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Negative Traffic: Here’s the Thing…

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A couple of weeks ago on Freelance Writing Jobs I wondered if all traffic equals good traffic. Specifically, did I want to purposely stir up negativity and controversy as a way to increase traffic? Though I already knew the answer, I gave it a little test. Here’s what I found:

  1. Negative traffic stays long enough to make a negative impact and then it goes away. You can get on the front page of Digg as the result of a negative or controversial post, but as soon as your new visitors have had their fun, they’re gone. Very few will return on a regular basis. Most only come by to tell you you’re wrong. I’d rather focus my efforts on creating content that will keep people coming back for more, and stimulate intelligent and useful discussion among the members of my community.
  2. My community doesn’t like negativity. The members of my community at FWJ want to discuss freelancing, specifically freelance writing and blogging. They’re not so much interested in a lot of “you’re wrong and you suck” type comments. A couple of weeks ago when I received a rush of negative traffic, a couple of my regulars told me they weren’t comfortable visiting my blog when people were cursing and name calling. Though I deleted all the offensive posts, I would have alienated my community if I allowed it to continue.
  3. Negativity doesn’t mean ad revenue. When I received the negative traffic I didn’t do well, revenue wise. People who come to your blog to insult you and tell you you’re wrong aren’t going to click or buy anything. In comparison, I had major Stumble Upon traffic a few days later and revenue went way up.
  4. Your reputation is at stake. Do you want to be known for teaching something useful or for writing linkbait? See item number one above. Negativity begets negativity. Don’t expect something positive to happen at your blog when you’re stirring up the pot or doing your best to offend. If you want people to consider you an important resource, you’ll write important blog posts. If you want people to think you know how to attract negative publicity, continue to find controversy.

I think it’s possible to write good, link worthy posts that enlighten, inform and entertain without having to resort to negativity or controversy. Remember, when it comes to blogs, you reap what you sow. And that’s not always good.

What Will Happen to Your Blogs if Something Happens to You?

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Have you ever wondered what will happen to your blogs if there’s an emergency and you’re sick, injured, or God forbid, worse? We don’t like to think about it, but the truth is we’re not permanent fixtures on earth and stuff happens.

Whenever I bring up the “what if something happens?” question to my fellow bloggers many don’t have a plan in place, while others don’t want to even consider there will ever be a time when they can’t blog. Before I left for BWE in the beginning of November, I thought a lot about what would happen if something happened. Who would alert my clients and readers? What would happen to my blogs if I was no longer around? Not attractive possibilities, but certainly something to think about.

Appoint a Blog Guardian

As much as I love my husband, I can’t trust him to handle my blogs, especially if he’s in mourning or caring for me if I’m injured. I contacted my oldest sister and gave her a list of contacts as well as the log in info for Freelance Writing Jobs. She knows to alert my readers.

I also have the passwords and logins for all my blogs noted on a disc, which is in the fireproof box that stores all the important family business.

Sell or Pass on the Torch?

It’s not enough to have someone alert your readers that you won’t be blogging for a while, or ever again. You’re going to have to decide if you want to appoint a successor or sell your blogs. If it’s a matter of illness or injury, you may just want someone trustworthy to fill in during your absence. Choose someone who feels the same way about blogging and your niche. This way your readers will be exposed to the same passion.

Now, what if you’re no longer with us? What will happen to your blogs then? Will you leave them to languish? If you care about your blogs the way I do mine, you’ll want to either appoint a successor or sell. Presently my family has instructions to sell all my blogs and websites and put the money into my son’s college fund. Eventually these instructions will be written into my will.

No One Wants to Think About It

No one ever wants to discuss the “what if something happens” scenario. Many of us would love to live forever or at least spend the remainder of our lives accident and illness free. That’s not the way life works, however. Stuff can and will happen. It’s best to be prepared, no matter how unattractive the thought.

How Do You Handle Negative Comments?

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This weekend I didn’t take my own advice and I’ve been doing damage control ever since. I’m not going to go into all the details, but suffice it to say, it doesn’t pay to respond to negative feedback or feed the trolls.

Let me explain.

Not everyone is going to like what you write. The majority of them will tastefully rebut and you can carry on an intelligent discussion among the members of your community. If you go ahead and respond to the people who are looking for a fight, it will only hurt your reputation and spill over into your community. Don’t do it.

Here’s how to handle the trolls:

  1. Ignore them – Let them say what they want and then ignore them. Do not respond, no matter how many times they insult you. You can’t reason with them.
  2. Delete their comments – When it comes to comments you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you let nasty comments stand, it makes your community uncomfortable. If you delete them you’re accused of stifling free speech. The bottom line: It’s your blog and your community, cater to them, not the trolls.
  3. Moderate comments – If the trolls are bringing friends and they’re piling it on, moderate your comments. This doesn’t have to go on forever, just until the furor dies down.

Must.Not.Engage

Here’s the thing. The people who are really negative are doing so for a reason. They’re trying to provoke a response. The more you give into it, the more you respond, the more it will continue. No matter how much it kills you not to set matters straight, don’t give in. Even if you’re right, don’t give in.

Your community comes first

When your blog becomes a battle zone your regulars will leave for neutral territory. They’re not visiting your blog for the drama, (well, most of them aren’t). They’re visiting for the advice and the atmosphere. Do the right thing and think of them first.

Plan Now for 2008

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Bloggers don’t generally follow editorial calendars, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Many of us wait until it’s too late to blog about products, seasonal topics or trends. Rather than wait for the last minute,plan ahead and organize an editorial calendar. Here are a few tips for getting ahead of the game in 2008:

Start researching trends now. Find out what the hot products and topics will be for 2008 and start writing about them NOW. And continue to write about them. By the time everyone else jumps on the bandwagon you’ll already have made it to the tops of the search engines and you might even be considered an expert thanks to your early analysis.

Any interesting holidays or events befitting your niche? Research the history, traditions and ideas behind the event and plan a series. Start writing now, but use your timestamp feature to post closer to D-Day.

Research your stats. What days and months have the higher traffic? Try writing your best posts on the days with the most traffic and perhaps drop a linkbait or two at times when traffic is needed the most.

Will you be away from your blog? Will you be unavailable for blogging due to vacation, family events, or other matters? Blog now, post later.

Plan weekly features. Plan weekly features for your blog, maybe an interview Monday, product reviews on Tuesday, a tutorial Wednesday, and so on. The good thing about this is that you don’t run out of ideas.

Write more than one post at a time. Rather than post on the fly, try taking some time out to write several posts and adjust your time stamp for each post accordingly.

I like editorial calendars because they help keep me focused and prevent me from getting bloggers block. If I know I have to post a certain thing each day of the week, it’s easier for me to plan ahead.

Did you know many bloggers have no idea what they’ll blog about each day? They make it up on the fly. By preparing as much as you can in advance, you only stand to gain traffic and better your reputation.

What Are Blogs For?

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I was halfway through part two in my series about monetizing blogs when I became sidetracked with a forum conversation. Without bringing in a lot of unnecessary details, I was visiting my favorite forum for work at home moms yesterday when I came across a thread from a blogger who was rather upset when a commenter disagreed with her. He wasn’t being disrespectful, though she felt he was, and she closed comments for that post because she didn’t want a debate.

I read all the posts with interest. I was very disappointed to learn many of my fellow WAHMs were trashing the person who disagreed and even going to his blog and leaving heated comments. After reading the entire thread I posted about how blogging is about building a community. About how discussions are supposed to happen and people should be allowed, no, encouraged to disagree. Debates do happen and as long as people act civilized, there’s no reason to close comments.

What I found most interesting was that a couple of people didn’t exactly agree with me. Neither of them realized blogging was about community. They felt is was more a marketing tool and comments weren’t really necessary. This goes against everything I believed blogging to be. Am I wrong?

So let me put it to you, Performancing community. Since the majority of you are bloggers, probloggers or wannabe bloggers, what is a blog to you? What is the purpose your blog? Why do you do it and how important is community?

Thanks for indulging me.

$1000 A Month: How I did it

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Yesterday Amy Derby gave us a peek into how she earns $1,000 a month on a blog receiving very little traffic. I sometimes earn that much on a blog receiving fairly decent traffic, but I don’t earn that much every month and I’m sure I can earn more. Still, for a writing blog it’s pretty good. You see, writing blogs are difficult to monetize.

Here’s how I do it:

Adsense – Adsense is still my biggest money maker. Though I’m still playing around with other forms of income, I have success with this and I’m not parting with it any time soon. For the end of October and beginning of November, my Adsense revenue is way down however, so I need to keep finding methods to monetize my biggest money-making blog.

Amazon – I have some luck selling books using Amazon but the bulk of my earnings with this affiliate is through the search box during the holidays. While I do earn a little using this throughout the year, during the holidays I can count on it for a few hundred bucks from people looking to do holiday shopping from home.

Kontera – I was hesitant to use Kontera at first, I’m not a big fan of context links ads but this was recommended and I’m so far pleased with the results. It’s good for a couple of hundred dollars each month.

Buy me a cup of coffee – This is something else I struggled with. A couple of years ago members of my community asked where they could make donations. I tried one of Paypal’s “donate” buttons and received a couple of dollars here and there. When I made the switch to WordPress I installed a “Buy Me a Cup of Coffee” plugin and couldn’t believe the amount of people who wanted to purchase my next White Chocolate Mocha. Actually most of my earnings for Freelance Writing Jobs is used pay the two people who help out – Jodee, who researches job leads for me and Ajay, who handles the techie stuff.

What didn’t work for me

I tried affiliate programs such as Commission Junction and so far no combination of affiliate ads or buttons have worked. I also had Auction Ads up for the better part of the year and while the beginning of the year wasn’t bad, the last few months have been a complete zero. I took auction ads out yesterday. I’m not saying these programs won’t work well for others, however.

Still Experimenting

I’m still experimenting with other affiliate programs for writers. I followed Amy’s advice and installed an Indeed ad box. I feel this program will be beneficial to my regulars. I’m also looking into affiliates for writing magazines and stores.

I think the lesson here is that you can’t just throw a few ads on your blog and forget about it. You’re constantly playing with new formulas and sources of revenue. I know a couple of people who have hinted that now that I have some help maintaining FWJ I can sort of sit back and collect profits. That’s far from the truth. Finding a way to keep the profits rolling in takes time and patience. I doubt I’ll ever get to the point where I’ll stop experimenting.

What formulas work for you?

Blog Posts or Articles

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I have a pet peeve regarding some individuals and networks advertising for bloggers. Many of them are jumping on the blogging bandwagon without actually knowing what blogging entails. They know blogs are popular and profitable and want in, but have no clue about blogging. In fact, many places want articles and not blog posts. Trust me, there’s a difference.

Article

Articles are well researched paragraphs of information following a specific format and word count. They’re static pieces of content in which the author cites sources and speak with a particular tone and voice.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are less structured. Posts can be one line or several paragraphs. They can be expert interviews or opinion pieces. A post can consist of a photograph, a video or useful content such as this. Blogs are supposed to encourage community and posts should elicit conversation among your readers.

Finding a Happy Medium

One of my former clients has a magazine publishing background and wanted her blogs to run the same way. She didn’t want me to use “I’s” and insisted on each post meeting a certain word count. Another client found my blogging to be too conversational and turned off the commenting feature because it was too “distracting”. Speaking of distracting, a current client sent an email around to all of his bloggers because he felt images were unnecessary and rather we didn’t use them.

In these situations I do my best to work with the client, but also offer a few suggestions as to why it might be beneficial to encourage a more open-minded approach to blogging. Some clients are willing to compromise, but the ones that don’t “get” it tend to have a “my way or the highway” type of attitude.

Adequate Compensation

If your client wants you to write an article as opposed to a blog post, be sure you’re adequately compensated, especially if you’re expected to do a lot of heavy research or interview experts. $3 a post isn’t going to cut it for a heavily researched 500 worder. I understand why blogging pays less than traditional writing, but if it’s traditional writing you want, you’ll have to open your wallet a little wider.

I’m not saying you should pay for a couple of lines a day either, but if you’re looking to hire bloggers it’s a good idea to take some time out to learn a little bit about blogging and what it entails.

12 Tips for Battling Blogger’s Block

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The other day I received a letter from a woman asking about whether or not she was cut out to be a writer. She mentioned starting about nine blogs and abandoning them because of having < a href="http://performancing.com/the-only-way-to-beat-bloggers-block">blogger’s block. While I won’t go into whether or not she has what it takes, I will say that good writers know blogger’s block or writer’s block happens, and take steps to deal with it.

It’s frustrating not knowing what to write about, here are some of the things I do to overcome blogger’s block.

12 Tips for avoiding bloggers block:

  1. Make a list – I have notebook on my desk filed with ideas. If I need inspiration, I look through my notebook.
  2. Check out other blogs – Not just blogs in your niche either. My bloglines has hundreds of blogs listed and even though I don’t visit all of those blogs every day, I do have daily stops. Making the rounds never fails to provide me with a topic or two.
  3. Go out for a while – Go for a walk, run some errands or have a cup of coffee with some friends. Take inspiration from the world around you.
  4. Subscribe to Google Alerts – Set up Google Alerts to notify you of any new news or blogs posts.
  5. Read past blog posts – Is there anything you can update or expand upon?
  6. Blog somewhere else – Move to another room or bring your laptop to the local coffee shop, Internet café or library.
  7. Check out your comments – I get my best ideas from the comments section of my blogs.
  8. Put it to your readers– Offer a poll, a quiz or take questions from your readers
  9. Enlist the aid of a guest blogger – Even if doesn’t give you new ideas, it will give you a break.
  10. Make a list – – List posts are a great way of presenting lots of small ideas instead of one big one.
  11. Visit some website’s offering writer’s prompts – Many writing websites offer writers prompts to help battle writing block. This may be a good way to get back on track.

  12. Filed Under: Blog Tip