Whenever someone starts a blog, the first thing they would normally do is to start surfing for tips on how to go about popularising their blogs. It was like that years ago and it is still like that today. Problem is the tips we read about 2 or 3 years ago might work, but the same tips if applied today now is totally outdated.
Lets take a stroll down memory lane and see what we read 2 years ago but still written by “new” gurus today as if they have just discovered a sacred truth. The sad thing is ignorant new bloggers will take these tips and waste a whole lot weeks and months doing these things that doesnt work anymore. It is beyond my comprehension as to how these “new” gurus can parrot tips that have been written years ago, have been copied a zillion times, do a post titled something like “Secret Tips To Explode Your Blog Readers” to cheat his way through as though he has just discovered the tips in his wet dream last night.
Anyway, let’s get back to where I left off. Outdated Blogging Tips That Does not Work Anymore. Just a few examples.
Submit Your Blog To Blog Directories. - How many of you have submitted your blogs to all those directories and gained from it? Some takes months for your blog to be listed and when it does gets listed, what did you get? Hundreds of hits? Got a good back-link which Google almost don’t recognise now? It’s an outdated tip.
Ping Your Blogs To The hundreds of Ping Sites - Except for the few big ones today, all the rest can be ignored.
Submit Articles to Ezines - This was a tip I used and got bitten. Did not get a single hit from the articles I submitted but all my articles got ripped from Ezines by some arseholes for their sites that has noting but stolen contents and full of Adsense.
Join A Blog Carnival - The most you get will be from the same group that took part in that carnival and for the duration of that carnival. Total waste of time.
Join A Forum - Unless you go and participate actively in at least 10 Forums or unless you are an established blogger, Forums are also a waste of time. If you go and join a very popular forum like Digitalpoint, introduce yourself, do you think all the participants will rush to your blog and check you out? NO. You have to spend months getting to know them. Chat with them. Become their friends. Even that does not guarantee they will read your blog. And how many friends can you actually make? 50 is already an exaggerated figure. How many will become your blog’s reader? Out of the 50, maybe 5.
Comment in other blogs - This a social practice. Commenting in others blog shows you either appreciate what has been written or you have conflicting views. It is an interaction between bloggers. It is a polite thing to do. If you hope to get all your readers from your commenting practise, then be prepared to comment in a few thousand blogs each day. You can build a community of your own through your comments. Try commenting in some high profile blogs. You will never ever get that blogger to come and comment back in your blog. So don’t hang your hopes on building your blogs with your comments.
I can go on and on for 3 pages. The idea is all the tips that newbies are getting today are all outdated tips, but in all fairness, some tips never gets outdated. Like the one that tell you to write good and unique contents, but writing unique contents is just the foundation of a good blog. It still does not guarantee success.
Just like building a multi story building, after then good foundation is laid, you need all kinds of people to complete the building. The building won’t be completed if you cannot find the right supporting personnel and all you see day after day will be just that. The foundation. Very soon, you will see grass growing all over it.
So where can you go for all the new age blogging tips? I am no guru, but here is a good start. As I learn, I will implement. If it works I will share. If it doesn’t I will shut up. How does that sound? You will only get the tips that works. Sorry.. can’t help whoring myself a bit, but you do know how to subscribe don’t you?
I was discussing the forum promo thing with someone on my “EntreCard Sucks” post. They seemed to think that spamming forums would work. It did, kind of, in 2002-2003. Now just about every forum admin is so thin skinned about it they’ll give you grief if you post to any site that has any type of monetization.
I do think commenting works to build a social blog, pressing the digital flesh so to speak, but not so much a money-making niche blog.
You know, I like this blog more than many others written by so-called pro-bloggers. I don’t know if it makes any difference as I am only one, I like the way you are frank and not afraid to admit you’re infallible and faces just as much obstacles.
I like the positive vibes from your posts.
Sometimes it’s unless you’ve tried, you’ll never know if it does work. As for the pinging of hundred sites, no point lor. Especially since you want qualified quality readers.
I’m only active in 1 forum and that too doesn’t bring in a ton load of readers. Right now, it’s all the search engines.
On the contrary, all those tips above do have its benefits in different ways. I haven’t tried Ezines and would not comment on them. But for the rests, they do bring in traffic every now and then. They are not outdated. Just different.
Yes, I do agree- I’ve found out that there are many spam sites that actually stole my content after I’ve submited some articles in EZine. Still, EZine is still bringing in quality traffic to my blog - I gauge by the duration and pages the visitors spend in my site.