Call this post something that I need to constantly remind myself about, or moreover, something that I want to keep in the forefront of my own mind for some time.
Applying a little bit of effort in everything you do can get you results that you want. It doesn’t matter if your trying to lose weight, or keep an active blog going. Imagine trying to lose weight without trying, it doesn’t work. You need to apply yourself and put in a good amount of effort and be consistent before you begin to reap any weight loss benefits.
The same can be said about blogging, although with blogging the effort is even less than if you were trying to lose weight, but the same principles apply, with one major difference. When you exert the effort to write a well written post, the post will live on and continue to garner traffic, readers and perhaps non-spammy comments. Albeit the latter is perhaps not as likely, at least, not from what I’ve seen on my own blog.
With weight loss, you work out one day, but need to continue working out consistently before you begin to see the results of your efforts.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Come on Wayne, this is obvious shit your spewing here, give us something that will help us!”.
Alright friends, if you really want to know why I’m writing this now, and why it’s important to you as a blogger or website owner, read on.
We all know that Google visits our sites every now and then, and Google might pick up a new post that you’ve written and include it in the index. Remember, not every post you write is going to be indexed. Google doesn’t index everything, just what it feels is worthy of being included.
More than likely, when you write a post and publish it, your site will begin to ping other services and let them know about your new content. You might even take some time to visit a few social services and put your link out there even more.
When you do this consistently on a regular basis, that constant flow of new content will help your blog a lot. I think of it like a heart, really. As long as it’s pumping out new content, your blog will be alive with traffic. Stop posting for a good amount of time and you’ll see that your traffic will drop. Sometimes not so much, sometimes significantly. It really just depends on too many factors, so each blog will be treated differently when the pumping out of new content begins to dwindle.
You probably already know that this same principle applies to losing weight. When you stop exercising, your internal engine might keep going for a bit and you’ll continue to lose weight, but that engine will slowly begin to turn itself around to the point where you’ll begin to gain weight.
On a personal side, if you’ve been reading my blog for any time recently, you might have recognized that my own consistency has dropped through the floor. I’m not going to make any excuses here, but I recognize that I haven’t been consistent with my posts this year. However from my own lack of effort and consistency I’ve noticed that my traffic will drop about 100 visits a day and level off. If I post on a regular basis, my traffic will rise up about 100 visits per day.
The rise and fall could probably be attributed to readers like yourself not getting any new items in your feed reader or email. When I post, a number of you might come visit and leave a comment, causing my traffic to rise. When I don’t post for a number of days, that traffic doesn’t visit, and I’m left with regular search traffic that visits some of my more popular posts.
When my own effort and consistency fail me though, what am I missing out on? Anything?
Sure, new visitors, new subscribers, new potential friends and partners. I might even lose existing subscribers. All of this is negative progress, just like if you stop exercising.
Being consistent and applying the effort to write new material will make your blog feel and look alive, and that’s going to be recognized by your visitors. It’s easy to tell when a blog or blog author is falling apart or not really interested in their own blog anymore. The posts begin to turn from quality information to bit of this and that perhaps. Really, it can manifest itself in so many different ways, but I’d suspect that each one is recognizable to some degree by your readers.
Exercising is not only good for your body, it’s good for your blog as well.
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I didn’t see many ads other than weight loss on your blog here and I sure don’t need to lose weight. Do you make money of ad clicks? Sorry can’t help you.
Demeur´s last blog ..Blue Gold
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Since I started writing a bit on weight loss, I’ve been seeing them too. Seems “weight loss” is quick to capture the pages.
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You are right Wayne, traffic is quite related to consistency. If you are quite consistent than you blog traffic will be quite nice but when the consistency is not there then the traffic comes down suddenly
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Don’t feel too bad Wayne. I just looked at Pixelheadonline and the last blog post I did was in May..Where does the time go? I must be enjoying summer too much. Anyway, I do have some posts in the que, but the fate of Pixelheadonline is uncertain at present. As I have not written on it in several months now, I am prioritizing my activities with the Baldydog.com business, and blogging on Pixelheadonline just does not seem to be one of the more lucrative things..I may be selling it or taking on co-bloggers.
Adam Donkus´s last blog ..Dry Cleaner Online Advertising
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I’m only writing when I can sit and write a complete post. I have about 50 drafts, and probably none will see the light of day for one reason or another.
I only have time to write, and not inject code and what-not, because that just takes way too much time. I can’t service clients and myself and maintain that level of production.
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hah! i thought i was the only one who had a whole bunch of drafts in my que that never seem to get posted. finding the time to get a post all the way to completion is the biggest hurdle that I have found in my blogging adventures. seems like all the life stuff keeps getting in the way and no one is willing to pay me enough to replace real income. oh well thanks for sharing the post Wayne it’s good to know i’m not the only blogger who starts to write posts that never seem to find an end
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Yeah, you’re not alone, that’s for sure. Hey, check out the keyword love thingy next time, it’s better to use that, so you can also use a name. It’s odd replying to “daily insights”, and not “dave”.
Hello Wayne,
First, thanks for submitting your site to Tittle Zing!
Second, fantastic blog you have. You mentioned in this post (yes, I read it all) that Google doesn’t crawl all the posts but you’ll be happy to know that ‘zinger’ (our spider at Tittle Zing!) will crawl them all. We review each site before we let the spider crawl the Web because we only want good content. Yours is top notch and a great resource, even for us. You certainly know your stuff. In the future as we grow I hope we bring you lots of traffic, its well deserved for any of our visitors.
Your new friends at Tittle Zing! Search
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I like you guys even more now! Flattery, love it! hahahaha
Seriously though, I think it’s really cool that you took the time to come here and leave a comment. I normally spam-file any comments that don’t have a person’s name, but I have to make an exception in your case.
Best of luck to your search engine! I’ll be watching the progress from this end.
Cheers!
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…and I clicked over here thinking you were writing about exorcising your blog. I was disappointed when I saw metaphors for workout rooms and not satanic cults.
Although… both words are apropos from the perspective your mood changes every day when you awake so it’s natural your written words change and both commenting and indexing with it.
Ari Herzog@Online Media Strategies´s last blog ..Marketing Paper Towels- TV vs YouTube
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Did you change your email address? I had to approve this, and I swear you’ve commented enough here that I shouldn’t have to approve anything for you. Ah well.
Satanic cults? Really? LOL
Sometimes I guess I need to exercise my mind a bit and just let things fall out of my head. That’s what this is…sort of a free-form brain dump if you will. Seems to have worked a bit so far.
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All good points Wayne. Your analogy with weight loss and exercise is timely for me as our whole family has been into a healthier life style as of late.
On a blogging note, we’ve noticed consistency brings more traffic. In other words, 1 post a week brings 1x visitors per week, but 3 posts per weeks brings 5x visitors per week. Our traffic is mainly from the search engines, so I think Google respects the frequency.
Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate´s last blog ..Funny Faces- Cool Dads
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Getting the whole family in on the fitness kick can really, really help everyone involved. The support factor would be incredible. I’m the only one in my house on the fitness bandwagon right now…but who knows, my efforts might sway others too, so I’ll keep pressing forward. You do the same!
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Great Post, and since we chat on a semi almost regular sometimes basis you know that I like you have not been real consistent blogging.
There is another reason for this too. When you find yourself making passive income, whether you blog or not, it is easy to get complacent. It’s not always a failure that makes us lazy, sometimes it’s just the opposite!
Ok, I am going to get on the treadmill, I wonder if I take my netbook with me if it will help my blog too?
David Cooley´s last blog ..Location- Location- Location…
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You’re so right too. Once you start to earn a little, and learn a little more, your attention can be easily shifted to non-blogging activities.
If you can treadmill and compute at the same time, my hat is off to ya!