Why do you blog?
Posted on June 18, 2007
Filed Under Thoughts & Ideas |
Nate Whitehill has a great article on his blog Nate Whitehill dot com called Traffic Steroids vs. Natural Traffic, where he compares the traffic you get from a digg effect to the muscle build by using steroids. Go here to read it now.
I have never received anything close to 20.000 visitors within a few hours, but my brother has. He told me the exact same story as what Nate is describing in his post. I have only been up to around 400 in one day, which I guess, is not considered a digg effect. But I can definitely recognize the patterns which Nate is describing. These people are one time visitors, and have absolutely no increasing effect on my AdSense account. This often made me wonder why I kept posting my articles on digg. Shortly after I started JakobDK I realized that Blogging is definitely not a great source of income, unless you spend all your time working on it. One thing is that checking my analytics stats gives me some kind of small adrenaline rush. It is a great feeling, knowing that some people actually want to read my articles. But is this really the reason why I keep blogging? Of course not. There is more to it, than adrenaline rush and money. Here goes.
When I started blogging, I spend too much time checking my AdSense & analytics stats. Now days I do this once, every 14 days, more or less. I have started to feel much more excited about how long people stay on my blog, instead of how many people who gives it a visit. I also consider comments on my blog, a higher priority than before. Why? Because this shows me they at least have read my post, and not clicked some ad which they found more interesting than my writings. Don’t get me wrong, I consider the money I get from AdSense, Kontera, etc. as a cool side-effect of my blogging, but it is definitely not the main reason. Sure if I can get some money, by doing what I would be doing anyway, I will take it. So what is the main reason for blogging? Well as I mentioned before, the adrenaline effect is a nice feeling, however it is kind of starting to fade away. I guess it will come back if I one day reach the front page of digg. Another reason is that people hopefully will start commenting more, which will give me feedback on my thoughts. I think the main reason is to brand my self. I believe a blog makes a perfect ad-on to a resume. When you send a job application or your resume, you got no more than one A4 page to describe what it is you want, who you are, why you want to job, and why you should have it. Having a blog, where people can read more about you and your thoughts, certainly can be a positive factor. This makes it even more obvious to me, why quality content is more important than anything else. Lots of bloggers describe daily updates of a blog as one of the vital aspects of blogging. This can somehow be slightly converse since a daily update surely can decrease the quality, specially if time is a scarce source for the blog owner. I was a bit concerned about this when I started blogging. I felt a need to update my blog, as soon as I would see the figures in Google analytics were decreasing. This got me started reading a lot about SEO, and ways to increase my traffic. But now, I positively believe that quality content is the absolute main factor in this game! So no SEO, blackhat or whitehat would get me anywhere without content.
This is when I started realizing what my reasons for having this blog were. I am trying not to focus on traffic anymore, but instead spend more time writing useful stuff. That way I can use this blog to focus on increasing my langue and writing skills, get useful feedback on my thoughts, and make friends online. More important, I can use this blog to promote myself. Furthermore, I enjoy educating myself in SEO, html, etc. The adrenaline rush and the money earned from AdSense will be considered as side-effects. There are many good reasons to start blogging, but lately it seems like everyone does it to make money. I my opinion, this should not be the reason for one to start a blog.
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9 Responses to “Why do you blog?”
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Well your post was awesome
I completely agree with you….i was the guy thinking your way these times.
What else can bring you more happiness than satisfaction??..rest all should be like side part thing…the reward for your writing…
Enjoy writing and enjoy life…
wanna make me your friend?mail me if u can at moneznotevrything@gmail.com
Bye..TC
Traffic is very important but the quality of the traffic is important also. If you purposely blogging for money then a one time visitor is ok provided you get this visitor constantly everyday.
I agree that if you blogged just to share your life with us, then it more rewarding that the visitors spending time actually reading what you write and get the feedback through their comment.
But to have this consistent visitor too visit the site again and again, the rule no. 1 too follow is that the content must be unique.
Exactly! It is way more rewarding to know that people like what I write, rather than just leaving, because some of the ads seems more thrilling. Maybe this is a valid reason for removing my adsense. However, if people are bored here, they are probably going to leave, no matter what.
I went down the route of contextual advertising - it did nothing for me and also, lost me a load of readers. I’m happier to write just to entertain - it’s more fun for me that way.
Qelqoth,
I agree. I see you have a paypal donation button on your blog. How is that working out? Do you actually get any donations? I have thought about getting one, myself.
Well, I get roughly 150-200 visits per day. Since setting up the site in March, I’ve managed to get just over £120 in donations. Which is not bad.
Mostly, they are small donations from loyal readers when I used to write on MySpace but it’s growing steadily.
Sadly, there are not enough donations coming for me to quit my day job but hey - it’s working well for me so far and the pay off has been much better than AdSense. :)
Very well said. You can’t have content without promotion, but without content you’re just some loudmouth. This is a great article, I am digging it.
Qelqoth
Well compared to my AdSense earnings, that is really good! Maybe I should reconsidder, and remove my adsense and get a donation button. I think I will start by removing the in-text ads from kontera, since I am slightly disappointed, both about the earnings as well as the way they work. I will write more about that later. But thanks for the input.
Damien Riley
Well you know I agree :) Thank you for the digg.
[…] After a small conversation with Qelqoth from The Cult of Qelqoth, I have decided to stop using in-text ads from Kontera. There are two reasons behind this. The main factor is the earnings I got from it. I must admit, I have not been using it for a long time, but when compared to AdSense, it is, I my opinion just not worth it. This is obviously due to a low number of visitors, which I why I still keep my account at Kontera open, just incase I one day might reach a broader audience. In the time I have been using it I have got a total of 3 clicks, which has resulted in something less than a dollar. […]