Building Websites, Traffic, and Income
Beating the Hare or How Not to End Up in the Mental Ward
- Image by Amanda Woodward via Flickr
I worry a lot. I worry that I don’t write posts often enough. I worry that I don’t comment enough on other blogs. I worry that I don’t make enough real comments at social networks, instead taking the easy route of quoting part of the page.
But going slow is just going slow. Yes, you can kill yourself to gain momentum or you can go at your own rate. But slip up once will you are killing yourself making sure you are keeping up with a minimum you have set up in your head, and it can send you in a tailspin. Falling short of a goal once makes the second one easier to give up on.
Maybe there should be another way to look at the issue of noise online, of keeping up. You can only move so fast. And running at 100% all the time may not really be 100%. The 100% may explain your stress level, but is that 100% making it to your work or is it getting lost in the twists and turns of trying to do too much.
I have consistently gained subscribers and traffic here at a nice slow rate. The rate has not changed much, but I post less often. I once posted daily and now it is weekly at most. And this last couple of weeks, with only two posts, I have gained 25% of the subscribers I have now.
And yes I realize that if I posted more often, I would create more content for search engines and subscribers alike. But I don’t panic as often. It doesn’t help anyway.
You can be the turtle or the hare and eventually reach the finish line.
And traffic on the internet sticks a bit. So while this blog has never crashed as a result of having a post Dugg, I can be relatively sure that I will have more traffic and subscribers here next month than this one.
Sometimes the invisible takes precedence. Right now I am in a developing mode and I’m running with it. More internet real estate is always a good thing. And when a job or my day job takes me in that direction, the rest of my day sometimes follow. The structure of my network is changing. I am cleaning cobwebs and fixing gaping holes. And then once spring cleaning and development is done for a bit, I will have a much better platform to work from.
It goes around in a cycle that turns exceeding slow with a full-time job and a family, but the knowledge, traffic and spread builds with time, whether it be one post a day or one post a week. The key is to find the cycle that keeps you interested without burning out. Pushing yourself is good. Goals are good. But a nervous breakdown isn’t. Creating a schedule that eats up your whole day leaves no room for new knowledge. This is a diverse and intricate landscape and knowing how the parts work helps you to see the whole more completely. It also helps with boredom.
An hour a day is better than 16 hours a day until you burn out because you have had no results in a month. And the next time you are beating yourself up about getting a blog post done and keeping up the promotion of your blog or site, turn time back to about a year ago. Who were the bloggers that were going to the top of the blogosphere? Are they still moving in that direction?
Any day you wake up is a good one and any day you are here making progress is a step in the right direction.
Stability and putting one foot in front of the other beats hype.
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20 Responses to Beating the Hare or How Not to End Up in the Mental Ward
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Stephen: There are phrases when I can write multiple posts in the same day, I write them and put them in draft so that my blog gets a steady supply of new content.
For some of my blogs audience is not webmasters familiar with RSS, most of them actually visit the blog to check if there is new content. It becomes essential to post everyday (or multiple times a day) if you want people to keep coming back.
With the kind of blogs you have (the ones I am following now) you can be sure that most people will subscribe if they like your posts.
Jeets last blog post..Free Directory List
Sometimes genius emerges when you resting. Our best ideas often hit us outside of work, so if you are working too much or focusing too hard, you may be missing out on some great eureka moments.
Charles Sipes last blog post..Are Brands Becoming Less Relevant?
It is only when we worry that work gets done. Too much worry is not good either because we become immobile in thoughts and action. As a parent and teacher, I worry for my children and students. I lose my worry by looking at the little progress they make over a period of time.
We know what to expect from kids at certain periods of their learning. Then when they succeed, I know I have been patient and I feel rewarded for that.
I enjoy reading your blogs because you share some of the ups and downs of developing a website and it makes this digital connection all real.
Slow? Nah! You should see my 8 year old daughter finish her meal: 1 hour or that 80 year old man finishing his 10 km walk in the morning!
Annies last blog post..Basics To Good Spoken Language: Pitch and Intonate
I agree with Charles, sometimes the best ideas for posts come from easing up a bit. The Eureka! moment. I find that many blogs from people who feel they must blog several times a day are kind of boring. Good writing needs some incubation.
I tend to agree with your strategy or like the old adage ‘slow and steady wins the race’ very much! Overnight hype cannot take you anywhere.
When I realized that 6-7 hours of internet time is not fetching the desired results, I cut my online activities by 75%. I still get the same traffic, same number of comments and very slow improvement in the subscription rate (and no reduction in income – however small it is) for only about 2 hrs of online time.
Ajith Edasserys last blog post..Niche blogging v/s Generic blogging
Dang, I should check in more often.
@Jeet I understand that, but my blog is firsthand posts about things I have done online. So, in order to have material, I have to do those things. A post a day at a couple of blogs meant all I was doing was blogging quickly turning into metablogging, which is boring.
@Charles Crazy thing is that after I wrote this post, I started having ideas.
@Annie But I think it is similar to the “is it excitement or is it stress” question. Or the fight or flight response. Worry tends to be an endless loop in the strictest definition. It is not action, but inaction thinking of action. You can be motivated without worry. And the slow part is the currently visible part. Internet work is an iceberg. What looks like nothing on the surface may hide a lot of activity and preparation for further advances.
@Nolan Some of the posts I like the best took a whole day to write, but on and off, adding things as I came up with them.
@Ajith
and again, 
I was wondering about the old Pareto principle. And I think you have a very good point. You never know how much real work it takes until you start cutting back the time you have. It makes a lot of sense and was in the back of my mind.
A lesson worth learning, I learnt by burning myself out, but you learn…lol
seo underworlds last blog post..Twitter list –1000 twitter accounts csv
As a guy who blogs full plus some I will tell you just how important a schedule is to manage your time. It is also helpful to know the tools that can speed up your work and which will only slow you down.
Keeping up with 38 websites I write for or manage is nearly impossible even when you have the tools but let me give you a few things that really work well for me.
Dragon naturally: This is a wonderful tool that turns speech to print. I have it integrated with a bluetooth set and can do most of my housework on top of post creation.
Windows Live Writer: This takes up very little memory and allows me to save drafts locally. Having it tied into Dragon means I can draft 10 to 20 posts in an afternoon without even batting an eye.
Text to Speech: This is the other side of Dragon. While the mechanical robot voice in my program isn’t really pleasant I can listen to hundred of posts and news stories in a morning and decide which I should follow up on with either comments or stories of my own.
Fast Blog Finder and SmartReader: These two programs allow me to find blogs on subjects I want to comment on, mostly to promote a post in the linking area. Fast Blog Finder as you well know is a great tool and one I recommend buying I can search for a thousand blogs instead of fifty. Smart reader is a free feed reader that is super fast and super small. It has a viewing pain that will allow me to read the full post and make comments without ever switching to my browser. If you want to know how fast it is, I usually leave between 50 and 100 comments between 6:00 and 8:00am.
Brad Harts last blog post..Digging Through The Trash for Twitter Stories
Great list. I use them all except SmartReader. Going to look for that one now.
I agree, any day you wake up is a great day and if you utilize that day to make some progress on something you have been meaning to do or that will result in coming closer to your goal is a step in the right direction. I am also currently building my online real estate, going pretty good… Regards!
All Beer Blogs last blog post..Beer News @ All Beer Blog
I forgot that you have multiple blogs. Last time I came here, I had just seen one of your blogs..
Do you think sending a quick ‘tutorial’ about how to subscribe to ‘my blog’ to anyone who leaves a comment would be good?
Jeets last blog post..Free Directory List
Hey Stephan, Great post. I’ve always had mixed feelings regarding when and how often to post. When I first started I tried to put out a post every day, especially after investigating or reading other blogs I noticed everyone was blogging everyday.When one puts out a post everyday or some that write more than one post a day,you don’t give your readers a chance to keep up with you. By the time they’ve read your post you have another one up, and I think they figure “why should I comment there will be a new one by the time mine get’s published. Then I just started to slow down or maybe it was writer’s block and posted maybe twice a week. I noticed that my comments went way up after posting less, I came to the realization that the less I wrote the more time my RSS or readers had time to read my post and then comment. I went from maybe 3-6 comments to now around 20-30 at times now. I find that my post are more interesting or at least I’m taking more time to write about something that will interest my readers and something that “I” and I think my readers will be interested in.So I guess I think “less is more” in some cases. JJ Great post btw.
jj-momscashblogs last blog post..Reduce Your Debt Load
@Beer That was the point with this post. Those that go slow will beat those that burnout.
@Jeet That’s a good idea. I do have the What Would Seth Godin Do? plugin which adds a minor nag to the page asking for a subscription for new visitors.
@JJ Thanks! Another point to the post. I read and wrote a review here on a book called Blog Blazers. It contains about 30 interviews with bloggers. Since then, I have taken “you must” statements with a grain of salt. You must “post every day”. You must “hold contests”. Each one of the bloggers in the book threw out the rules in one way or another. Doing is better than filling your day with so much “to do” that nothing ever gets finished.
Hey Stephen,
I had the same experience like you had, i was very rapid in blogging to get people attracted sooner i felt that people were visiting but the ratio was the same, i changed my plan to weekly limits to 1 post and still the same, i have tried all methods by means but i cant see any increase in traffics.. Put recently i felt i can give access to people to write post within my industry topics, this will spare my time and they will get benefited through linkbacks for their site, well i think anybody will loves this offer.. well hoping out for best.. whats your ideas on this?
Talk SEOs last blog post..[WTS] 4 wordpress databases | 5$ each | Buy before its gone!
I worry too. It’s alot of hard work and very SLOW rewards. Quality posts, with a sense of humor. Comments that are relevant and not just phrases. There is so much to this blogging thing, one wonders why they choose it?
@Talk SEO I am starting to think that is the better way to go. Not to be an island. Guest posting and allowing guest posts. When I do go back to posting daily or more, I will not be keeping all my content here but searching out guest posting opportunities also. I do have a lot of flagship content here and adding fluff just for the sake of a schedule is not the way to go.
@Leprechaun Because it’s all theirs.
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I agree with Charles, sometimes the best ideas for posts come from easing up a bit. The Eureka! moment. I find that many blogs from people who feel they must blog several times a day are kind of boring. Good writing needs some incubation.
sedats last blog post..Gürcistan’da yeni eylem plan? haz?r
I thought the post you did about the 600+ places to post PAD files was killer. It’s reason I’m here commenting on this one, so I’d love to see more like that.
A really helpful resource, especially being able to sort by PageRank.
Fantastic blog! Do you have any recommendations for aspiring writers? I’m hoping to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you recommend starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m completely overwhelmed .. Any ideas? Thanks!