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Followers, you fickle bunch

  1. theuglymoose
    Member

    I'm a little baffled by the concept of followers. I've watched my follower count go up by about an average of 5 a day, and I'm approaching 140 now by the end of my second month. I thought that was pretty good. Yet, this has appears to have almost no bearing on my views counts, if referral traffic is anything to go by.

    I do have a small steady group that almost always pop by to view my posts, and some people clearly enjoy them, but about 90% of those followers are no shows.

    Today I finally fell off a cliff in terms of views. I can't blame it on today's post, as hardly anyone has viewed it, and I can't blame it on yesterday's post, as plenty of people viewed it and apparently enjoyed it.

    So even though I enjoy writing for the sake of it, it's discouraging to think you had a steady growing audience only to find it was just a mirage.

    Very sad, Woe is me. Maybe it's just a weird, off day. Maybe I need to stop worrying and just keep writing, but it's tempting just to switch the follow widget off.

    The blog I need help with is theuglymoose.wordpress.com.

  2. teamoyeniyi
    Member

    People have lives other than reading our blogs. I follow many and recently had to delete 200 emails notifying of new posts for me to read. I knew I was never going to catch up.

    To be very blunt, it isn't all about you! Stats go up and down and many people do pop by and read but not comment or give any other indication they have been.

    Some days are just slow days, too.

  3. timethief
    Member

    No kidding. I have a life to libe, a business to run, contracted work to do and in my "free time" I blog and I read other blogs. Becoming a follower does not mean that I commit to read each and every post in any blog, nor does it mean I commit to commenting on each and every post either.

    900,000 blogs are created every day. Yes, every 1.5 seconds a new blog is created! And 6 months to 1 year from now I'll wager that most of them will be either deleted or dormant.

    If you want to have a healthy blog with a decent pagerank a year from now then:
    1. Don't get hung up on stats.
    2. Don't waste valuable time on idle chat and seeking encouragement from other bloggers.
    3. Become a content creation machine and for 6 months consistenely work you butt off to create fresh content frequently and promote it beyong this garden wall at WordPress.com.

  4. timethief
    Member

    edit: consistently work your

  5. timethief
    Member

    There are useful links to writer's communities and poetry communities in this post and in the comments too. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/06/26/promoting-your-writing-or-poetry-blog/

  6. theuglymoose
    Member

    Just venting. Having a bad day, and then I see my WordPress friends weren't loving me enough for my ego to cope with. I guess I should write something, or do some work, one of those.

  7. theuglymoose
    Member

    Did you just promote your blog with a link to 'how to promote you blog' ? There's a irony in their somewhere :) Just kidding. Thanks for the link and I'll take a look.

  8. theuglymoose
    Member

    Some great links, I'll check those out tonight. Thanks again.

  9. timethief
    Member

    There is no irony in providing you with useful links and you're welcome.

  10. teamoyeniyi
    Member

    By the way I don't think I ever got 5 followers in one day. Consider yourself lucky. :-)

  11. noirciplume
    Member

    To achieve that many followers in two months is great! Appreciate that at least. The stats you receive everyday will be very random. There will be good days and bad days. Eventually, you will ignore the stat numbers and focus on what you have, your readers.

  12. theuglymoose
    Member

    Trying.. very.. hard.. thanks for the nice comments, my ego thanks you on this rough day.

    I did look at the writercafe.org, as that seemed a good place to start, but none of the links are working. Wonder if that's still up and running.

  13. timethief
    Member

    The link in my post works http://www.writerscafe.org/

  14. timethief
    Member

    I forgot to say the links on the writerscafe site work for me too. Maybe you need to clear your browser cache and cookies.

  15. iameva1
    Member

    I know what you mean, its discouraging to write and feel like no one is reading, but truth is a lot of people are just busy and they'll stop by and read when they have time.

  16. theuglymoose
    Member

    Not a browser or cookie issue, more a hosting issue.

    I could get in today, and register, so things looked up.

    I took a look at their forums which is a good sign of life, and there's about a post a week which is lucky to get a response. I believe I get more traffic than they do.

    One of the post headers was quite telling, 'Is this site dead' the poster asks. I clicked on that post and the site spun its wheels until the it died. Try again, same thing.

    You might want to consider removing that one from your list.

  17. robrubin
    Member

    I get a steady stream of followers too, but just like you, it's only a core group of about 30 that regularly read and comment on my posts. I have many followers that I've never heard from at all. But I don't sweat it. As @timethief says, focus on quality content and page views will come.

  18. theuglymoose
    Member

    Tried another writer site. They want money to display your URL. More money than to host a site! Never mind.

    Yes, I'll keep typing away. If it's quality, maybe they will come, maybe not.

    I'm pretty much done with marketing though. I can't write, be a family man and hold a job while I'm busy shamelessly plugging myself. They'll have to come to me or nothing, somehow.

    I guess my point at the start of the thread is that your follower count counts for very little, and I was getting hopeful over nothing. My second day is another of decline, lost one follower, down dramatically on visits.

    Thankfully I have a small core who do enjoy it, so press on.

  19. teamoyeniyi
    Member

    Moose, you need to decide WHY you are writing. If your only reason is to attract and audience, I think you are putting the cart before the horse.

    Write about things that inspire you and you will in turn inspire others to read you.

  20. theuglymoose
    Member

    If I'm writing to please as many people as possible, trust me it's not working. I've had one person that's read my blog today out of my 134 followers. I've had people ask me not to post because they felt it was in bad taste, or wouldn't be popular.

    With that said, I doubt there has been a writer in history that wrote without wanting an audience. Writing is after all the dissemination of ideas, which is worthless if nobody hears that idea and its ability to communicate and connect with the public. The larger the audience, the better to share those ideas, be they silly or serious. I believe even diary writers believe one day their diary will eventually surface and be held aloft as a work of brilliance.

    Any writer, and I was guilty of this not long ago out of bravado, who says they don't care who reads their work is very good at fooling themselves, or not very good at fooling others.

    With that said, I'm not writing to please, as I've mentioned, but everyone seems to want to move away from the topic I raised.

    The point is that I have x 'followers', which translates into very little. It is a false indicator of audience in my opinion. I think you can almost ignore it altogether, and just look at your visit stats to see if your writing is resonates over time.

  21. noirciplume
    Member

    It takes at least 6 months to build a solid readership. Until then, you will be writing to an unknown world. At times, it will feel like you're writing to yourself. Every newbie blogger will feel lonely. Patience and inspiration is all you need.

  22. theuglymoose
    Member

    By then I might have mastered proof reading :)

  23. timethief
    Member

    Please let me get this straight.
    1. You have very few subscribers and most don't read or comment every day, which is the same thing all bloggers experience. (Even A list bloggers like Chris Brogan don't have a great comment to page view ratio. raincoaster and I have previously shared that the ratio of comments to pageviews is about 1 comment for every 700 - 800 hits.)

    2. Most of your susbcribers are apparently drawn from the WordPress.com community and perhaps mainly from those who have the time to hang out in the Showcase and Off-Topic Forums.

    3. The title of this thread is Followers, you fickle bunch
    Was it your intent to attempt to pressure your WordPress.com subscribers, who aren't behaving as you wish them to behave into reading and commenting by creating this thread?

    If so then what made you think praising the WordPress.com subscribers you do have and who are reading your posts would not be a better tactic?

    Was your intent when creating this thread to vent and seek shoulders to cry on?

    P.S. I immediately unsubscribe from any blog wherein the blogger makes any demands on their subscribers regarding frequency of reading and commenting. I do likewise if the blogger bitches about their subscribers at all. If a blogger lacks the kind of passion for their subject matter and the self-confidence to blog on, despite a low readership, and/or if they lack the grace to treasure the readers and comments they do have, my experience is that they won't be around 6 months or a year from now.

  24. plasticdaffodils
    Member

    Another reason to not pay too much attention to how many followers you have - not everyone who follows your blog subscribes through WordPress. I don't follow any blogs through WordPress, I use Google Reader, and I assume a lot of people do something similar. And no, no one is going to read your blog everyday, but as you grow you'll also get hits on days you don't post. Everybody likes validation, but the fact is no matter how many subscribers you have it will never feel like enough. There will always be somebody else more popular than you, so it's best just to be happy with where you're at.

  25. jessielansdel
    Member

    I love writing. I don't do it for money or blog followers although I do have some (followers not money. Lol) and that's great. But even if I had none at all I'd still blog and write. because that's what I do.

  26. theuglymoose
    Member

    ironically those keen to attack my post didn't take to time to read it, or maybe had trouble understanding it. I guess I'm done with the subject as we're just going around in circles.

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