
What I learned from a month of blogging and 250k visits - robfitz
http://blog.thestartuptoolkit.com/2011/11/what-i-learned-from-a-month-of-blogging-and-250k-visits/
======
DanielBMarkham
This is a good article. I liked and upvoted it. Nicely done.

Having said that, I feel as if I must in a good-humored way poke fun at this
type of article. The vast majority of the articles I see on HN talking about
overnight success at something (How I made 30K my first month! How I turned
40K visitors my first week into $3000! Etc) _are actually using HN as a
marketing channel_. So when I see articles that are 30 minutes old with dozens
up upvotes, and some kind of promise to tell a tale of high traffic, it makes
me laugh. Yes, with that kind of market traction I'm sure you had that many
visits. Next month we'll be reading about the really cool traffic stuff that
happened _this_ month, and this article is part of that. It's actually pretty
cool if you think about it: by providing us with something we want (advice on
blogging) the author is actually becoming a better blogger. Lots of nice
recursion there.

Please don't take that the wrong way -- I mean no disrespect. I'm certain
everything is on the up and up, and like I said, great article. I just think
that readers can easily get mixed up, that's all. As a reader you could start
thinking that HN was primarily a marketing venue. While I love HN and love
promoting my own stuff and seeing other ideas (Need books to learn marketing
and start-ups? Try <http://hn-books.com>), HN is essentially a one-shot deal.
As one other commenter pointed out, there are probably better things to do
with your time than chase an audience on HN. Blogging is a great activity.
Chasing eyeballs, at least to me, turns blogging into something a lot less
fun.

~~~
jonnathanson
_"Chasing eyeballs, at least to me, turns blogging into something a lot less
fun."_

An important corollary to this is: chasing eyeballs without any way to retain
them is neither fun nor productive. The article -- which I quite enjoyed --
does a nice job of pointing that out. And, while the point may sound obvious,
it's certainly nontrivial and not immediately intuitive. And even if you have
nothing tangible to sell, you're still "selling" your blog. So you've got to
make it consistently engaging to the people you've decided to target.

The first mistake many bloggers make is to write for themselves. They assume
that an article they found interesting to write will also be interesting to
read -- or worse, that an overarching blog topic they love is interesting to a
big group of people. Not always the case. You can write about your passions,
and you can always lure in a bunch of outside readers with a well-marketed
post. But don't expect everyone -- or even 99% of those whose attention you
got -- to stick around if they don't care for the rest of the material on your
blog.

I'm not advocating that everyone write big, general-interest, broad-topic
blogs. The internet has enough of those. So writing about a niche domain is
fine. Just _be consistent_ , and stick within that domain. Deviate every now
and then if you have something amazing to say. But don't be one of those blogs
that's ostensibly about X, but veers off into Y and Z greater than 50% of the
time. If I came to your blog to read about startup marketing strategies, I
really don't care what you have to say about college basketball, or Call of
Duty, or the pricing of the Harry Potter Blu-ray set. Don't write just
anything that comes to mind. Have the discipline to stick to a domain and a
"brand." Joel on Software is about Joel on software; it's not "Joel on
Software and Kittens and Foreign Film Reviews and Fixed-Gear Bikes and What He
Saw at Starbucks The Other Day."

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I think we're conflating two things.

There's "blogging" -- writing on the web for marketing purposes, and
"blogging" using the web as a daily journal.

My personal blog is my journal. Whether you care or not about the topics I
write about does not concern me in the least. I've been blogging for several
years and get 10-50K visits a month and rank on all kinds of weird and odd
keywords. Yes, it's totally awesome when I am passionate about something that
lots of HNers will find interesting. There's nothing like seeing 20K visits.
But if I'm just journaling for eyeballs, I am not doing anything but trying to
make a more and more popular noise.

On the flip side, I love writing targeted material: I have several sites where
I post niche pieces. Want to see my funny picture collection? I'm posting them
all on <http://caption-of-the-day.com> But I don't think of these in the same
way as my blog. The things you describe are all about blog/marketing, not
blog/journaling.

I would say that I admire people who can write tons of tightly-focused
material every day. But it strikes me as being a bit unnatural, at least to
me, like writing an encyclopedia by starting with "A" and writing straight
through. My brain doesn't work that way. Sure, visiting the site it's great to
have it all and nicely on-topic, with a little email sign-up, an ebook,
landing page and the rest of it. But that's not journaling, that's marketing.

If my goal is to write something people want, I'm marketing. If my goal is to
write something that helps me think, I'm journaling. Marketing is great --
lots of awesome things to share. In my mind journaling is better -- helps me
be a better person so that I can help folks better. So when I read "blog", I'm
not thinking of the web-personality who is the expert and writes everything
you wanted to know about underwater basket weaving.

I don't want folks to think the primary purpose of writing is to market
something. That's bad. Very bad.

~~~
jonnathanson
Totally fair, and I agree with you. But I think a lot of people market their
journals and market their subject-matter-blogs in the same fashion. They
"journal for eyeballs," as you very eloquently put it. Which is sort of a
hollow activity for both the journaler and the marketed-to audience.

I see a ton of blogs that _are_ conflations of journal and subject-matter-
blog: neither fish nor fowl. And that's where things go wrong, IMO. In many
cases it's a fine line to toe, but the blogs I've stopped following are the
blogs that don't seem to have a consistent leaning in either direction.

 _"I don't want folks to think the primary purpose of writing is to market
something. That's bad. Very bad."_

It doesn't _have_ to be bad, so long as the author of the blog is forthright
with his intentions. A lot of company blogs fall into this category. Many of
them are trying to sell product, albeit indirectly. I know that's what they're
doing, and I'm fine with it.

To your point, I _wouldn't_ be fine with someone who's ostensibly journaling
but keeps trying to sell goods or services. Or with someone who's simply
content-farming in an attempt to capture eyeballs and monetize them via ads.
There needs to be an honesty and transparency of intentions, one way or the
other.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Funnily enough, I started my blog as a marketing tool. I read up some of those
"how to blog" books that came out when blogging first took off.

I found I couldn't do it. I could either tightly focus -- and lose interest in
writing -- or write what I wanted -- and write solely for me.

My old job is consulting, so I have a fair amount of consulting material on my
blog. I'm wrapping up some of it into an ebook. But I wouldn't use the blog to
promote the ebook, at least not directly. It's just not targeted for that.
Instead, I'll probably set up a micro-site for ebook and crank out a couple of
dozen high-quality resource articles.

I actually love writing targeted articles as well, but I just can't maintain
the energy level for more than a few weeks. What can I say? Stuff bores me
easily.

------
sandee
"Tweaking a button and seeing conversions increase 8-fold is a beautiful
thing. Seeing an hour of work turn into 120k visits is magical."

If you are a starter at HN, then do not get misguided by the quote above. If
you are aiming for using blog writing as SEO for product marketing and
reaching out to new customers then it is good effort. But if you are looking
to get eyeballs for adv revenue then stop right there. There are better things
you can do with your time.

~~~
babuskov
When is the last time someone earned a lot of money from blog? Maybe five
years ago. These days blogs are only used to get traffic, either directly or
via SEO, to pages where you sell the real product to the customer.

~~~
acangiano
I make thousands of dollars from my blogs. I wrote a book on how people can do
the same (or at least close to it) here:
<http://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging>

~~~
simon
A great book and one that I am reading diligently as I work up to re-entering
the world of blogging. I stopped blogging half a dozen years ago as I was
making no money and using plenty of time. This time I intend to manage the
time aspect more carefully and apply some gentle moneytization techniques.

~~~
acangiano
Thank you, Simon. I appreciate your positive remarks about my book.

------
ofca
I have had the same experience when my 'Is tumblr a bot fest?' post got #1 on
HN. I went from 10 views a day to more than 1k a day. Those types of things
are crazy.

My only advice is - dont let it go to your head. Keep writing. Keep thinking.
Keep hustling.

------
robjohnson
Good article about getting at the core of what users ALREADY want. I think
that this is the crux of the confusion for most people. Many startup
entrepreneurs want to make vitamins when they should really be making aspirin.

------
Peroni
I'll weigh in with some context to back up your traffic stats. My blog is
basic and I don't have a product to sell. Generally just me ranting about
stuff that winds me up. <http://www.voltsteve.blogspot.com>

The post with the most views was 'My experiences as a recruiter on Hacker
News'. Now, granted, a post with that title is going to attract a lot of views
but the HN post had almost 400 upvotes and to date, that particular post has
had 21k Pageviews and approximately 90% of that came directly from HN.

------
jccodez
250k visits, did you get any customers? I could not tell a quick scan of the
article.

