Photo by Violator3
I like blogging, but there are a few things about it that drive me a little crazy.
Maybe you can relate?
1. Your daily traffic plummets
Links and social media votes dry up and so does your incoming traffic. It will rarely disappear completely, but if you’re like me and don’t get a lot of search engine traffic, a bad day can see half your usual visitors fail to show up. Remembering one thing can help you avoid letting this get you down: it’s completely normal. They say traffic comes in waves, and it behaves like them too: every blog and website will experience periods of high and low tide. Your main concern is long-term trends and monthly averages. Are you getting more traffic, overall?
2. Your subscriber count fluctuates up and down
This drove me crazy in the first few months of SKW’s existence. What could I have possibly done to make 50 people unsubscribe? A few months later I learned how Feedburner determines its subscriber count. Rather than a holistic total number of subscribers, Feedburner gets figures from each feed reading service, some of which base subscriber numbers on the number of times your feed was read rather than total subscriber numbers. That’s why your feed count tends to drop or stagnate over weekends, and spike a little the day after you’ve posted.
Looking at day-to-day counts is fun, but looking at graphs for the last few weeks and ‘all time’ is more useful to identify long-term trends and whether you need to be trying harder.
The graph below is the ‘all-time’ graph for SKW, with my, err, narration. Oprah has ‘Ah-ha’ moments, I have ‘Uh oh’ periods, also known as plateaus. You can see that most plateaus are followed by a steep spike where I put a redoubled effort into the blog to get things moving again.
3. The thought of updating Wordpress
This seemed pretty scary to me for a long time, but it’s actually not that hard. I’d suggest using an FTP program to download a copy of your uploaded files on to your computer as back-up, and if you’re really paranoid, you can back-up your database (which includes all content and comments). I used MYSQL GUI Tools to do this. Not because you should expect anything to go wrong, but you’ll probably be less stressed during the process if you know you have a back-up.
Skellie’s thirty-second how to upgrade Wordpress guide:
- De-activate your blog’s plug-ins.
- Open the .zip file for the version of WP you want to upgrade to.
- Cut the WP-Content folder and wp-config-sample.php from the .zip file and Paste them to your Desktop.
- Save the .zip file and double-check those files are gone, then upload the .zip to your blog’s root directory, unzip and overwrite the files on your server with the files from the .zip.
- Upload the contents of folders wp-content, plug-ins and themes into the same folders on your server, but not the folders themselves. Uploading the folders will overwrite your theme, plug-ins and any customizations you’ve made.
- After you’ve done that, visit this URL immediately and finish the process:
http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php
4. Plateaus
Your stats and subscriber count seems to freeze, producing the same results day-in, day out. Plateaus are one of the main reasons I suspect bloggers decide to give up. When your actions produce no results, it’s easy to wonder why you’re bothering at all.
While this mind-set isn’t hard to slip into, you should always remember that plateaus are a normal part of growth. If you look at the ‘all-time’ graph for SKW’s subscriber count above, you can see some major plateaus, even some dips. They do end eventually, as long as you interpret a plateau as encouragement to work harder, rather than ease off the accelerator, or worst of all, take a hiatus.
5. You finally get Dugg… and your blog goes down
The first time SKW got Dugg the server took it like a slap to the face: the blog was down for 24 hours and connections were severely limited for some time after (sorry about that, to those who remember). If your blog hasn’t been on the front page of Digg before, there’s one major positive: you have time to install and enable the WP-Cache plug-in, which will allow your Wordpress blog to survive a stint on the front page even on a shared hosting account.
6. The odd nasty comment or insult
It happens. In fact, there are only two variables guaranteed to increase as your blog grows: email and nasty criticism. I appreciate constructive criticism a lot, but criticism with the intention only to hurt was always something that played on my mind. My skin has become thicker over time, though, with the help of the following methods.
- If the comment goes into moderation, delete it. You’ll find that most of those who leave nasty comments are first-time, hit and run visitors, and if moderation is turned on you’ll have a chance to nip the problem in the bud. I think of it like this: my blog is my property, and so is my house. If I wouldn’t let someone say it in my house, I won’t let someone say it on my blog.
- Respond only once. There’ll be some situations where the criticism is published in public, either on your own blog or another blog. The key things I’d suggest are: a) don’t respond straight away, b) make sure your comment is shorter than theirs, c) respond rationally and professionally, rather than emotionally and d) don’t give them something to argue with. In other words, if someone says your blog sucks, you shouldn’t list all the reasons why it doesn’t. Instead, you could respond with: “I’m sorry you feel that way.” They can’t argue with that, so it short-circuits the argument. It also creates the impression that you’re completely unbothered by their comment. I’d only break rule d) if someone says something libelous, in which case you should correct them.
- Ignorance is bliss. Nasty comments can’t bother you if you never read them. I don’t read Digg comments, I just enjoy the traffic. If a post I write elsewhere elicits a nasty reaction from some people, I’ll give my defense and then stop reading comments on the post. Unlike constructive criticism, nasty criticism has negative value — it’s only purpose is to unsettle you. Once you’ve said your defense, there’s no reason (or obligation) to expose yourself to more of it.
I’ve also written in more detail on dealing with criticism.
7. Not enough time
If there were ten of me, I would have started twenty blogs instead of two. Anyone who takes blogging seriously will have felt that there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things you’d like to do. I’m not sure there’s a cure for this. I suspect it’s the inevitable result of ambition and inspiration meeting with its arch-nemesis, reality. You can make the problem a little better, though, by cutting the fat from your blogging routine.
8. Blogger’s block
I wrote this post five days ago, relative to the time you’re reading it. I write all my SKW and Anywired posts on Fridays, in one batch of about 10,000 words. Blogger’s block is the reason I spent most of the morning watching YouTube videos!
Ideas are fickle things. Sometimes they come in spades, sometimes they take time, other times you can look back on a pool of ideas you thought were fantastic three days ago and see no merit in them now. My strategy is to devote at least one hour a week to inspiration and brainstorming. Ideas tend to be sheep — once you get one, others usually follow — but you need to give yourself enough time for the trickle-down process to occur.
My favorite posts on SKW dealing with this topic are:
Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas (written by Leo Babauta)
110+ Resources for Creative Minds
I also loved Darren’s post on how he comes up with so many ideas: Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas For Your Blog with Mind-Mapping. I thought idea-drought would be an issue for someone who writes dozens of posts a week but when I asked him about it, it turns out that he actually has too many ideas. Sucks to be him, right? 
9. When it feels like you’re shouting into a vacuum
Anyone who’s started a blog from scratch has experienced (or might still be experiencing) this feeling. No-one comments on your post, or votes for it, or links to it. You wonder if anyone actually read it. You wish you could have used the two hours you spent writing it to go out to dinner with someone you’re fond of instead.
Well, all is not lost. Sometimes a post doesn’t blossom until a few months after it’s been published. Search engine traffic might start trickling in. You can also link to under-appreciated posts in future and help it receive comments and votes that way.
The problem is more troubling when it’s long-term. If your posts consistently seem to be getting no reaction, I suggest you use SKW’s search bar to look for ‘the five barriers to success series’, which will explain why this might be happening, and what you can do about it.
