More on blogger ratings
Mitch commented in the post below about blogger ratings and says, in summary, that he basically don’t care. My reply, in summary, was that according to Technorati, that’s currently true for about 19.699 million others as well–and counting up at about 100,000 a day.
I used to be just like Mitch. I went a year before listing my blog with anybody. I put the ecosystem on my site for a while last year, got really pissed off and removed it. A little after a year and some very lackluster results, I decided to get serious about blogging again. There had been about a four month dry season while I was doing some contract work that I was barely posting three times a week. What little traffic I had built up slowly drained away to about 20 Google hits a day.
In contrast, for the last several months my attitude has been that if I don’t post at least three articles in a day or one really long one (target is 1500-2500 words a day, every day,) then I am not getting it done. I think of it as working to build up a small part-time business. Or at least building a prototype for one.
There are two reasons I blog. First, I like to talk a lot of crap and I like to write. A blog is a natural medium for someone who is always on a computer anyway. Writing is also a good way to work through difficult thought processes and can even be cathartic.
Second, and more importantly, I want to figure out how to implement a successful strategy for search engine optimization. What can be done once can be done over and over again. A lot of people blather on about techniques for successful SEO, but there are few who can point to a site they personally built and run that gets 50,000 plus hits per day. And even fewer who can do the same and lay claim to all the content too.
In today’s computing environment, the ability to point to a successful blog is a strong testament to one’s understanding of and ability to manipulate internet technologies from a technical standpoint and within the context of mass communication and marketing. Not to mention a strong testament to one’s tenacity and persistence.
To put my second reason into perspective, think of owning the major newspaper in a medium sized town. Every town has a newspaper or two for one reason and one reason only: they make money. A fifty-thousand daily is making money and likely has a couple dozen employees to help them do it.
A good blogger can accomplish the same thing with a only a few people or even single-handedly if they are exceptional.
Now, unless a blogger is already financially free, it is only natural for him or her to have a desire to make money at a hobby. Who doesn’t want to do that? For someone who believes they can make a little bit of extra money at what is basically a hobby, a thousand, ten thousand, or even 50,000 hits per day is a goal that at first appears quite attainable.
Alas, such numbers are quite elusive for most bloggers.
The best advice I can give to a new blogger is to have a take, and don’t suck. (That is blatantly stolen from Jim Rome, so I’m sending him some love. Jim Rome.com) To make the little saying more applicable to blogging, it needs to be embellished a little: Have a unique take, and if you suck, link often to someone who doesn’t.
If all a new blogger can say is what a bajillion other bloggers are already saying, they better be blogging for fun.
Remember there are 19.7 million blogs–and counting–and Google displays search results at only ten per page. The top two percent of blogs is 380,000. If your blog is ranked in the lower third of these, your search listing will be somewhere between pages 26,000 and 38,000.
In regards to the post that Mitch commented on where I was discussing the accuracy of the TTLB ecosystem, Technorati, Sitemeter and the others, the point I was making is that if the metrics provided from the free services are not reliable, then I may not come up with the best solution. Or the right solution even. I may even fail completely. Knowing that the metrics are skewed to the point that they are worthless is just as valuable as knowing that the information is reliable. Maybe even more so.
The bottom line, of course, is that I may need to provide for my own stats or be willing to pay for some. I am not about to be one of these guys who complain about free services. I appreciate the work put in to TTLB ecosystem, it’s a lot of fun to look at.