and thoughts and I'll respond to their comments, this adds additional content to the page, keeps it alive for longer, and it gives me more ideas for future posts, by encouraging people to leave comments you can learn a lot about your readers and their experence level with what your talking about.

What do you think what should be the frequency of new blog posts? Every 3 days? Every week? Every two weeks?

You should keep in mind that no matter how hard you try your always going to end up writing a few posts that are no very informative and you'll always have some posts more informative then others.

As for frequency I don't think it should be more then every week at the extreme most, I pride myself on making at least one post each and every day, sometimes I miss it or I'm too lazy but I do my best to make one post each day, its not hard and you don't have to write out an entire page each day but I feel that the majority of the information should be quiet informative.

If your trying to get a lot of return visitors and you only post once every 3 days eventually your readers will say ok this guy only posts every 3 days or so and for two days you'll get a very low visitor rate, two weeks or even a post per week in my opinion is much too long to wait when your writing for a blog.

This also applies to a time sensitive blog, for instance one of my blogs is about the NBC series Heroes and another one is on the Fox Series Prison Break, those are time sensitive, I've got to keep up with my posts in order to keep ahead of the show.