Blogging Weekly
February 12th 2009 08:58
It's been a big blogging week. It has had highs, it has had a bitter low, and as always it has provided some blogging lessons.
The low was a failure to win a paid blogging position. More spit and polish went into that job application than any in a career which now stretches over a disturbingly long time. This was a job which I was convinced I could do exceptionally well, and I crafted an application which I believed would convince an intellectually impaired lump of coal of that fact.
It didn't. It was with regret, they said, that I had been unsuccessful on this occasion.
There is a useful trick in such situations. It is to write back and ask, in the interests of improving one's understanding and prospects for the next job, why the application had been unsuccessful. I did this a couple of years ago, partly from curiosity and partly from indignation, and received a considered and generous response which taught me several things about how I could better prepare next time.
The blog people, however, haven't bothered to reply.
The week's highs were record blog statistics and performance. In China, the number four is a bad luck number, and having lived there for many years, I prefer to avoid that number where possible. I overcame my aversion yesterday, however, when the Orble traffic email arrived and told me that I had had more than 2,000 hits from 444 individual readers.
This was 10 per cent higher than my previous best, and I woke the dogs performing a happy dance.
The number is still a little one in terms of the greater blogosphere, but I have been at it for only seven months, and all my blogs were started from nothing.
This is not something I would recommend to anyone starting a blog. Orble has a clever scheme where it retains abandoned blogs which people can take over, immediately acquiring that most valuable of blogging assets, search engine visibility. A blog that has been dormant for 12 months is still quietly raising its awareness factor as the Google and Yahoo spiders pass regularly by, like a creepy orbiting satellite.
To choose to start blogs from scratch, as I have done, should only be attempted by people who are confident they have the following professional and personal attributes: you should be a pig-headed, concrete-brained loner who never, ever listens to anybody else.
If that describes you, join the club.
The biggest lesson I have learned over these seven months is that readers like a subject-focused blog.
I started with Zoomies. The intention was to write some anecdotal pieces about my two greyhounds; the aim was put my toe into the blogging pond and learn a few things before starting my real blog, Vyoos.
I was in for a surprise. Vyoos has underperformed Zoomies, and this despite having double the content. The reason is that Vyoos, with its mixture of serious news overviews, odd spots, retrospective pieces and personal editorialising, is a hotchpotch of material which attracts few return readers.
Vyoos has generally received more hits, due to its bigger content. Zoomies has always received higher average individual reader numbers and, crucially, it has considerably outperformed Vyoos in link reader numbers.
Over the past month or two, I have changed tack on Vyoos, posting only short, opinionated pieces on quirky recent news items. And I now try to post at least five times a week. The result has been a major rise in traffic, and especially in link readers.
The next post on Vyoos will be the 100th, and this feels like a significant milestone. To celebrate this happy occasion, I have decided to write the next 100 posts much more quickly.
The low was a failure to win a paid blogging position. More spit and polish went into that job application than any in a career which now stretches over a disturbingly long time. This was a job which I was convinced I could do exceptionally well, and I crafted an application which I believed would convince an intellectually impaired lump of coal of that fact.
It didn't. It was with regret, they said, that I had been unsuccessful on this occasion.
There is a useful trick in such situations. It is to write back and ask, in the interests of improving one's understanding and prospects for the next job, why the application had been unsuccessful. I did this a couple of years ago, partly from curiosity and partly from indignation, and received a considered and generous response which taught me several things about how I could better prepare next time.
The blog people, however, haven't bothered to reply.
The week's highs were record blog statistics and performance. In China, the number four is a bad luck number, and having lived there for many years, I prefer to avoid that number where possible. I overcame my aversion yesterday, however, when the Orble traffic email arrived and told me that I had had more than 2,000 hits from 444 individual readers.
This was 10 per cent higher than my previous best, and I woke the dogs performing a happy dance.
The number is still a little one in terms of the greater blogosphere, but I have been at it for only seven months, and all my blogs were started from nothing.
This is not something I would recommend to anyone starting a blog. Orble has a clever scheme where it retains abandoned blogs which people can take over, immediately acquiring that most valuable of blogging assets, search engine visibility. A blog that has been dormant for 12 months is still quietly raising its awareness factor as the Google and Yahoo spiders pass regularly by, like a creepy orbiting satellite.
To choose to start blogs from scratch, as I have done, should only be attempted by people who are confident they have the following professional and personal attributes: you should be a pig-headed, concrete-brained loner who never, ever listens to anybody else.
If that describes you, join the club.
The biggest lesson I have learned over these seven months is that readers like a subject-focused blog.
I started with Zoomies. The intention was to write some anecdotal pieces about my two greyhounds; the aim was put my toe into the blogging pond and learn a few things before starting my real blog, Vyoos.
I was in for a surprise. Vyoos has underperformed Zoomies, and this despite having double the content. The reason is that Vyoos, with its mixture of serious news overviews, odd spots, retrospective pieces and personal editorialising, is a hotchpotch of material which attracts few return readers.
Vyoos has generally received more hits, due to its bigger content. Zoomies has always received higher average individual reader numbers and, crucially, it has considerably outperformed Vyoos in link reader numbers.
Over the past month or two, I have changed tack on Vyoos, posting only short, opinionated pieces on quirky recent news items. And I now try to post at least five times a week. The result has been a major rise in traffic, and especially in link readers.
The next post on Vyoos will be the 100th, and this feels like a significant milestone. To celebrate this happy occasion, I have decided to write the next 100 posts much more quickly.
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Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
You are right there. Just look at Charles on ZCars. I notice he often has 12,000 more readers daily than the next most read Orbler.
Yes, cars!
Comment by Chris Champion
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
Money Whither