Make your blog about your readers, Not about you!
My question is, are you a Problogger/Doshdosh reader, or a Johnchow/Shoemoney reader?
Now most likely you are subscribed to all four of them, but though everybody groups John Chow and Problogger together because of their success, they are Very different bloggers. They both have very different styles and their content is also very different. In my opinion at least, doshdosh and shoemoney are simply the second-generation problogger and Johnchow, so I will only be talking about Problogger and Johnchow
Problogger is more of a content-based writer. He writes helpful tips, and lots of list on how to blog, how to get traffic, and how to make money blogging… I find his posts very down to earth, and easy to understand. Not always very useful, because it’s often things you’ve already heard elsewhere, but he still writes good posts. Just look at the title of his blog, “Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging.” At least the way it sounds, is that it’s all about You.
John Chow on the other hand is more of a rant-based writer. And what I mean by that is, he writes whatever the heck he feels like writing at the moment. And you know what? He’s amazing at it. That type of blogging is really hard to do because it’s hit or miss, because his posts are so random, you could just as easily upset your readers as make them enjoy it. So in that sense, props to John Chow. Also, when he’s in the mood, he writes very informative “how to…” posts. These posts though few, are very helpful and definitely as insightful as Problogger if not better. However, if you just read John Chow’s blog title, you will see a drastic difference in his goals, as opposed to Problogger’s. “I make money online by telling people how much money I make.”
It’s all about him and his success.
The interesting thing is, Problogger could be very likely as stuck up as John Chow “sounds.” Now I’m not saying either necessarily is… I’m just saying that John Chow sounds like he is. But this just shows what a difference how you advertise your blog, will effect it’s stats.
Let’s look at the stats of these two sites momentarily. These are the stats as of Nov 2nd 2008,
Google Page Rank
Problogger 6
John Chow 3
Alexa
Problogger 44,000
John Chow 27,000
Technorati
Problogger 32 (yes you read that right, it’s not a typo)
John Chow he’s not in the top 100 so he’s somewhere below 1,146
Siteanalytics.compete.com (A much more accurate traffic checker)
Problogger 358K for this last month
John Chow 164K for this last month
So now you probably read that and went is this guy stupid or something, John Chow is slaughtering him in Alexa ranking. Well No I’m not stupid lol, everybody knows Alexa is very skewed, check out this post by Otooo if you don’t believe me. And further more, look at this alexa graph of the last six months for both of them. They are practically even except for that massive peak by Problogger.
So the point of all this is to get you to question your advertising strategy. When you write your posts, or are commenting on blogs, or are emailing your readers, who is the focus? Are you making it about you? Or about your readers?
This last stat I think clearly shows the difference between the two sites, their RSS subscribers. RSS subscribers are like votes, they show how good and popular a blog really is.
RSS subscribers
John Chow 38,150
Problogger 66,584
Problogger almost doubles him. The morale of this story is, Make your blog about your readers! Not about you!
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5 Responses so far
James Bruning
November 2nd, 2008
4:25 am
Not sure how you even group Shoemoney in there. He has sold 2 companies for many millions (15 million for auctionads according to techcrunch).
While the other 3 talk about making money none of them really make piss.
Simon
November 2nd, 2008
6:02 am
Thanks for the link love - and I’m a ProBlogger / DoshDosh reader
Simons last blog post..Speciality WordPress Theme Released
Yield to Pedestrian
November 2nd, 2008
3:11 pm
MOS: Thanks for another good post. I had not been able to identify what it was that turned me off at times about John Chow and why I spent so much time at ProBlogger. This seems to obvious now.
I also think the future of blogging is NOT in ranting but in providing quality content for free. The rant era is fading.
I have a subject matter request though: I would be interested in hearing your opinion about pushing RSS subscriptions vs. “get this post by email” boxes that feedburner provides. It is better to do both? One? the other? As the older/retiring generation slowly starts to get into blogging, I think that the email option is much more viable for them, and a way to get new viewers that aren’t as comfortable with using a reader but know how to use email. Your thoughts? Does feedburner track email subscriptions as an RSS stat?
Yield to Pedestrians last blog post..Mainstream Media’s Decline Lets New Media Step Up
Collin - Feed Flare
November 3rd, 2008
12:06 am
Ok I hate doing this when I comment but there is one thing I wanted to point out to you.
Last year at this time Darren had around 30k in RSS readers, a very nice number. So over the past year Dareen has just over doubled his readership.
Last year at this time John Chow had around 7k readers and now he is sitting at 38k.
As far as growth is concerned who do you think is doing better? I hope you are saying John is. In the next year you are going to see John’s blog over come Darren’s - Mark my words-
John blogs because he loves blogging and he is not in it for the money. He wants to see how much he can profit from his blog sure, but the money aspect of his site is merely a test. He has other income streams that are his bread and butter.I am not sure if Darren’s blog “Problogger” is a major part of his income stream or not, I don’t read Darren’s site.And as far as John’s personality goes, he is a nice guy and when he had the chance he would help every blogger that he could.
Collin - Feed Flares last blog post..Feed Flare Blogging Millstone - 200 Posts
admin
November 3rd, 2008
2:13 pm
Wow well I guess I annoyed a few people, let’s see, James first.
James: I was talking about from a purely blog perspective. Just about those four sites that I mentioned, not other off internet things, or other sites.
YTP: Yes Feedburner does track both, you can tell right in your stats how many of both that you have. My personal opinion is to do both, I mean you can’t really lose anything besides side space. I would recommend just doing both, and letting your readers decide. When you check your stats, if you have an even split of RSS and Email, then just keep them both. If everybody does one or the other then just keep that option, experimenting is always good.
Collin: I’m not denying that they both have had astronomical growth, and I am very interested to see which one will continue to grow. I wonder who John Chow’s growing fan base is coming from, because most of the bloggers I interact with are all Problogger/Doshdosh readers like me.
I just want to point out, I wasn’t saying that either was a selfish miser. Nobody can achieve that much success with out being a politican of sorts with your readers. I’m not denying that John is a nice guy, and if you saw in the middle of my article, I mentioned that I’m not saying either is stuck up. All I did, was I commented on their blog titles, and how they are two very different advertising techniques. Both are working very successfully, but at this point Problogger is ahead, though admittedly his site is older. John Chow’s title is about him. Not that that is a bad thing, but it’s just a different strategy. Problogger plays his blog off as it’s all about you. Now who knows what they are really thinking, but please don’t be upset at me, and I wasn’t trying to insult either blogger, I just wanted to compare the two and note their differences. I hope that clears up some confusion.