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"Chasing eyeballs, at least to me, turns blogging into something a lot less fun." An important corollary to this is: chasing eyeballs without any way to retain

"Chasing eyeballs, at least to me, turns blogging into something a lot less fun." An important corollary to this is: chasing eyeballs without any way to retain them is neither fun nor productive. The article -- which I quite enjoyed -- does a nice job of pointing that out. And, while the point may sound obvious, it's certainly nontrivial and not immediately intuitive. And even if you have nothing tangible to sell, you're still "selling" your blog. So you've got to make it consistently engaging to the people you've decided to target. The first mistake many bloggers make is to write for themselves. They assume that an article they found interesting to write will also be interesting to read -- or worse, that an overarching blog topic they love is interesting to a big group of people. Not always the case. You can write about your passions, and you can always lure in a bunch of outside readers with a well-marketed post. But don't expect everyone -- or even 99% of those whose attention you got -- to stick around if they don't care for the rest of the material on your blog. I'm not advocating that everyone write big, general-interest, broad-topic blogs. The internet has enough of those. So writing about a niche domain is fine. Just be consistent, and stick within that domain. Deviate every now and then if you have something amazing to say. But don't be one of those blogs that's ostensibly about X, but veers off into Y and Z greater than 50% of the time. If I came to your blog to read about startup marketing strategies, I really don't care what you have to say about college basketball, or Call of Duty, or the pricing of the Harry Potter Blu-ray set. Don't write just anything that comes to mind. Have the discipline to stick to a domain and a "brand." Joel on Software is about Joel on software; it's not "Joel on Software and Kittens and Foreign Film Reviews and Fixed-Gear Bikes and What He Saw at Starbucks The Other Day."

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
I think we're conflating two things. There's "blogging" -- writing on the web for marketing purposes, and "blogging" using the web as a daily journal. My personal blog is my journal. Whether you care or not about the topics I write about does not concern me in the least. I've been blogging for several years and get 10-50K visits a month and rank on all kinds of weird and odd keywords. Yes, it's totally awesome when I am passionate about something that lots of HNers will find interesting. There's nothing like seeing 20K visits. But if I'm just journaling for eyeballs, I am not doing anything but trying to make a more and more popular noise. On the flip side, I love writing targeted material: I have several sites where I post niche pieces. Want to see my funny picture collection? I'm posting them all on http://caption-of-the-day.com http://caption-of-the-day.com But I don't think of these in the same way as my blog. The things you describe are all about blog/marketing, not blog/journaling. I would say that I admire people who can write tons of tightly-focused material every day. But it strikes me as being a bit unnatural, at least to me, like writing an encyclopedia by starting with "A" and writing straight through. My brain doesn't work that way. Sure, visiting the site it's great to have it all and nicely on-topic, with a little email sign-up, an ebook, landing page and the rest of it. But that's not journaling, that's marketing. If my goal is to write something people want, I'm marketing. If my goal is to write something that helps me think, I'm journaling. Marketing is great -- lots of awesome things to share. In my mind journaling is better -- helps me be a better person so that I can help folks better. So when I read "blog", I'm not thinking of the web-personality who is the expert and writes everything you wanted to know about underwater basket weaving. I don't want folks to think the primary purpose of writing is to market something. That's bad. Very bad.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  Totally fair, and I agree with you. But I think a lot of people market their journals and market their subject-matter-blogs in the same fashion. They "journal for eyeballs," as you very eloquently put it. Which is sort of a hollow activity for both the journaler and the marketed-to audience. I see a ton of blogs that are conflations of journal and subject-matter-blog: neither fish nor fowl. And that's where things go wrong, IMO. In many cases it's a fine line to toe, but the blogs I've stopped following are the blogs that don't seem to have a consistent leaning in either direction. "I don't want folks to think the primary purpose of writing is to market something. That's bad. Very bad." It doesn't have to be bad, so long as the author of the blog is forthright with his intentions. A lot of company blogs fall into this category. Many of them are trying to sell product, albeit indirectly. I know that's what they're doing, and I'm fine with it. To your point, I wouldn't be fine with someone who's ostensibly journaling but keeps trying to sell goods or services. Or with someone who's simply content-farming in an attempt to capture eyeballs and monetize them via ads. There needs to be an honesty and transparency of intentions, one way or the other.
  - DanielBMarkham 15y ago
    Funnily enough, I started my blog as a marketing tool. I read up some of those "how to blog" books that came out when blogging first took off. I found I couldn't do it. I could either tightly focus -- and lose interest in writing -- or write what I wanted -- and write solely for me. My old job is consulting, so I have a fair amount of consulting material on my blog. I'm wrapping up some of it into an ebook. But I wouldn't use the blog to promote the ebook, at least not directly. It's just not targeted for that. Instead, I'll probably set up a micro-site for ebook and crank out a couple of dozen high-quality resource articles. I actually love writing targeted articles as well, but I just can't maintain the energy level for more than a few weeks. What can I say? Stuff bores me easily.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

I think we're conflating two things. There's "blogging" -- writing on the web for marketing purposes, and "blogging" using the web as a daily journal. My personal blog is my journal. Whether you care or not about the topics I write about does not concern me in the least. I've been blogging for several years and get 10-50K visits a month and rank on all kinds of weird and odd keywords. Yes, it's totally awesome when I am passionate about something that lots of HNers will find interesting. There's nothing like seeing 20K visits. But if I'm just journaling for eyeballs, I am not doing anything but trying to make a more and more popular noise. On the flip side, I love writing targeted material: I have several sites where I post niche pieces. Want to see my funny picture collection? I'm posting them all on http://caption-of-the-day.com http://caption-of-the-day.com But I don't think of these in the same way as my blog. The things you describe are all about blog/marketing, not blog/journaling. I would say that I admire people who can write tons of tightly-focused material every day. But it strikes me as being a bit unnatural, at least to me, like writing an encyclopedia by starting with "A" and writing straight through. My brain doesn't work that way. Sure, visiting the site it's great to have it all and nicely on-topic, with a little email sign-up, an ebook, landing page and the rest of it. But that's not journaling, that's marketing. If my goal is to write something people want, I'm marketing. If my goal is to write something that helps me think, I'm journaling. Marketing is great -- lots of awesome things to share. In my mind journaling is better -- helps me be a better person so that I can help folks better. So when I read "blog", I'm not thinking of the web-personality who is the expert and writes everything you wanted to know about underwater basket weaving. I don't want folks to think the primary purpose of writing is to market something. That's bad. Very bad.

jonnathanson 15y ago
Totally fair, and I agree with you. But I think a lot of people market their journals and market their subject-matter-blogs in the same fashion. They "journal for eyeballs," as you very eloquently put it. Which is sort of a hollow activity for both the journaler and the marketed-to audience. I see a ton of blogs that are conflations of journal and subject-matter-blog: neither fish nor fowl. And that's where things go wrong, IMO. In many cases it's a fine line to toe, but the blogs I've stopped following are the blogs that don't seem to have a consistent leaning in either direction. "I don't want folks to think the primary purpose of writing is to market something. That's bad. Very bad." It doesn't have to be bad, so long as the author of the blog is forthright with his intentions. A lot of company blogs fall into this category. Many of them are trying to sell product, albeit indirectly. I know that's what they're doing, and I'm fine with it. To your point, I wouldn't be fine with someone who's ostensibly journaling but keeps trying to sell goods or services. Or with someone who's simply content-farming in an attempt to capture eyeballs and monetize them via ads. There needs to be an honesty and transparency of intentions, one way or the other.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  Funnily enough, I started my blog as a marketing tool. I read up some of those "how to blog" books that came out when blogging first took off. I found I couldn't do it. I could either tightly focus -- and lose interest in writing -- or write what I wanted -- and write solely for me. My old job is consulting, so I have a fair amount of consulting material on my blog. I'm wrapping up some of it into an ebook. But I wouldn't use the blog to promote the ebook, at least not directly. It's just not targeted for that. Instead, I'll probably set up a micro-site for ebook and crank out a couple of dozen high-quality resource articles. I actually love writing targeted articles as well, but I just can't maintain the energy level for more than a few weeks. What can I say? Stuff bores me easily.