When Not to Follow the Blogging Crowd

Schlaraffenland

Blogging fatigue hits most of us at one time or another. Why are we doing it? Just what is the point?

Some of us use blogs to make a living--or at least to try to earn enough to let them pay for themselves. Some of us use  blogs to promote our books and services. Buy me, buy me.


You can find blogging help all over the Internet. Some of it is useful. Some is not. But one idea is constant--the idea that blogging should be making you money. 


How to Publicize Your Blog


This cheerful little instagram showing how to publicize your blog and succeed at blogging is old in Internet terms--2013--but illustrates advice more than ever relevant today.

I, for one, am fed up with self promotion, email sign up lists, and building up websites that are under constant attack by spammers and hackers the more popular they grow. I am so cross with pop up attempts to make me click social media icons that I instantly click the little go-away cross and exit the site.


And I'm not the only one.


Think carefully before applying the next great software aid to help grow your list, add more readers, make more money.



Stay Real


With the proliferation of blogs on the web, how easy is it to find a real review site which is not ruled by PR interests or affiliate earnings?

Readers follow blogs which discuss real life interests, solve problems. It takes a load of trust to click on a blog advertisement.


How easy is it to find a helpful blog which is not overrun with advertisements? Not very.


But if we rely on these for our income, what then?



A Solution


Keep it simple.

Create your own simple advertisement image links with software like PowerPoint. Stop them looking spammy and salesy.


This helpful tutorial from Lynette Chandler shows how. These are created for social media. But you can easily adjust the idea to fit one or two into the margins of your blog. Attach them to an affiliate or book link.


The bonus is that you can play at creating these for a day or two and have a rest from thinking up ideas for your next blog post.


What do you do when faced with blogging fatigue?


painting Schlaraffenland by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. It was never meant to illustrate blogging fatigue but the exhaustion of life in a land of milk and honey.

Anne Duguid
Anne Duguid Knol


A local and national journalist in the U.K., Anne Knol is now a fiction editor for award-winning American and Canadian publishers. As a new author, she shares writing tips and insights at Author Support : http://www.authorsupport.net where you can find Yaro Starak's Blog Profits Blueprint 2016 to download for free.

Her Halloween novella, ShriekWeek is published by The Wild Rose Press as e-book and in print  included in the Hauntings in the Garden anthology. (Volume Two)

At last starting to write something else...

6 comments:

Terry Whalin said...

Anne,

Great article. I loved the focus but also the additional information in the links to other resources that you provided. Thank you and keep up the good work.

Terry
Straight Talk From the Editor

Anne Duguid Knol said...

Thanks Terry. Your site has a beautifully clear and uncluttered front page offer. A great example of how to do it.

Karen Cioffi said...

Anne, great article. I hate those popup CTAs also. I have to say though I do have it one two of my sites. Not that I wanted them, but a service I use for social media uses it automatically. It's crazy because I immediately click them closed when I'm on a site.

But, you're so right. Everything has become marketing oriented.

Kathleen Moulton said...

Anne, thank-you! I am not alone! I think we all are on overload and long for simplicity.

As far as blogging fatigue, I have not faced that yet. I post 3x per week and seem to always have content.

Anne Duguid Knol said...

Perhaps the consistency helps, Kathy, and also the fact that you are really helping your readers by blogging? I was a bit down after having a couple of blogs hacked just as they were on the way to building. All well now, though :-)

Anne Duguid Knol said...

hehe Always look at your sites when I'm working out how to do it, Karen. It's the ones I can't manage to click closed that really irritate me.

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