The Mindless Following Mentality Of The Internet:
Want to know why its so hard to start up a new blog, taking months to grow the site as well as increase traffic? It’s because your a nobody, at least, not yet in the eyes of the average internet user. It just drives me crazy the amount of people that won’t even consider reading your blog or website, if you don’t have the credentials of some of these “SuperBloggers” that are on the internet today.
The only exception to this is search engine traffic, as they are clicking over to your blog to read an article about a specific topic.
To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, heres an example:
Site #1 - Newly started blog, has no comments on any of their posts, has 5 RSS Readers indicated by the RSS Chicklet in the sidebar and puts a couple of “advertise here” boxes to try and generate some revenue.
Site #2 – Has been around for 2 years, has over 50 comments on each post and has 20,000 readers. They do not have any “Advertise Here” squares due to the amount of advertisers that are interested in buying ad space.
If Site #1 sees the success of Site #2, they will most likely work a little harder to get to the success level that Site #2 has, but what they don’t realize is the fact that the average internet user isn’t interested in a “Newbie’s” blog content. Why go to Site #1 when you can go to Site #2?
Which brings me to the conclusion of the mindless internet swarm that won’t give anything new a chance until they have the numbers to show that they are an authority in their niche. Being a blogger, this mentality just defeats the purpose of trying to start a new blog due to the amount of time it takes to grow it into something worthwhile.
In conclusion, RSS Inflation may not be that bad of an idea. Although most bloggers and webmasters can easily detect the inflation (due to the subscriber to comment ratio), the average internet user might see that and give your blog a second chance.
What are your thoughts on the average internet user, and the way that they stereotype blogs?
(I’m really curious as to what people think about this, as this is just one side of the countless views that people have.)
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21 Comments
It definitely seems like it’s easier to stay at the top than get there in the first place, as is shown by how many top blogs survive with uninspired, repetitive content – especially in the MMO niche. I suppose it has something to do with the “authority” a site carries and how much people are willing to jump on the bandwagon. I guess all you can really do is self-promote like crazy and hope something catches on with the masses.
I don’t think RSS inflation would really work because you’d still be lacking the traffic and “buzz” that you need to attract readers in the first place. You can have a blog with 100,000 fake subscribers but if real subscribers don’t know it exists, you wont get anywhere with it.
I completely agree with you about the “authoritative” sites pushing out uninspired content, just to please the general audience with unoriginal information. Perhaps if some newer sites leveraged themselves as authorities, more people would consider them to be “that much better” than the competition.. Just a thought though
I see what your saying about the RSS inflation.. however, if it were from lets say 50 to 428, it might not be as noticeable as a couple thousand. You really made a good point about getting yourself out there. For me, comments usually do the trick!
Bloggers nowadays are looking for something how to earn money online. Blogging is not just for money profit but it is be a hobby but most of the bloggers are blogging just to earn money. That’s why are so many blogs that are abandonized by the bloggers because it doesn’t earn. There are one thing question about it and it is how to drive more visitors at your site?
Its just because of the press interviewing the top bloggers about their blogs and then having the people tell them that they make insane amounts of money off of advertising.
Then the average internet user with no experience creates a blog and slaps a whole bunch of ads on it, hoping to make money.. Sad thing is, that will NEVER work. Blogging takes an incredible amount of time before you even begin to see a small return on it!
Thanks for your comment Eriugs!
It’s a bit of a vicious circle isn’t it. At least in the beginning. Blogging is effing hard! If you don’t have any big blogger connections you’re sorta screwed unless you’re a pro at promoting or you spam the crap out of other blogs. I just keep truckin’ along and enjoy a slow but steady increase in readership as long as I keep the content coming.
Thats all you can really do. It is sort of neat though, seeing an overall traffic & subscriber chart getting that much bigger each month. Makes it all worthwhile
Again, I find commenting on new blogs usually does the trick in getting some free promotion.
Nice to meet you Cassie! Hope to see you again.
Or.. you can can go the niche blogging route. Build blogs about specific niches. Build links to rank them for something. And put adsense in them. Make sure the blogs theme is butt ugly. And to write long posts (they have to deliver real info or google may smack you in a manual review) be sure that posts have long tiring paragraphs without much white space and watch your CTR improve. The vast majority of people do not like to read. And you can take advantage out of that. In my MMO blog I use the What Would Seth Godin do Plug in to catch leads to an email submit offer. I set so that people landing via search see the ad while regular readers get an offer for a product that I do endorse. On my niche sites its Adsense all over the place and long boring posts. I currently have 10 blogs and probably be over 30 at the end of the year. Some of my blogs are just aging domain others are adsense sites, others are just spider food. Will probably be working on more spider food this summer and probably one money site.
Hey Archie.
Those are some great ways to make some cash.. Seriously.
I never would of thought of using the WWSGD plugin to capture email leads.. I have mine set to “Subscribe Today” notification. Might just employ that tactic in the future
I also employed a tactic of hiding PPC ads from my IP address, so that family wouldn’t go on to my website and click the ads, banning me from the program. That sounds sort of like what you’re doing, only with search engine traffic
Great to see you again.
Email submits do not pay a lot but, a buck here and there can add to the overall income. I am not using adsense on some extra pennies right now because posts are not well targeted to ads but on my niche blogs I do use it but only for search visitors. I usually place it inside posts and does quite well. I use Adsense on sites that are getting search traffic mostly to avoid smart pricing.
I’m a litte bit guilty of this. Often when I browse blogs I first look at the comments activity. When I basically find 0 comments for every post I lean towards leaving, especially if its nofollow. The post titles or snippets really would have to grab or interest me then to persuade me to stay. I have to say though that most of the time these blogs are very personal and seem to be intended for family and friends rather than a wide audience. Hence a random visitor feels reserved about posting a comment. Or they just don’t fulfill any of the following things:
1) More or less uniqe content.
2) Captivating writing style.
3) Nice layout and illustrations.
4) Lots of promotion, non-spam kind.
Without these, chances are a blog won’t get much attention with the lack of time and clutter of today’s world. Regarding the sheep mentality, I think it’s much bigger in the offline world. IMO, the internet tends to be pretty effective in separating the wheat from the chaff. Exceptions are the rule however.
I completely agree with the “family” oriented blogs that I stumble across sometimes.. Posting pictures of kids and what not. Makes you sorta feel out of place, and doesn’t really provide any of the points out of your list above.
The offline world is most than different, but ultimately is the same:
Would you pull up to a restaurant on a Friday Night that had an empty parking lot?
Great to meet you DT. Hope to see you again soon
The other thing you have to remember is that people like Darren Rowse started in the early days when blogging wasn’t all that big and competition was scarce and so it was easier to make a name for themselves, and this is enough to carry them through even today. It is so much harder to get noticed today simply because there are so many bloggers trying to be noticed.
As for the so called pro bloggers, I’m not at all that impressed by some of them and some of the comments are pretty pathetic. You have to wade through all the pitiful grovelling in the hope it will get them something to actually find something of use.
Nice post Brad
I think the main thing to do is a lot of search engine optimization. On my other Blogs I worked a lot on getting search engine traffic so I can put them on autopilot. Now I am using twitter to promote my new Blogs. It really depends on the topic when using twitter to promote them though.
Very true post when people starts blog only think about to make money inspite of generating some useful content for readers, placing bunch of adds on blog reduces readers interest and traffic as well. so need to put interesting and different topic post on blog at regular basis.
What do you expect of the free sheeple of the internet ?:D That’s just human nature I guess, most of us get dragged to things other people like.
The only thing that can really help you is an amazing content that’ll somehow get noticed on digg and similar websites. After that you might suddenly find your site becoming the next big thing (just look at xkcd).
Unfortunately this isn’t just on the internet. This is the same reason why the rich get richer. They have leverage.
And connections
I have been trying quite a few different measures to get new visitors to my blog and speaking honestly, most of them have failed. I keep the mentality that eventually people will come. I guess I have to or else I would have stopped posting by now. I try to make at least one good post a day that any visitors I do have will hopefully enjoy, and hopefully when they look back through the blog (if they do) they will see that I am trying to keep it updated with good information. I guess that is really all I can do, right? If anyone has any other suggestions trust me, I am totally open to them.
By the way, thank you for this great blog. I can see this will keep me busy reading for some time.
Paula Jardine´s last blog ..Millionaire Casino Review | Vegas Technology Casino Software
This is how I feel about the internet. Will the small guy ever make it to the top? i mean honestly. It seems impossible.
The small guy can become a large player in their niche with one method: Hard Work (and networking!)