7 reasons this is the worst blog ever
I’ve been researching blogging for over a year now. Many use it as a way to make some side cash and, in some cases, as their main source of income. So, I’m blogging. But everything I’ve read tells me I’m doing it all wrong. Here’s what I mean.
1. No specific target audience. The gurus of the blogosphere say that in order to have a successful blog, it has to be geared to a certain topic. That way, the people who are interested in that topic will read the blog. The experts say it should be something you’re either passionate about or have a great deal of knowledge of. We already know I’m not good at figuring that out.
2. No SEO-friendly key words. Search Engine Optimization. That means when someone Googles a topic, they use certain words. My job as a blogger is to make sure each post is filled with as many of those key words as I can squeeze in. So, if you write a blog about horror flicks, you might want to fill each post with words like “scary”, “movie”, “zombies”, “decapitation”, “machete” . . . you get the idea. So what do I expect people to Google looking for a blog like mine? “The ramblings of a middle-age cranky bastard”?
3. No ad revenue. When you’re trying to make money on a blog, one way is to sell advertising space to people who want to sell things to your audience. You can sell space directly to the advertisers or there are services like Google AdSense that choose what ads run on your blog by your key words. With AdSense, you get paid every time one of your readers clicks on an ad. But how can you sell ads when there is no specific target and no specific industry trying to sell things to that target? No specific focus, no key words, no advertisers.
4. No way someone will hire me after reading this crap. Another way a blog can make money is to use it as a marketing tool for another venture. In my case, freelance writing. Theory is, if you show your expertise in a certain area and become the “go-to” person in that niche, people will hire you. One way to prove expertise is by blogging. All I’m proving is that I’m fluent in “cranky”.
5. No products to sell. Once you’ve become a recognized expert, you start creating and selling stuff. Most bloggers create e-books, audio files and video that people can download for $10 to $80. Some even publish real books that you can buy from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Even others create training packages for hundreds – and thousands – of dollars so they can share their wisdom.
6. No marketing. You’re supposed to market your blog. You write articles on web sites that link back to yours, or frequently comment on blogs and in forums that relate to your topic or interest. It’s hard to know what blogs and forums cranky people hang out in. It’s not like I can Google it (see #2).
7. No “list” posts. Apparently blog readers eat up any post that has a list. Like “10 reasons not to starch your shorts”, “5 ways to get the most out of a kumquat” or “7 reasons this is the worst blog ever”.
I’m hoping some of these things will change after I find my rhythm and get a few more posts under my belt. Maybe by then, I’ll figure out what my point is.
Miracles happen.
Don’t be too hard on yourself man, you just got started! You have at least one subscriber that I know of.
Hah, very entertaining post. This is my first time visiting your blog, and yeah – the first link I clicked on was “7 reasons why …” It’s weird that people love lists.