No bad pun intended really :). Well the shadowy John Cow has an article A-Listers Found Guilty Of Stealing where he talks about what he feels is a disparity in time spent by bloggers reading the a-listers and whether or not it is worth that time. Here is what Mr. Cow had to say.
We hardly ever read Problogger, Shoemoney and have never even seen Seth Godin’s blog…well we did just now actually because we had to find his link.
Quality Vs. Quantity
I have to admit I don't visit those blogs nearly as much as I used to. I check the feeds of around 200 blogs and do searches for topics instead of spending my time browsing around a single blog. I try to stretch out a bit and read new blogs and find new sources of information and inspiration.
Your post[sic] might have taken you hours to compile and will get you ~50 readers while they post a stupid YouTube video on a lazy day and get over ~5000 readers. - John CowI know I have felt this way. Now I can't say that ProBlogger posts crap because that wouldn't be true, but some of the other a-listers do post quite a bit of "fluff." I guess I can't be too critical I post what you could call "fluff" sometimes too probably. I left you all with a few of my feelings on this subject when I talked about Contests Are Full of Sh-T. I think that some of the a-listers have taken their readers for granted to a certain extent. I feel that sometimes they get complacent and figure that the readers will keep reading simply because they are who they are. This leads to periods of tons of guest articles, fluff "what I ate for dinner" crap articles, the afore mentioned sh-tty contests :), and an overall drop in blog quality. Usually though they realize the error of their ways and return to their better ways. There is an article I recently read at a "new to me" blog Angel of World of Angel wrote a post asking the question Has Shoemoney lost the plot? The point of the article is what I am making here that many a-listers go through periods where they simply don't produce good stuff.
Work time Vs. Play Time
Yours, and my, focus should be on the quality of our articles. Keep posting quality content, working hard at marketing and networking, practicing good blogging and you will find your efforts rewarded.
That’s something you can’t do if you’re looking for the answer on other people’s blogs all the time! Try to set a 80% work and 20% play limit in place. - John Cow
I agree with this percentage breakdown to a point. Here is how I would probably break it down. Let me know your practice or what you would recommend to a new blogger.
- I would recommend closer to 90/10 for about the first month. This is so that you can build up a foundation of quality content before you start your marketing and networking push.
- After that I would drop to the 80/20 for about another month. Put a little more emphasis on building relationships and networking with other bloggers, while still placing the most focus on quality content.
- Now that you have a good foundation of content the percentage would be closer to 60/40 for a while say 2-3 months. Still having more emphasis on quality content, but really starting to push your marketing efforts and spending more time networking with other bloggers and your blog readers.
- You should by now have a pretty good foundation of content, a feel for blogging, a good network in the blogging community, and a decent size and growing readership. This is the time to once again take the percentage to 80/20. Now keep the focus on your blog content and on your readers, with less time spent on reading other blogs, networking and marketing.
later all and have a profitable and productive blogging day
Yours Truly
C “has to stand for Chow” Man
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Comments
I know that too many beginning, and even established bloggers, do a bit too much fawning and pandering.