I’m sure I can write a coherent article about building a low traffic blog because I’ve had one for around 4 years now. Let’s not play dumb and pretend that my traffic is sizable. It is not. Check out my Alexa ranking. Right now it is in the 5 millions. I was actually surprised to see that because before it was in the 6 millions. So I guess I’m moving on up. My website is viewed not very often, I assume. If there are 5 million other websites getting more traffic than me, then perhaps I’m doing something wrong. Or maybe it’s just that people would rather read more established websites. Perhaps my content has not been constant enough for the average reader. I’ve talked about way too many different things on here, but that’s who I am. I’m not a robot who only wants to write about one topic and stick to it. I like to mix it up and go through phases, such as my anarcho-primitivist phase where I blasted humanity big time for probably about a year. But I always said there was a better way to live and there is.
Let’s take a look back at the history of this blog. I started this blog sometime in 2006 to make money and eventually be able to live off of it. That was my primary intention. I wanted to help people, too, just make money as well. I figured that I’m a pretty good writer, and I have ideas about things, so why not offer them to the general public? So I did. Within a year, I bought my first domain name and went from Blogger to Wordpress. I did okay with traffic for a little while, mostly because I was posting on topics that people actually wanted to read, like Personal Development and comedy. It was a time when I was starting to truly build a small, but sizable following, and my ranking was somewhere in the 1 millions. I still hadn’t made a dime from this site, but at least I was getting somewhere in terms of success.
Then I started really enjoying nature and started reading stuff about simplifying my life and how we humans are destroying the Earth, which is still true regardless of how few people want to hear it. I got my inspiration from people like Dave Pollard and Ran Prieur, both who run pretty successful websites, at least compared to mine. Dave Pollard has been running his blog since 2002 and Ran Prieur’s website has been up around just as long. I totally resonated with what they were saying and jumped on that bandwagon pretty quickly. And I still feel this way today, to a point, but the more I rant about it, the more people don’t want to read it. I know the old adage that people will listen when they are ready and only when they are ready, but the planet is dying, for God’s sake! And there isn’t much being done about it. But that kind of talk still falls on deaf ears I guess, or maybe, just maybe, people are so entrenched in their current way of life that they would rather die than give it up.
Finally, I started talking about stuff like who are we, and what is reality? I guess that’s what caused my traffic “spike.” I’ve been steadily increasing in traffic for the last few months, although it is a small increase. I’m still not an A-list blogger, nor do I think that will ever happen with this blog, mostly because my past entries are way too chaotic and I don’t have a good framework for high page views. I tried installing plugins like ‘Related Posts,’ and it ruined my site until I was able to remove it. It caused all the blog entries to become incoherent lines of code. I have no idea why all the sidebars disappear when I click on just one entry and read it. I am clueless when it comes to computer programming and I hate it with a passion. I’ve never been a fan of programming, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s just so tedious and exacting.
I wish I had the work ethic or the programming skills to make this website better, but I don’t. I wish I had someone to do it for me, but I don’t. I am thinking of creating another website so I can start over from scratch, but without my name attached to it, so that way maybe I can rebuild some traffic and have mostly articles I know people want to read. Not only that, I want to create a website that is much more technically sound than this one, and I have to learn all these skills before attempting this. I want to still keep this website, but as a secondary one. I’ll still post here semi-regularly, as I have for the past 4 years, but it will be less of a disappointment if I can get another blog off the ground where I can actually build sizable traffic. It will be a whole new format, a whole new platform for me. I won’t be linking to it from here. I’ll be promoting it elsewhere, far far away from the stigma of a low traffic website. It is going to be completely original because I know exactly what it is I want to do with it.
I’m going to have a central theme on that website. It will be unavoidable. But I’m not ready to actually create this website yet. I might just create a free blog and post there for awhile until I figure out exactly what it is I want to do with this new direction I’m taking my blogging. I’m going to learn from the mistakes I made on this blog, albeit 4 years later. I’m going to market it better, have a bigger following, and create truly meaningful content. Maybe I’ll even make some money from it. That would be nice. Because this website has made me nothing, even when I had ads on it, and I’m so anti-advertising that I would balk at even placing an ad in the corner. I won’t make a dime without traffic, so that should be my main concern, and creating and delivering unique and valuable content. Content that has high social value and high personal value. I’ve often thought I mostly blog on here for myself and whoever might want to read it. But perhaps I’ve been doing it all backwards. I don’t know, but I sure as hell have a great example of a blog that hasn’t really blossomed the way I hoped it would and it is nice that this failure of a blog will be here for years to come. It will be a good example of what not to do with a blog if you want to make money from it.
Here is a list of things I have done that I suggest nobody does if they want to build a successful, high traffic blog:
- Not having any central theme whatsoever
- Not posting with any regularity
- Creating content that you know is not your best
- Ranting and raving about the same thing for over a year
- Not knowing how to make your website have all the neat blogging gadgets
- Being afraid to offend anyone
- Taking all negative feedback seriously
- Writing about things most people aren’t ready to hear
- Not optimizing anything or marketing whatsoever
- Thinking that blogging will be easy
- I hope you get the general idea…
I know that some people like this blog, while most either don’t like it or don’t know about it. I’ve received tons of feedback, most of it positive. My next website will not allow comments. Why? Because I don’t want to spend my time moderating them. I still like this blog, I’m just admitting that it isn’t successful. And that’s okay. I’m not willing to say that it has been 4 years wasted. I have shown flashes of true brilliance on this blog and I can’t deny that. I just didn’t always have brilliant posts and some of them were simply too similar to the previous posts and that is where I think I lost a lot of people. But that’s fine. I’m going to start fresh soon with a whole new blog and do my best to correct the mistakes I am aware of and try to find the mistakes I am still unaware of. Just scan the archives to see what the progression of a long-term low traffic blog is, because I am a prime example. At least I admit it and at least I am trying to learn from it. My next blog will be at least a little better and I can move on from there. Maybe by 2020 I’ll actually be earning money from a website, or maybe from a book I write. Who knows?
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