3 ms·

I've been trying to boost readership on my blog, largely without success. Here's what I've tried: 1) Posting here when it's relevant. Success rate so far: 0%,

I've been trying to boost readership on my blog, largely without success. Here's what I've tried: 1) Posting here when it's relevant. Success rate so far: 0%, but I've only tried a couple of times. 2) Answering questions on Quora and including a link to my blog. # of visitors so far: 0, but I've only answered a couple of questions. 3) Answering questions on the relevant Subreddit: # of visitors so far: 0, despite having tried a bunch. 4) Starting a companion Substack: don't know, just launched it today! 5) Contacting other bloggers in space: I'm playing the long game here, so I haven't directly asked for backlinks. Feature posts seem to be a dead format, most bloggers in my niche explicitly don't do them. 6) Posting all content to social media: I regularly post to LinkedIn, Facebook, and X, but I've only seen engagement with LinkedIn. I think that's because I have ~1,500 organic connections there and a couple hundred followers. 7) Creating content on other platforms: I dipped my toe into Tiktok, but the brand and the format didn't match. I still want to at least try Youtube, but it's a much bigger time investment, so I imagine it'll be a while before I can do that. I've only been it at it for about 8 months, so still early days, but as with most other stuff on the internet, attention and followers seem to follow a largely luck-driven power law distribution. So my current strategy is just to try as many possible avenues as I can afford. My contact info is in my profile, happy to connect to discuss this more if you'd like! And for anyone curious, my blog is over here: http://www.overthinkingmoney.com http://www.overthinkingmoney.com Don't mean to shamelessly self-promote, but I figured some people might be interested in the context.

jyunwai 3y ago
Thanks for sharing the info on different approaches. I did check out your blog as thanks and read through a few posts, and decided to write feedback as a non-expert opinion in case it's helpful. For positive feedback, the best part of the blog is the use of flowcharts, tables, and graphics that organizes the information quite nicely. This is a higher-effort and effective way to communicate technical information, and especially numerical information. The presentation of information in this way also helps your blog stand out from similar websites about the same subject. However, the biggest weakness I can see (as a non-expert reader) is that it's hard for me to immediately tell whether or not the advice is credible, which is especially important because your blog is about money and personal finance. It is an unfortunate reality that there are quite a few financial blogs that give low-quality or even malicious advice. Though a reader could give the blog a chance and evaluate the advice logically and from first principles, that takes effort—it would be helpful for the reader and the blog to have more signals that the advice is trustworthy. A good way to achieve trustworthiness would be to include a prominent About page (I couldn't immediately find one, outside of the brief introduction on the right-hand sidebar and a couple sentences on the Contact page). If comfortable, after weighing the pros and cons, the inclusion of your full name on the blog itself would also elevate the blog from a semi-anonymous blog to a personal blog tied to your identity. The advice would then appear more credible to the reader, as the credibility of the blog would have a more direct effect on your personal reputation. A more detailed biography would also provide a chance for the reader to understand why your blog is trustworthy, and how your personal life experience gives you unique and useful insights into personal finance. For example, you mention your background working in major technology companies in the past on your Hacker News biography. Mentioning this upfront would add credibility to your articles on "Tech Stock Compensation" articles—while you present a bit of your personal background in the article itself, a reader landing on the homepage would find it helpful to learn about your background from that page of the website, as they decide whether or not to continue exploring your website by reading its articles. To summarize: it's great that you are sharing your knowledge and experience through a personal blog, and this comment itself is another example of the insights you have to share. However, potential readers who do not already know you would benefit from having an easier way to understand why they should trust your perspective and point of view, especially as the blog deals concerns personal finance—with this subject, the consequences of taking bad advice can be severe. You can more easily communicate why the your advice is trustworthy by writing more about your personal background in an easier-to-find way on the website.
creer 3y ago
That does seem like a good solution. A problem with posting to random platforms is the lack of durability - it feels like it could be gone at any time and that's because it could be gone at any time. Writing first for your own site, and then either copying elsewere or linking from elsewhere at least preserves the original writeup. On many platforms there is a preference for very short answers (too long didn't read). So copying a very short version and linking to the full version seems like a good direction. It's not perfect because contributing answers are then locked on each platform. - But we can always link back to a few worthwhile, and summarize them on our own page. After that, traffic or not is mostly out of our control.

jyunwai 3y ago

Thanks for sharing the info on different approaches. I did check out your blog as thanks and read through a few posts, and decided to write feedback as a non-expert opinion in case it's helpful. For positive feedback, the best part of the blog is the use of flowcharts, tables, and graphics that organizes the information quite nicely. This is a higher-effort and effective way to communicate technical information, and especially numerical information. The presentation of information in this way also helps your blog stand out from similar websites about the same subject. However, the biggest weakness I can see (as a non-expert reader) is that it's hard for me to immediately tell whether or not the advice is credible, which is especially important because your blog is about money and personal finance. It is an unfortunate reality that there are quite a few financial blogs that give low-quality or even malicious advice. Though a reader could give the blog a chance and evaluate the advice logically and from first principles, that takes effort—it would be helpful for the reader and the blog to have more signals that the advice is trustworthy. A good way to achieve trustworthiness would be to include a prominent About page (I couldn't immediately find one, outside of the brief introduction on the right-hand sidebar and a couple sentences on the Contact page). If comfortable, after weighing the pros and cons, the inclusion of your full name on the blog itself would also elevate the blog from a semi-anonymous blog to a personal blog tied to your identity. The advice would then appear more credible to the reader, as the credibility of the blog would have a more direct effect on your personal reputation. A more detailed biography would also provide a chance for the reader to understand why your blog is trustworthy, and how your personal life experience gives you unique and useful insights into personal finance. For example, you mention your background working in major technology companies in the past on your Hacker News biography. Mentioning this upfront would add credibility to your articles on "Tech Stock Compensation" articles—while you present a bit of your personal background in the article itself, a reader landing on the homepage would find it helpful to learn about your background from that page of the website, as they decide whether or not to continue exploring your website by reading its articles. To summarize: it's great that you are sharing your knowledge and experience through a personal blog, and this comment itself is another example of the insights you have to share. However, potential readers who do not already know you would benefit from having an easier way to understand why they should trust your perspective and point of view, especially as the blog deals concerns personal finance—with this subject, the consequences of taking bad advice can be severe. You can more easily communicate why the your advice is trustworthy by writing more about your personal background in an easier-to-find way on the website.

creer 3y ago

That does seem like a good solution. A problem with posting to random platforms is the lack of durability - it feels like it could be gone at any time and that's because it could be gone at any time. Writing first for your own site, and then either copying elsewere or linking from elsewhere at least preserves the original writeup. On many platforms there is a preference for very short answers (too long didn't read). So copying a very short version and linking to the full version seems like a good direction. It's not perfect because contributing answers are then locked on each platform. - But we can always link back to a few worthwhile, and summarize them on our own page. After that, traffic or not is mostly out of our control.