Make your blog about your readers, Not about you!
Author: Don Gilbert | Filed under: Uncategorized
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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concert your reads on your blogs, really not just for yourself but the readers
I am a reader. Most of the blogs you said on your opening sentences are my favorites.
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