I thought it would be interesting to capture a few of the Site Meter world map visitor reports.
Check it out...
I've been having second thoughts about continuing to do Pay Per Post. OK, that's not true. It's more life tenth or eleventh thoughts. At this point I believe I will continue; I'm leaning that way. One thing, though, is certain. The megaposting experiment has ended.
Pay Per Post has been at best a mixed bag when it comes to The Gonzo Papers. In order to be successful doing Pay Per Post you need to build traffic and maximize Page Rank. Since I started doing Pay Per Post I think my Page Rank has improved, but I'm not sure. Before I started writing the sponsored posts I honestly never thought of my Page Rank for one second.
It could be possible that my Page Rank has gone down since I've been blogging for cash. One thing is certain, I know from the Site Meter reports I get each day, my traffic went down. Then it dropped. From there it bottomed out.
I'm confident Pay Per Post advertisers have gotten their money's worth. I've made the ads "work' in terms of approach as much as possible considering the content that's normally found. I've collected some of the money I set out to generate for web related activities. It's been nothing but a loss, though, when it comes to my visitors; especially my blog friends.
There was a time when I got 50 and more visitors per day. There were times it was nearly 100. That's not traffic to brag about, but it was better than when I was blogging and nobody was reading. Now I regularly get half that number. There are days I don't even hit double digits.
It's not about numbers though. What sucks is that Pay Per Post has damaged the relationships I built.
A lot of my blogger buddies have stopped visiting or they do so infrequently enough that it seems they have disappeared. They have written comments in this blog, and have written in their blogs, that they don't like all the ads.
Looking back, before I was doing Pay Per Post I received comments regularly. It's gotten to be that comments have become almost rare.
I don't write this blog for other people, I don't blog to get comments. If you have no audience, though, there are easier ways to journal than blogging. It's more interesting to know people are interested what you're publishing, it's more fun to have interaction.
So it goes. Things change. From here, they may get better, they may get worse. What they won't do is stay as they have been in recent months.
Posts
7 comments:
An interesting discourse on Pay per post. I'm curious though how it would affect your Page Rank.
Kilroy, you don't need to publish this unless you want to; I just wanted to respond to your observations.
I think things aren't as simple as they may seem. Part of the reason I haven't visited as many blogs for some time was due to the season (busy holidays; post holiday slump in energy, sickness). I'm sure many of those reasons apply to others, too.
Although, and I wouldn't bring this up if you hadn't mentioned it, it is also true that, when roughly two out of three posts are ads (not a formal survey; my impression on a few visits) that does dampen my enthusiasm for visiting a blog.
Personally, I think if the volume of regular posts kept up, and the ads didn't seem to overwhelm them, more readers might overlook the ads. As far as comments: well, I wouldn't feel it was respectful to leave the only sort of comments I've ever wanted to make to an ad on someone else's blog. :-) So I personally would only leave one if I visited; found a non-advertising post; and that post that I found inspired me to comment. It does cut the odds way down.
One last point, which you may or may not already know. PayPerPost and similar services aren't really paying you for ads intended to be read although they have to appear that way, for Google, etc. The real purpose is the link, which adds value in search engine rankings to the site you've linked to. But, the link must appear natural, in text "designed for the user" even if no user ever bothers to read it. If you doubt me, just consider how much attention they pay to your PageRank, and how little to your traffic... which is not normal behaviour for an advertiser who wants their ads read.
I like what the Wandering author has said. I don't know or care much about page rank, but i suppose it musthaver some import for some projeects I know nuthin' about.
at the risk of being rude i will say
"ITS GREAT TO HAVE YOU BACK, KILROY, YOU LOOK LIKE HELL!!!"
It is definitely difficult to leave a comment when the post is about dehumidifiers!
Thanks for visiting my blog. I will check out your carnival.
In the meantime, I will favourite your blog and would love it if you could do the same for mine.
Regards
Anja
Kilroy, I have always found your posts informative, well-written and creative. I will admit, though, that I don't often comment on pay-per-post posts; I do read them however.
Keep writing!
I could relate more to your "old" type posts and thus would comment more often. I can see that most people aren't enamoured with the ads, as they sometimes seem a stretch no matter how hard you tried to make them seem like natural conversation. Okay, tell me, What does page rank even mean? I honestly don't know. I don't actually look at a site meter much. I visit a fair number of blogs though.
Yay! I respected your decision to go the pay per post way, and that was all well and good, but it was off-putting reading adverts (I avoid them on tv and the radio is turned down during the ads, so I wouldn't be visiting a site deliberately because of this.)
I had an idea though, based on what the wandering author said - why don't you just start up a new blog for the purpose... if it doesn't matter how many are reading them, then why not create a place especially for them? Just an idea...
I'm working on your Jackson Pollock meme... it's not as easy as it looks, is it!! :-)
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