A Blogger’s Confession: I Murdered My Blog!

In 2007, Technorati estimated that nearly 80% of all blogs were eventually abandoned. By today’s standards that could equate in upwards of 15 million blogs!

In 2008, After 16 months of blood, sweat, and tears, I decided to close one of my primary blogs. It was a sad day for me – but I learned a valuable lesson on what I did wrong. (I think!)

Those that have recently been frustrated by slow traffic, poor search engine results, or low revenue return from their blogs, should be able to appreciate this article.

By taking that painful walk down “memory lane,” I’ll share with you how I systematically murdered my blog over the course of a year. My defense was that it was not premeditated – and I wish to claim temporary insanity. (Laughs) 

1) I had expectations!

I thought I could charm my way into the blogosphere. My content was decent and I was dedicated. Little did I know how long it would take for my article URLs to saturate the search engines. Little did I know how little the revenue from blogging is at first.

2) SEO Strategy

I took for granted that I would be found by Bing, Yahoo, and Ask. Many months had passed before I formally submitted my URL thinking they would naturally pick up my “internet footprint.” I was wrong and lost valuable time in the process. The bots came too late.

3) Too Much SEO

Every few weeks I would manipulate my blog’s title and description, play with stuff in the header tags, or find some random piece of online advice that would have me tinkering with my Blogger template. When I didn’t perceive it to be working, I changed it back causing havoc in the SERPs!

4) I didn’t optimize my images for search.

No alt-tags or title tags here. My images were appealing and I could have used the low volume of hits that some blogs receive from their images. 

5) I was trying to please everybody.

With no target market in mind, I blogged to everyone – whomever would listen. I wasn’t quite sure who you were. I felt that I could blog, and blog, and blog and everything would fall into place.

6) I blogged about too many broad subjects.

What was the likelihood of finding visitors who were knowledgeable of small business, taxes, accounting, the stock market, outdoor marketing, history, politics, and blogging – all at the same time?! 

7) I used a modified blogger template that was coded poorly.

The site loaded very poorly – to the point of timing out. I had a lot of bad script on my home page and ran off just as much site traffic as I hoped to attract. How many times have you clicked on a link that took too much time to open? I’m sure you returned to the Google Results Page and went to the next site, didn’t you?!!

8) My content was controversial, provocative, and entertaining!

Why would I list that as a mistake? Because it added to the frustration level! I knew you would have become a subscriber if you read some of my content. 

9) I took a long break.

7 months to be exact.  Was that the reason I had 0 subscribers when I returned?

10) No Social Marketing or Blogging Communities

In the midst of an enormous boom in blog networking, I remained on my own island. No Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, NetworkedBlogs, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, and Entrecard. There’s got to be a couple subscribers in there. I found out too late.

11) I was selfish

I rarely responded to reader comments, ignored other bloggers, and declined all back link requests.

-- The Aftermath --

This is actually the abbreviated list of some of the blogging errors that were made. When we looked around for direction, all we saw was multitude of egos all going about their mission of pushing their next digital product/e-book.

There wasn't a site that spoke to me - the everyday blogger. Problogger was too simplified, Dosh Dosh was too over analytical, and many of the SEO sites were either regurgitated/recycled posts of other sites, or just too over-complicated for anyone outside of the industry. Make Money Online? Forget it! Every shady spammer from California, to Mumbai, to Singapore, had jumped on the bandwagon. And internet marketers? They were too busy trying to manipulate Twitter for their own advantage to take notice.

For the next 6 months, we monitored forums, watched discussions in blog communities, and read comments on other blogs. Bloggers were desperately looking for a site that provided relevant, concise content directed toward them. We realized that if we were going to do this right, it had to be well-written, intelligent, and inspiring.

From those ashes, Source Blogger was born. No other site is as determined as we are to make you a better blogger. We can only declare our success when you have achieved yours. Ok, perhaps, we are a little biased. But, we think we are doing something special here. Something that has never been done before.

The Source Blogger Challenge

In every post on Source Blogger. You can feel it. You can touch it. You can taste it. Quality. We encourage you to look high and low in our category/niche of blog optimization. Make the comparison. Then, come back to Source Blogger. We will be waiting for you. We will not stop until we are the #1 blog in the world. But, we want to arrive there together with you as part of our growing, Source Blogger community. You are welcome and wanted here. Join us here. This is spirutual. This is magical. The movement is real.

And just shy of 4 months, we haven't even begun to spread our wings. We have so much to share with you. Your blogging journey is far from over.  It's just beginning! Let's make 2010 your year of success, shall we? But, let me ask you, "Are You Ready?"

So, let other blogs and other bloggers know we are here. We refuse to continue to be the "internet's best kept secret."  You demanded more. You set the bar higher. You chose Source Blogger. And we are grateful.

Updates: We have been receiving a lot of e-mail recently asking us to showcase a major blogging topic. We are putting the finishing touches on a landmark week - with the topic being site scraping, duplicate content, and content theft. From what I read, you will love it. So, be prepared for it. We want to read your feedback and comments.

You don't want to miss it!

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