Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently (tweet this).
~ Henry Ford
In my experience, a lot of people are under the impression that once you’ve “made it” as an entrepreneur (whatever that means), you stop making mistakes.
Well, I certainly haven’t. I’m probably making as many mistakes these days as I ever did. Fortunately, I’ve also had some success along the way to balance things out.
I don’t see failure as the enemy. Failure usually offers up huge learning opportunities. Furthermore, rarely is any failure a true “failure” in the literal sense of the word.
The failed project I am going to discuss in this post provides one such example of how beneficial failure can be. It has taught me an enormous amount and (to an extent) defined the direction of a major future project of mine. I for one am bizarrely happy that I was victim to such “failure.” Read on to find out why!
Recapping the One Hour Authority Site Project
The One Hour Authority Site Project was launched on 14th September 2012. At the center of the project was my authority site: Free Online Dating Advice.
It was originally intended as an experiment in producing content specifically for low-competition keywords in the hope of ranking for them without any backlinking necessary. When that experiment failed I decided to turn the site into a blog in the “traditional” sense, with a unique design, social media profiles and content that was more “bloggy.”
With a custom design and nearly 100 high-quality posts published, I consider Free Online Dating Advice a fantastic resource for anyone interested in online dating.
Not including this post I have written ten updates on the project here on LWB:
- Introducing the One Hour Authority Site Project
- How I Chose a Niche for My Authority Site
- My Authority Site’s SEO Optimized Setup
- Keyword Research and Competition Analysis for my Authority Site
- The Three Stages of My Authority Site’s Development
- How I Create SEO Optimized Content for My Authority Site
- Organic Search Engine Optimization: How I’m Doing It
- My Authority Site’s Content Marketing Strategy Revealed
- My Authority Site Revealed (Plus a Job Offer!)
- The One Hour Authority Site Project: My Make or Break Strategy
As you will see if you read through those posts, just about every aspect of my approach to the project has been documented in detail.
Just a few days ago, I decided to call time on the project. There were a number of reasons as to why I made this decision, but Free Online Dating is no longer an ongoing concern for me. I’m moving on.
In the twelve months or so that the project was ongoing, I learned a huge amount — mostly about what not to do when creating authority sites / blogs. Now I want to share those lessons with you.
1. Forget Google
I’m going to be frank about this: I am sick of talking about Google. Until I feel the need to feature another rant about search engine optimization, you are not likely to hear me talking about Google again.
Why? Because Google is unpredictable and still remarkably unsophisticated.
Glen Allsopp of ViperChill has recently written a bunch of posts on how Google still serves up low-quality results on the first page for popular keywords. To be honest, I do not have the inclination to keep up with the schemes of black hat scammers — especially when the efficacy of such schemes can shift from one day to the next.
But webmasters are not only fighting the scammers and spammers when attempting to rank — they’re also competing with bigger brands and budgets (regardless of the quality of the information on hand).
Consider for example the top five results on Google for the keyword “online dating advice”:
On the face of it you could argue that these results are reasonable — they are all relevant articles published by well-known brands. But there’s more than meets the eye.
First of all, each of the above pages links to an article on a site that is not specifically related to online dating. It’s just one article. In fact, to call some of them “articles” is a stretch: Channel 4’s page is made up of nothing more than a collection of online dating tips totalling just 450 words.
So where does my site — with nearly 100 articles featuring online dating advice from experienced online daters — feature in the SERPs for the keyword “online dating advice”? Let’s see…
There it is! Ranked 104th, below awesome articles like top online dating tips men women and lazer-focused websites such as Romance Online Dating Sex Advice Horoscope.
I believe that in terms of both quantity and quality, my site should be on the top spot for the keyword “online dating advice”. I have worked hard to make sure that the content is informative, helpful and actionable. When a good friend of mine told me last week that she has started online dating, I didn’t hesitate to recommend it to her because I believe in what I have created.
Yet Google clearly disagrees. And I can see why by their parameters — the domain is less than a year old and there aren’t many backlinks pointing to the site. I’m not arguing against that. But I am arguing that Google consistently fails to rank the best content in the right places. And I’ve got no interest in playing their game.
Here’s how I see it: Google rankings come last. You create a great website, you work your ass off to get it in front of people, they start to link to it, and in time you get rankings in Google. At no point do you make a concerted effort to rank, but it will happen naturally. To engage in a focused effort to rank in Google above all other marketing strategies is to create an exercise in temporary success or total futility.
2. Only Write About What Other People Are Writing/Talking About
Online dating has come a long way in the past decade or so. It’s transformed from a closet interest into a mainstream activity. It is far less of a taboo than it was.
However, it is still something of a taboo. Although online dating is now a huge industry, you won’t find many high-quality online dating blogs out there. I would rank mine easily amongst the best, and thats with just ~100 articles published over twelve months or so.
However, competing with no one can be a bad thing. You see, bloggers typically thrive on reciprocation (not in the black hat Google sense, but in a real, organic sense). On LWB I’ll find an awesome blog post and link to it. Someone else will come across a post on LWB and link to it. These links spread across the web, then people browse from one blog to the next and stick to those that they like. It’s an effective system.
But if few people are actually talking about a topic (such as online dating), this “recycling” simply doesn’t happen.
Just do a quick search for “online dating blog” or even “dating blog” and you’ll see how woefully underserved the niche is. Far from this being an opportunity, it makes building an audience pretty damn hard. Unless you’re an SEO whizz and can rank for some decent keywords (let’s not go there again), your next obvious avenue is to reach out and network with other bloggers. If there aren’t any (or only a handful of questionable quality), you’re screwed.
I made a few connections in the dating/online dating niche and even had a couple of guest posts published. Those two guest posts sent me a grand total of nine visitors.
Furthermore, articles on online dating are not the kind of things that people will be keen to share. I said that online dating is less of a taboo, but it is definitely still taboo to an extent. While most people will admit that they are online dating, they’re not going to advertise it by sharing articles on online dating. If you want to build a successful blog, it helps if people actually want to share your content.
3. Be Exclusive
The common curse of the newbie blogger is to create a blog for everyone.
The best (or worst, depending upon your outlook) examples I see of this are those blogs that touch upon a number of broad topics. For example, a recent reader asked me to critique their blog on “Spirituality, Productivity and Personal Development.” What a confusing mess of topics.
In reality, successful bloggers should not only focus on a specific topic, but focus on a specific subset of people interested in that topic. To be vague in your approach is to melt into the background.
I made this mistake with Free Online Dating Advice. I didn’t make an online dating blog for men in their 30s or single mothers — I made an online dating blog for everyone. Because it was for everyone, it had a far smaller chance of resonating with anyone.
I’m showing how it should be done with my new blog, Healthy Enough. Here are some notes I have made relating to my target reader:
I got really specific with this — Healthy Enough is for a very particular type of person.
This will be to my benefit, as the above type of person will feel like the blog was made for him when he lands on it.
I’d like to make something clear though: being exclusive does not mean that you literally have to exclude everyone but your target audience. In an ideal world I would like everyone to love my blog, but that is not possible. So I’ve focused down on a subset, but in doing so, I will also be appealing to plenty of other people (both men and women) for whom the subject matter will still resonate with.
By targeting a specific type of person you include them wholly. However, you also include many other people partially — and that can be enough. For instance, a 25-year-old woman could match many of the above aspects of my target reader, and as such could still be interested in the blog.
This will result in a core audience of highly engaged visitors, surrounded by a much larger group of partially engaged visitors. Anyone else will bounce off your site, which is exactly what you want.
4. Create High Quality Content, Then Share It Liberally
The web is saturated with content. That means one thing: if you are going to make any kind of noise, you need to publish only your best content, then make sure that plenty of people see it.
If that means posting once per fortnight (or even less frequently) rather than twice per week, so be it.
A great example of how effective this can be comes courtesy of a blog called Forever Jobless. Its second post, How to Buy a Ferrari for $20k, has 240 comments, 143 Facebook likes and 40 tweets.
Not bad for a blog’s second post, right? It did so well because it was such a compelling post (bravo, Billy).
To go back to Healthy Enough again, that’s why at the time of writing I haven’t published a third blog post, despite my last post having been published eight days ago. I’m working on a post that requires a lot of research and a lot of work, and I’ll only publish it when I’m confident that people will get a lot of value out of it. Then I’ll spend the subsequent week sending it to everyone and anyone who I think could benefit from it or would be interested by it.
Derek Halpern put it really well in a recent article on Social Triggers:
If you spend time writing a piece of content, and that content only gets 1,000 readers, chances are there are one million other people in the world who can benefit from what you wrote.
Why, then, would you spend more time creating content when you already have something that your ideal customers can benefit from?
…
It’s smarter to find another 10,000 people to consume what you’ve already created as opposed to creating more [content].
Or, in other words, create content 20% of the time. Spend the other 80% of the time promoting what you created.
Derek’s nailed it. If you truly spend four times as long promoting a piece of content as you did writing it, success is all but guaranteed (on the assumption that your content is suitably compelling).
5. Have a Striking Personality
Speaking of Derek, if you’re familiar with Social Triggers, you’ll know that he is a frank and (dare I say it) rather brash character. It works well for him, as it has for many others: Johnny B. Truant, Ashley Ambirge, Dave Navarro, et al.
I’m not saying you should be frank and brash, but you should be something. To blog without character is to serve up lifeless and uninspiring content. Even if you provide compelling content, if it reads like a college essay, the masses are unlikely to engage with it.
This is as much about clarifying who your target reader is as it is about not being afraid to be yourself. You’ll need to combine both pieces of the equation in order to create characterful content.
Let’s look yet again at Healthy Enough. The second post I wrote was 10 Ways You Know You Should Be a Healthy Enough Reader, and it pulled no punches.
The featured image and first line of the post is in itself enough to turn plenty of people off:
However, there are a group of people who will resonate with my (admittedly immature and slightly off the wall) personality. If you like pulling stupid faces, toilet humor and Family Guy (oh, and being healthy enough), you’ll love the blog. If you hate those things, you’ll hate the blog.
Dividing opinion with a strong character is part and parcel of building a successful blog. Leaving Work Behind has become a popular on the blog in part because I have always been utterly honest and forthcoming about both my success and my failures. I have promoted a personality of utter honesty and transparency (one that is rare in the “make money online” niche) and people have appreciated that. However, I’ve also published my fair share of forthright posts that not everyone agree with (such as this).
In short, don’t be afraid to piss a few people off. Just make sure that you’re also resonating with a bunch of other people.
So What Next?
In a beautiful stroke of irony, the day I finally decided to call it a day on Free Online Dating Advice was also the day when a new article on the blog hit the front page of Reddit, bringing in a few hundred visitors:
However, that changed nothing. A blip of low-quality traffic wasn’t going to transform FODA’s fortunes.
At the time of writing I have a further nine posts (i.e. nine weeks’ worth) scheduled, so the site will actually rumble on for a while yet. After that, new content will cease and the site will be dormant.
I’m not going to do anything rash like shut it down — for those few people who actually come across the site, I hope they get a great deal of value from it. The published content is the result of a lot of hard work and I believe that it can help anyone interested in the world of online dating. But unless something drastic happens, FODA as an active project is over for good.
Healthy Enough has now taken FODA’s place as my active non-LWB project and I am seriously excited about its prospects. I feel like after just over two years of blogging, I am really starting to get a handle on what is really needed to create a highly successful blog. Most of what I have done with Leaving Work Behind has been trial and error — Healthy Enough is my opportunity to start from scratch and apply all of my experience from the very beginning.
If you have any questions or comments relating to my lessons learned from a failed authority site project, please do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section below!
Image Credits: Brett Jordan and Ilker.
Point no. 3, I believe, is the most important one.
In effect, its actually a part of selecting your niche. If you’re consistently providing real value, even the most specific audiences are large enough to make you successful.
As for your love-hate relationship with Google, don’t you think you would have seen better results if FODA had an even more specific audience like Healthyenough?
Nope. All of the articles themselves were highly specific and yet didn’t perform in Google at all. I’m done second-guessing Google’s odd and unpredictable ways!
“There it is! Ranked 104th, below awesome articles like top online dating tips men women and lazer-focused websites such as Romance Online Dating Sex Advice Horoscope.”
I lost it here! Haha.
I can’t agree enough with your stance on Google. Undoubtedly, being SEO’ed up is important, but I’ve honestly started to shift my focus away from Google when it comes to creating content. Mainly because of the reasons you put forward.
Healthy Enough looks good by the way. From first glance, it looks like it has far more potential than the dating blog. Keep up the good work!
Thanks Kaya, appreciate it!
A lot of good lessons in this post. I’ve done similar things with creating niche sites for Google. I found that after awhile (6 months+), the sites would get more traffic for long tail terms, so it’s good for a little traffic. Definitely leave it up there and see what happens.
A lot of people think SEO traffic from Google is the holy grail, but agreed 100% that SEO should be a secondary focus behind building a real audience. A lot of people are afraid of failure, but it’s actually the fastest way to learn and succeed.
Who knows — maybe it’ll be attracting thousands of hits from Google in six months time if I ignore it 😉
Interesting! Glad you wrote this to share what you’ve learned.
I disagree with you on the Google point, though. I think it’s important for Google to consider longevity and back-links — I think both of those prove a site is valuable enough to rank high in results.
It can be frustrating to see a low-quality site rank before your own, but in the big picture, I think it benefits us all that Google’s rankings take a while to change. If you could change them quickly without the longevity and back-link pieces, it would be even easier for scammers to play the system.
You’re right that the system does sometimes penalize those of us who take the high road, though. For those of us who don’t play the game with scammy back-links, etc., it takes a whole lot of organic work to rank.
I’m in the midst of trying to get The Write Life to be the top slot when you search for “The Write Life” — You just gave me an idea, that I should write about how I’m doing it! Nothing ground-breaking, just a lot of solid content and sharing and back-links over time.
Cheers to making more mistakes 🙂
Lexi
Hey Lexi,
Interesting points — have you read this: http://www.viperchill.com/new-seo/? Seems like Google is more into freshness of content these days than anything else.
That aside, I’m not saying that it’s wrong that Google uses domain age and backlinks as factors in determining rankings. My message was more this: there’s no point trying to play Google’s game when good content alone won’t get you above inferior websites. If instead you focus on creating great content, networking with other bloggers and social media, the Google rankings will come in time.
Cheers,
Tom
From what I’ve seen Tom, Google seems to “experiment” at times with its algorithm.
Sometimes it impacts content-rich sites, and sometimes it doesn’t… and in different ways.
Without devoting 10,000 words to the subject, I think this “freshness” idea Glenn is exploring will revert back to a balance between content and use different (e.g. more relevant) “freshness” indicators in their algorithm.
Of course, no one really knows except Google… but hang in there. 🙂
It’s important to think about your reader for sure, but it’s important to keep a light “pulse” on what Google is doing as well.
Hey Joseph,
To be honest, I don’t necessarily think it’s important.
I was watching an interview with Steve Kamb, owner of Nerd Fitness (1,000,000+ visitors per month) a couple of weeks ago. He admitted to knowing nothing about SEO beyond writing a title and meta description. If you write great content and attract loads of attention and links, the search engine traffic follow in the wake.
Cheers,
Tom
Number 5 resonates with me the most. Especially in crowded markets where your brand is what attracts clients/traffic.
Can’t comment on Google as I haven’t attempted to write for Google ranking. I wouldn’t know where to begin, and also, guest posting is a great way to grow my audience right now.
Tom – thank you for such a detailed post – it helps a lot of us in creating/developing a service that gets results.
– Razwana
My pleasure Razwana 🙂
Quick question Tom:
Was the purpose of FODA simply to figure out definitively whether a no -back linking quality content strategy works? (Which we now know the answer to – it doesn’t!)
Or was it to launch another successful blog in the online dating advice category?
Hey Daryl,
It was initially an experiment to see if a no backlinking quality content strategy worked. I honestly didn’t think it would be that difficult to outrank a Yahoo! Answers page with two lines of content or a forum post with a hundreds words. I was wrong.
So that was stage one. Then it evolved into attempting to build a multi-author authority site that could hopefully run itself by generating a little traffic that could be monetized to pay my writers. That didn’t work either. So I threw my dolly out the pram and gave up 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Tom
You didn’t fail look what you learned.
I’ve advocated for some time writing for Google is pointless, you have no control over how they operate their business.
Writing for your audience is what matters. Your collective audience and their extended connections are worth ten of Google.
On behalf of all newbies and seasoned bloggers thank you again for your honesty and insight.
Regards
Rob
My pleasure Rob 🙂
Tom,
Another excellent post. Wishing you plenty of success and the attention you deserve as a blogger. Your honesty is refreshing. I feel a lot of people hang on when they should cut their losses simply out of ego and a desire to avoid failure. Shifting one’s paradigm to make room for failure and understand that it is merely a (valuable) part of the journey to success is essential. Your post reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
“There is no failure. Only feedback. ” Robert Allen
Cheers Tom and keep up the good work!
Gil
Great quote Gil — thanks for sharing!
Once again love your openness and honesty. There’s no shame in sharing a “failed” project such as your dating site.
I love how you went right into a new project, after learning from your previous venture.
And I’m excited about what may come of “Healthy Enough” – brilliant name by the way – as I pretty much fit your target reader. I think I’m a match for every bullet point except #3 (being single) as I am very happily married. (Well, I do own P90X and Insanity. While the DVDs are getting dusty, I’m not cynical about them.)
Here’s to blogging, business and getting “healthy enough!”
I’m all about sharing the failures. I prefer sharing success though 😉
Glad you’re on board with Healthy Enough. I’ve never been so excited about a project!
Honestly, it’s just nice to hear one of the experts admit to a site failing. It’s always discouraging when you feel like you’re the only person who can’t make this SEO stuff work for you, no matter how much knowledge you have on the topic, or can’t get a certain niche to budge in the right direction. I have a site that I’d consider to have pretty much failed as well. I may pick it up later, I’m hoping that a bit more age on it will get Google to trust it better, but I’ll only pick it up again if it starts showing promise without any more content and effort packed into it. Hopefully your “failed” project will start picking up after a year or so of dormancy as well, even if it’s just to say your work was good enough, but that Google just places too high a value on the age of a domain. Who knows.
Anyway… such is the state of Google search right now I guess, which of course ViperChill, as you’ve mentioned, has pointed out time and time again. So discouraging.
Who knows Elise — we’ll just have to wait and see.
You can consider it discouraging or you can take it as a sign that there is little point focusing on Google. Pour your efforts into more profitable avenues and benefit from the shift in focus!
Amen! Pretend there is no Google. Or if you’ve been around long enough, type and upload as you would have back in 1995.
You would have used Altavista back then 😉
Hey Tom,
I can understand why you wouldn’t want to concentrate on the blog because you have other things in your schedule, but do you think if someone concentrated on it for a few years they could eventually turn it into a lifestyle business?
I agree with your Google thoughts. From now on I’m just promoting my blog and waiting for the links to come (semi) naturally. I wanted for about a year for Google to even notice my blog for some big keywords, but now they’re slowly getting there. I agree with what Alexis says about it just taking time.
Hey Jamie,
Upon reflection I wouldn’t choose the online dating niche — I have reservations about its commerciality. But if I simply had to make the blog work, I’d re-brand it with a new domain name and go from there. The web is screaming for a top-quality online dating resource, but creating it would be a tough slog, given all the roadblocks.
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks for sharing this.
Perseverance is directly related to success. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
So yeah, who cares about Google? OK, they can’t be ignored completely. But I don’t think we should be writing solely for keywords and links. Google isn’t the be all, end all. If we write valuable content, word-of-mouth will help promote it.
Couldn’t agree more Tiare 🙂
Hi, Tom,
Thank you for sharing your valuable experience, looking forward for next article of “Healthy Enough”. Have a question: you pointed out “american male” as part of you target audience, what about europe?
Thanks:)
Hey Diana,
The blog is intended to be exclusive, but is also inclusive of many people who may not fit the perfect mould of my target audience. For instance, even I’m not quite a perfect fit, being from the UK!
That’s why women are welcome — if they fit the mould in every way apart from their sex, they will of course get a huge amount of value out of the blog. At that point, sex becomes a mere technicality. The same goes for your nationality — if you’re on the same wavelength as me, it won’t matter if you’re from New York or Timbuktu.
Cheers,
Tom
Did you know much about online dating before hand? Was it actually an interest of yours?
I ask because I think you mentioned (possibly in the subscription email) that you regretted picking something you didn’t care as much about, right?
Not to criticize at all! I’m sure you spent a lot of time researching and learning about it, right? And I bet you’re an expert on the subject now, aren’t you? And I bet the quality of the content was expert-level!
But, if I’m correct about your statement above, I have a feeling your new project will work much better — because of the things you stated here, but also because I bet you’ll *care* so much more about it because it’s something that actually interests you!
Hi Anthony,
I’ve used online dating sites extensively — I met my long-term girlfriend on match.
However, you’re right — the topic certainly doesn’t interest me as much as others might. The subject matter of Healthy Enough really interests me, and because of that (and many other reasons), I think it will be a success.
Cheers,
Tom
And sometimes it’s simply not meant to happen. I managed to create an authority website in less than 12 months, with over 1 million uniques in its peak month and over $10,000 generated in that month, sold it and decided to create something similar (not in the same field since there was a non compete in place). The second authority blog is not picking up and after three months things are not looking well at all. I thought I had it all figured out but sometimes things are not going to happen. Time to move on and make it big with the next project!
Yep! It really can be pot luck at times (not to diminish your achievement in any way) — with the best will in the world, sometimes it just doesn’t pan out. Like you say, time to move on!
Tom, a man after my own heart (and name!). Keyword research stinks as a way of creating a successful blog. It’s misleading, time-consuming and bores the pants off me. So I stopped doing it.
There’s easier, more accurate and human ways of finding what people are really wanting to know, and what will entice them to read content, think it’s worth telling other people about via Twitter, etc.
Secondly, most bloggers fail because they started a blog purely to make money. Yes, a few start a blog for other reasons too.
Most of the popular bloggers; the ones with large audiences, and large incomes, achieved all they have by:
Blogging because they had something to say that they thought other people would want to know. They carried on long after most “money online bloggers” quit because they have things to say, not things to sell.
Example: David Cain of Raptitude.com.
There are very few blogs I go back repeatedly to read because most just churn out what everyone else is saying. It’s not their fault. Having failed to get readers, they look around to see what people are reading, then write about the same thing on their own blog. Of course, they still don’t get readers because … Who wants to keep reading the same old stuff. I know, my first blog went belly up because of this. So writing what everyone else is writing about fails too.
Then it clicked. Why does anyone attract attention and keep it? By being different, daring, dangerous, turning fads and trends on their heads, giving other people permission to do the same (and giving them a home [blog] to do it all). And doing it repeatedly.
Great comment Tom!
Another way to create a great blog: write about something that will benefit you too. For instance, I will be doing plenty of personal case studies with Healthy Enough as well as lots of research into topic areas that could result in taking that benefits me (and can benefit others). That’s a real win/win scenario and will really help to keep me motivated (both to blog and be healthy).
Cheers,
Tom
Tom,
I’ve been studying a number of blogs rather intensely for the past 3 weeks. This is a whole new medium to me as I have never had much of an interest or aptitude in computers and online activities. Your launch into a new health related blog caught my eye as that is the area I’m interested in.
I was becoming frustrated with all the research into the Google ranking system, etc. and was getting irritated by the thought of having to play games and jump through hoops again to accomplish what I was interested in doing – helping people be healthy.
Thanks for helping me realize I need to focus on people instead of technology. After 34 years in the natural health business, I already knew you build it one satisfied customer at a time!
Thanks again from a soon-to-be blogger.
Hi there,
It’s my pleasure! SEO, social media strategies and so on can get overwhelming for people who have been blogging for years, let alone complete beginners. But successful blogging ultimately comes down to two things: creating great content and establishing genuine relationships with other influential people in your niche. It never has to get any more complicated than that.
Cheers,
Tom
It’s such a relief when you realise you don’t have to worry so much about Google when writing blog posts. It’s so freeing and makes the posts so much better! It’s funny because I read a post recently about Google collecting information about small, high quality sites that aren’t doing so well in their results. Have you read it Tom? http://bit.ly/15HYJ4a
I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway – it’s just interesting that I should read that and then this!
Well done on your ‘failure’ and best of luck with the new venture 🙂
Hi Kirsty,
That smacks of little more than an attempt in positive PR, but that’s probably just the cynic in me 😉
Thanks for the kind words!
Tom
Dear Tom,
I really enjoyed your post!
BUT: since I read your post about “online dating niche site” my blog is being under attack by comment-spam of online-dating-sides…
Strange, isn’t it?
Greetings from Cologne
Heike
Yep, strange!
It’s amazing how often we try to write for Google.
It’s just one of those things that we try to do no matter what.
However, we must forget about it and focus on the reader and what they want. Google will catch up with you.
I’ve had some dealings with Google lately as well. They turned out similar.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Trying to work the system never ends well.
“Google will catch up with you.” I like that. Write great stuff and at some point Google will figure out that it’s great stuff.
To restate what I believe you are saying. Write some great chapters as a serial. Finish and call it a book. Promote the hell out of the book. Then write another book one chapter at a time…and do all this knowing that, Miss Google is my crazy anal retentive publisher.
Sounds like a plan 🙂
Great post! Can I pick your brains about on ‘#3 Be Exclusive’:please?
I want to start a WP-style blog as I write for some WordPress blogs now, and want to create my own one (to generate money, get better at blogging, find more client work, etc).
Should I go niche and focus on just WordPress, or even a small slice of WordPress such as eCommerce sites for example. Or should I go more general and include other blog platforms, general web design tips, hosting, design news etc.
I don’t want a wpname.com domain as I think that mght be too limiting for future expansion but I’m not sure whether to be totally non-specific/exclusive to just WP users?
Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks.
Hey Joe,
I think the WordPress community is screaming out for quality blogs that focus down on specific topics. There are 101 crappy generic WordPress blogs out there, so you absolutely must avoid that. You need to go specific, but not too specific. General is definitely not what you want to do.
The reason why there aren’t that many great WordPress blogs out there is because there isn’t much money in WordPress blogging. If you think of most of the big blogs (WPMU, ManageWP, WPExplorer, etc.), you’ll find that they’re all referral machines for an adjacent business.
But if nothing else, creating a WordPress blog could potentially be very good for your freelancing career.
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks for your advice. Could you suggest a blogging area in which there is much money? Or is that the $64,000 question!
I’m doing ok with my freelance blogging journey and am writing for a few WP blogs but am failing to make decent money. I want the blog that I start to help me get more lucrative work, so I don’t want to start it in a niche that doesn’t make money (either as a blog or in terms of freelance writing).
I’m a competent writer, but I can’t do the high level, advice/motivation style posts you produce, so something more technical would probably be better for me?
Thanks.
Hey Joe,
You can certainly make money in the WordPress space — it’s all a matter of positioning. But like you say, figuring that out is the $64,000 question.
You can definitely make good money as a WordPress blogger and a quality WordPress blog will help no end. If you’ve got technical skills, all the better.
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks Tom. I guess I will just have to give it a go and find out if I can make money from a WordPress site.
I’m currently making OK money as a WordPress blogger (for other people’s sites). Can’t quite break into the good money realm though.
Thanks!
Thanks for the tip Tom, it had never even occurred to me to use 80/20 rule between promoting and writing.
As a result I shall promote existing content much much more.
Thanks again
Karl
No problem Karl — I heard it from Derek Halpern first so you have him to thank really 🙂
Good insights!! I too find google makes me want to bang my head against a wall! I’m another quit-my-job-er…sort of….I’ve actually been freelancing for almost my entire career, but I like reading what other people are doing! It’s good to have a bit of a network in the work from home (er coffee shop) world:)
It certainly is Lynnette 🙂
I think that your laser-focus on the target audience for your Healthy Enough website is an absolutely fantastic idea. I think a lot of people think that making a blog that appeals to everyone means that they will get lots of visitors. Sometimes, it is those focused blogs that keep readers coming back.
I would also agree with your comment on search results. I had a bad toothache recently and when I did a search online, the top result was a crappy website that provided little information. All it had going for it was that it was an exact domain match to the search terms I used. I couldn’t believe that it ranked above WebMD and other reputable sites.
Such is Google’s wont it seems…
WRITE TO YOUR AUDIENCE
As Eugene says, “laser-focus on the target audience”; it’s very good to know who will be reading your website, even if you haven’t met them yet, as readers of your blog.
A good way to get to know a specific audience is to visit blogs that are similar to what you want to build. Then jot down what you can tell from the comments on each of the posts. Age, interests, sites they frequent, what continent they live on, what products they’ve purchased, what they know, what they need to know and want to learn.
PICKING A SIMPLE SUBJECT FOR YOUR BLOG
There are also tools that can be used to make the process quicker, so you can fixate on a certain subject that is not too broad and not too specific.
After you have a specific audience you understand, even a little, you have a starting ground for your blog posts. Then make sure your subject interests you and is simple enough that you can easily stay regular publishing useful things.
Tom, that Gary Vaynerchuk video was something else! I had never heard of him, but now I am compelled to watch other videos, he is so energetic and inspiring, thanks for including it!
Check out his book, “Crush It!”
Great indepth analysis.
In terms of how you could proceed I would suggest partnering with a SEO specialist. You are obviously fantastic at writing the content for the site but need someone to get the visitors for you. I’m a great believer in online dating as met my wife that way so you just need SEO help perhaps.
Theres plenty of ways to monetize such a site as there are some very high paying affiliate programs and I know you could get some blackhat assistance for some quite good prices. I know where you could find some blachatters for a profit sharing arrangement.
Just a shame to have great content and the world not see it.
Dale.
Thanks for the advice Dale, but this article is two years old. I’ve moved onto pastures new 🙂
I have had some success lately trying different methods and twisting things up and come up with conclusion that Content Should be Interesting, creative, and fun…what ever topic it is. If it can’t grab attention of few people, there is hardly any luck left for the content. It will be just sitting in your archives.
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