There you are… 
Can I ask? …
Do you still look at the same sites, blogs as you did a year ago? 6 months ago? 3 months ago… Last month?
Why am I even asking you may wonder?
Because I’ve realised I don’t like I used too either and I am thinking I’m not that much different to any other person online…
We move around online alot, jumping from one thing to another or we stick to the same things over and over, like social sites… Twitter, Facebook (and others) addicts are out there, that say’s alot.
It also means…
Losing your audience
Not a good thing and one thing we online workers, bloggers
If so, lucky us to have such readers and changing anything would be daft.
But I am not one of those lucky ones I think… to be totally honest, those who are lucky in that sense are probably few and far between and even they have to continuously gain new readers like all of us but they have the numbers for it to not matter too much.
Endless marketing and self promotion
Until you if you’re lucky, you hit that tipping point where it grows itself at a rate you can forget about it personally, which as I have never done I am no marketing expert
Creating decent content, whatever it is, is simply not enough on it’s own and won’t do enough to make it matter the way we would like it to matter.
Marketing itself is funny, it’s something people shrug their shoulders at or turn their noses up to, or get excited about learning and doing, then it changes them too, good and bad!
Either way, it’s got to be done to some extent else whatever it is you do never get’s seen or gains any traction to grow in any form. It always starts with you as it has to.
That means me getting back to marketing the hell out of what I am sticking with too and doing it better.
Wanna help me with that?
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Twitter: alexwhalley23
says:
Hey Rob,
Just coming over from the InfoPreneur post and I liked the title here so I clicked.
I think you offer a good perspective on the realities of blogging and it relates to the constant balancing act you have to make.
Blogging on it’s own cannot be sustained without having a skill that you can leverage, whether that be earning money online through other means or something you do in the real world. I think building a community and blog hopping is all important, but without anything to offer, the whole act becomes futile.
That being said, you touched on a very true fact about the nature of the internet, people do move all over the shop save for social networks so as long as we keep moving around too then its irrelevant that regulars come and go.
It’s a numbers game after all.
OK I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore LOL!
Thanks for the great read man.
Alex
Twitter: robsellen
says:
Hey Alex,
Good to see you here and thanks for adding your comment, I agree, it is a numbers game and there’s no escaping it for any of us.
Think the internet is even making our attention span shorter…
P.s I just noticed… this is the 1000th comment!! woot!
Twitter: melindaSimple Home Organization
says:
I think my attention span has shrunk over the last year thanks to Twitter to about 10 seconds. We are the age of information overload. Blogging success…sometimes I think it’s just pure dumb luck
Twitter: robsellen
says:
I think you might be right.
Twitter: kaiserthesage
says:
I have to agree with this. I’m not really that good with marketing, but I know how to, there’s a big difference between the two, but I’m taking my chances to be good at it. Keeping up with today’s trend — blogging is not an exception as far as I know — will definitely be hard, especially when you know you are losing the touch, seeing as there are lots of people getting much wiser everyday. And eventually no one will ever seek for tips from bloggers.
I guess it’s the right time to innovate things and move a quicker step ahead. Since that’s where I’m seeing SEO in the coming years (blogging could also be), every one will know how to do it (given that there’s nothing new around to brag, hide or even offer about it) then every one will be a self-proclaimed guru.
Twitter: robsellen
says:
Hi mate,
Everything will get harder online I think, in any case you just gotta persevere… just as with anything else.
One of the oddities I’ve noticed with feedburner that my subscriber numbers vary by about 200 – alternating up and down every few days – I suspect a glitch on their side because my Analytics stats are pretty consistent
Twitter: robsellen
says:
Hi Lis,
I notice that with feedburner daily, it’s strange but it’s been doing that for a while now, so I have no doubt it’s a feedburner glitch rather than anything else.
Hope ya well, moved home yet?
Cool Down! You got a new reader from today!
Twitter: robsellen
says:
Hi Chethan,
I’m cool.
Good to know and welcome, hope you stick around too.
Rob
Twitter: websiteweekend
says:
These things come and go. Over time, your average readership should slowly grow, at least if you continue to grow as well.
Twitter: robsellen
says:
I agree mate.
Twitter: awilkes
says:
Hi Rob,
we all have our talents that are more advanced than the average person in our talent niche so we should aim to teach them what we know to the best of our abilities.
Also there are interest areas where we can bring this area of interest to the attention of our readership since if we are interested in it then chances are a good proportion of our readers will be too.
Just some ideas.
I keep a largish list of blogs in my Firefox bookmark area and move the inactive ones to an Archive file to check up on occasionally in case they resurfaced.
Many of the interesting blogs lasted under a year.
Andy
Twitter: robsellen
says:
Your last sentence said an awful lot, a shame that it’s the interesting ones that die fast too… the spammy crap, no-one cares, but the interesting ones… shame they didn’t stick around.
Goes to show, what’s interesting to the readers can be boring to the writers at times, IF they got bored.
Twitter: Anklebuster
says:
Hi Rob,
I gotta tell you, you have two kinds of readers: those who know you and those who don’t.
Those who know you will generally stick around as long as you have something interesting to say. Those who don’t know you …
…There are two kinds of people who don’t know you: those who think what you write is interesting enough to bookmark and those who bounce. Those who bounce won’t be back unless SEO brings em. Those who bookmark …
… There are two kinds of people who bookmark: those who love to recall great sites, and those who want to come back to the conversation. These two groups are the answer to you question: they become people who know you and not the people who ForsooK your blog.
Cheers,
Mitch
Twitter: robsellen
says:
That’s a great comment, explains it clearly.
Thanks for sharing that, interesting way to look at it.
It’s absolutely true I’ve drifted away from certain blogs, but I can safely say there are blogs that I’m excited to read, and even blogs that offend me from time to time, that I’m always going back to.
I think the trick is to produce quality content that sticks with people AND find the best readers. Some people really don’t know how to read – they know how to get a rudimentary meaning out of the symbols on the page, and perhaps see a blog post title and comment immediately without reading the post. Those kinds of readers are, to make the understatement of the century, superficial.
Twitter: robsellen
says:
I ignore those who make comments on here without reading the post, I just don’t bother approving the comments, if they can’t be bothered to do things right then they shouldn’t expect anything different.
Superficial is a good way to describe them.
Who want’s superficial readers? Not me.