WebPublishing.me

This is a guest post by blogger and roller derby girl, Lauren Morrill-Ragusea who founded Higher Ed Underground.

My blog, Higher Ed Underground, was conceived after a particularly rough week at my day job. I was tired, frustrated, overworked, underpaid, and just generally burnt-out. I needed to do something in my line of work that was fun, if for no other reason than to remind myself that such a thing existed.

After several years spent working in and around college campuses, plus an advanced degree in higher education administration, I started to have faith in my ability as an expert. Yes, there are people with more experience and more education, but those people tend to be older and boring. They also tend to be people than can barely text message, much less blog. Thus, Higher Ed Underground was born.

It hasn’t been all daisies and roses since I started the site. I’ve made quite a few mistakes along the way (and am probably still making mistakes as we speak), and I’ve decided to share them with you in hopes that your website dreams don’t come crashing down around you.

Starting my blog for the wrong reasons

As I mentioned, Higher Ed Underground grew out of a particularly tough workweek. As a result, my initial motivation was to grow a web presence large enough to rake in the cash, quit my day job, and love life.

Yeah … fantasy.

You see, launching a site thinking you’re going to make a good living off it is the same as sitting down to write your first novel and thinking you’re the next John Grisham. Making money off your site is HARD. So hard, in fact, that if money is your only motivation, it’s going to be damn near impossible to put in the effort required to see a single red cent.

I’ve been blogging for a while on my person blog, Derby Girl, about my life playing roller derby. It’s been easy to keep up with it, because I do it just for myself. I do it because I genuinely enjoy hitting the “post” button each day. That blog has just over 2,000 pageviews a month, which isn’t too shabby, and that was with zero effort or promotion of any kind.

What’s the difference between Derby Girl and Higher Ed Underground? I started Derby Girl because I loved derby and felt like sharing it. I started Higher Ed Underground to make money. Which one do you think is more fun to maintain?

Thankfully, not long after I began working on Higher Ed Underground, this realization smacked me in the face. I threw out the serious, boring, advice-driven content and got back to what I like best: snarky commentary. The content was easier to come by, the daily posting was easier to maintain, and my pageviews jumped considerably. I also abandoned the sheer desire to monetize the site, and am having way more fun with it. It was right about that time that I made my first ten cents from AdSense.

The moral of that story? Find your voice, then blog.

Researching too quickly

If you’re really serious about growing a small business from your blog, you need to do the legwork up front. Research the market. Find out what sites already exist in your niche. Figure out how you’ll be different than the existing market, and if you’re the same, how you can do it better. Figure out what keywords are leading people to sites like yours, and see if you can maximize those keywords to drive traffic. I did all this, but I did it over the course of about three days. This probably wasn’t enough research, especially since I keep stumbling across sites in my niche.

Launching too soon

I still have my day job, and my day job is fairly demanding. There’s not much time to sit around surfing the internet during work hours, much less create meaningful, valuable content. When a site is new, it’s important for it to have strong content that updates frequently. I should have aggregated several weeks worth of posts (at a minimum) before I kicked off, so that when my paying job got crazy, I had content to fall back on. Nothing loses readers faster than infrequent posting or throwaway content.

Buying a theme

Let me be clear: I absolutely love Thesis Theme. It’s easy, customizable, and professional. But the truth is, I could have gotten by for at least the first six months on a standard WordPress theme. WordPress has some great skeleton templates that I could have taught myself to customize over time, and it would have saved me $89 during the whole site setup. This is another example of me diving in to the deep end before I quite knew how to swim.

There’s no need to spend money on your site (other than the domain name and hosting) until you’ve started to see a little bit coming in. Sure, you want your site to look professional, but until you’ve got a readership that demands professional, there’s no reason to put out any money to get there. The look of your site, though important, is not what will keep readers coming back. Invest your effort in producing quality content, and the rest comes later.

Monetizing too much, too early

Don’t clutter your page with ads. Yes, it’s hideous and distracting, but it also makes you look like you care more about money than content. Once you have a dedicated readership, they’ll understand why you put ads on your site. They won’t mind, because they’ll be conditioned to pay attention to your kick ass content. But if the only thing readers see when they visit your site for the first time is an AdSense banner, affiliate links, and those stupid in-text links, you’re pretty asking them to click away. You look like you’ve created your site to steal their money, and they won’t stay, much less come back.

So there you have it. Feel free to let me know of other mistakes I’m making. One thing I’ve learned from entering into the world of blogging is you have to have a thick skin. You’re going to post silly things, make typos, or simply draw the ire of a reader or two. And guess what? Someone will probably send you a nasty email. It happens to the most well-intentioned blogger. So if you don’t think you could put all your mistakes out there like I did … well, then blogging just isn’t for you.

Lauren Morrill-Ragusea is the guru (ha!) over at Higher Ed Underground, where she blogs about college life, admissions, news, and academic success. She also blogs at Derby Girl Blog and is a roller derby blogger for Skirt! Please hire her so that she can quit her job, write, and play roller derby for a living.

How is it that a blog that posts compromising pictures of cats with silly captions draws more than 60,000 visitors a day? I suspect it’s because it goes viral very easily, but I’m not entirely sure. Still, it exists, and there any number of strange blogs out there that fill niches you might not of thought existed. I present this list of the Web’s Most Bizarre High-Traffic Blogs as evidence that you can find an audiebnce for almost anything, if it’s unique (and, of course, if you work hard to draw new traffic).

1) I Can Haz Cheez Burger? Cats in compromising positions saying ludicrous things draws more than 60,000 visitors per day. (Traffic Rank: 20; 66,000 visitors per day).

2) Make: Blog: The Web’s most popular Do-It-Yourself blog is devoted to crafts, arts and useful products you can make on your own. Just add time, supplies and elbow grease. (Traffic Rank: 21; 60,000 visitors per day).

3) Neatorama: A geek culture blog (similar to BoingBoing.net), Neatorama doesn’t just focus on tech-related news. Recent posts included pancake caterpillars and churches converted into wonderful things like cafes and bookstores (not that I condone that sort of behavior). Daily traffic? 25K+. (Traffic Rank: 29; 25,400 visitors per day).

4) Celebrity Baby Blog: I think the name says it all. Celebrity Baby Blog is published in partnership with CNN, and the daily fare is news about the children of celebrities. Photos of smiling babies take center stage, and that’s good for some 16K+ visitors every day. (Traffic Rank: 41; 16,200 visitors per day).

5) ZenHabits.net: Published by a married gentleman with six kids in Guam, ZenHabits is all about achieving your goals (like acquiring that flat stomach you’ve always wanted). One recent new age-ish post? “How to Create the Abundance Mindset.” (Traffic Rank: 51; 13,100 visitors per day).

6) PostSecret: You’ve been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of PostSecret. One of the most brilliant ideas in the blogosphere, the founder encourages readers to send him anonymous, confessional postcards, which he then posts on his site. It’s exhilirating, heartbreaking, lovely, pitiful … In short, it’s the full spectrum of modern life. (Traffic Rank: 57; 8,300 visitors per day).

7) The Pioneer Woman: Published by a “desperate housewife” named Dee, The Pioneer Woman is a confessional blog by a ranch-dwelling mother of four who’s moderately agoraphobic. (Traffic Rank: 58; 8,100 visitors per day).

8) Dumb Little Man: Filled with “tips for life,” Dumb Little Man offers brilliant ideas on things we might never have known we needed help with (like learning how to chill a soda or beer in three minutes). Of course, there are more substantive tips, too. (Traffic Rank: 61; 7,130 visitors per day).

9) Dooce: Perhaps the weirdest of the mom blogs out there, Heather B. Armstrong is a former Web designer-turned-Stay at Home Mom (what she calls a “SAHM” or a “Shit A** Ho Mother***). “I do both equally well,” she writes. Posts touch on things like new ultrasounds pics and cake toppers. (Traffic Rank: 66; 5,900 visitors per day).

10) Arts & Letters Daily: Stopping by Arts & Letters is like walking back in time 100 years. The layout looks like an Old World newsletter, and the topics are ceaselessly fascinating — all of which are simply teased from the homepage with delicious blurbs like this: “Being human is not a simple matter of stimulus and response: it is shaped by history, thought, time and space — not to mention tears, snot, and earwax.” (Traffic Rank: 90; 1,090 visitors per day).

In analyzing my recent post on the Top 100 Blogs of All Time, I’ve narrowed down the Web’s most popular blogging topics and the amount of traffic they yield:

TECHNOLOGY BLOGS: 1.2 million visitors per day.

NEWS AND POLITICAL BLOGS: 779,000 visitors per day.

CELEBRITY BLOGS: 560,000 visitors per day.

LIFESTYLE BLOGS (including sites like LifeHacker, ZenHabits.net, Treehugger and MakeZine Blog): 514,000 visitors per day.

Content Continues Below ↓

Sponsored Link

ENTERTAINMENT BLOGS (including film, music, TV, books and games): 161,000 visitors per day.

FINANCE AND MARKETING BLOGS: 77,000 visitors per day.

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN BLOGS: 40,000 visitors per day.

Not surprisingly, the tech world stands head and shoulders above other topics in terms of traffic generated by the Web’s Top 100 blogs. Some 1.2 million people check out a popular technology blog on any given day. This could lead one to assume that technology news is one of the key factors that drive people to the Web. Of course, that’s ludicrous. I believe — and I’ll continue to believe — that tech news drives the bulk of blog traffic right now because tech fans spend more time online than anyone else.

There are some less apparent reasons why tech might lead the pack as well. Namely, tech blogs get started by people who thoroughly understand the Web. Their designs are smoother, more user-friendly, and geared towards generating more and more traffic. They utilize database driven sites, capitalize on e-mail newsletters, more effectively target ads, and attack leading SEO techniques that editors and writers in other industries might not understand.

If you don’t agree with me, go to any newsstand or Barnes and Noble and browse through the magazine section. You’re not going to find one enormous section devoted to tech and — stuffed in a dusty corner — all the magazines devoted to other topics. As companies from other industries dump more dollars into developing their blogs (and hiring people who understand the Web), you’re going to see traffic levels at non-tech blogs start to rival those tech blogs currently enjoy.

For me, this study proves that there’s still enormous growth potential online (particularly in realms outside the tech world). One day, blog traffic stats are going to mirror the distribution of magazine topics (and their accompanying circulation numbers) that we currently see at our local bookstores. That means we’ve got a lot of fleshing out to do in a lot of different areas. Why does this matter to you? If you’re looking to start a blog, but you’re not sure what to write about, just browse those magazine shops (or magazine Web sites) to figure out what’s popular in the real world. One day, the Web will look like that, too. Mark my words: tech won’t always be so weighted.