Blogging for a second income - does anyone else here do this?

shabbadoof13

Hi Guys...

Here's a good question for you all..

Do you think 'readers' prefer small articles or larger ones? By small I would say 500-700 words and larger being over 1000.

I wonder in todays social media world if the attention spam is too short for long winded posts and I may be better of writing shorter articles that maybe leaving them time to explore other parts of the site..

daz501

shabbadoof13 wrote: »

Hi Guys...

Here's a good question for you all..

Do you think 'readers' prefer small articles or larger ones? By small I would say 500-700 words and larger being over 1000.

I wonder in todays social media world if the attention spam is too short for long winded posts and I may be better of writing shorter articles that maybe leaving them time to explore other parts of the site..

You can always save your longer content for eBooks which the readers need to provide their email address to access. This is pretty typical. Your blog posts need to be easy to consume and ideally use some images, text indenting etc to make the content easy to read.

It all depends on your niche and how interested your readers are. If it is a news digest site then the content does need to be shorter (IMO) but a tutorial for a given topic can be as long as it needs to be.

MattGoku

shabbadoof13 wrote: »

Hi Guys...

Here's a good question for you all..

Do you think 'readers' prefer small articles or larger ones? By small I would say 500-700 words and larger being over 1000.

I wonder in todays social media world if the attention spam is too short for long winded posts and I may be better of writing shorter articles that maybe leaving them time to explore other parts of the site..

There is no exact number but it is important that it is not too short or too long as this will alter where you appear on google! The quality of the content is always the most important part and I currently aim between 750 and 1000 and this seems to be having a positive effect.

shabbadoof13

yeah I tend to try and aim for 750-900 words in each post.

Am only doing 1 a week at the moment as I feel that is enough.

Following some 'mum blogs' on twitter and people just seem to make a post. Tweet about the post all week and then at the end of the week go on about it again.

I feel this may be overkill but maybe that is what I am meant to be doing.

On the plus side it seems search engines have picked me up now and using the JetPack plugin in WordPress I can see people are finding me quite easily (obviously depending on the search terms they are putting in)

I played around with google adsense for 5 minutes to see what it looked like and wasn't impressed at all.

Another problem was becuase my site is called The Money Shed but is actually about road testing 'at home earning methods' all the ads I got on the site were about Sheds!!! - Not sure how to rectify that

j.smith1981

shmeeko69 wrote: »

The best thing to do for any niche you're in, is to type a few keyword phrases in to Google and check to see which blog or free site is getting the most success for page one searches. This will give you the answer and piece of mind going forward.

Basically that's a great idea (though (hopefully without sounding at all patronizing) before you start your blog of course), or even after, if after if you've got your name and blog in the addresses/domain, try typing in without the word blog and see where you appear in the search results, sadly it probably (unless you have some killer SEO knowledge will probably be quite low in the results).

I am actually off the scale at the moment since I'm developing areas of my blog to improve upon them, but I was identical to this, search for 'insert my name here' blog and then try without the likely keyword blog, if I tried without the blog in there then I would be further down the search rankings.

I am not too sure on generalized terms, google in particular have a very specific way of filtering out frantic keywords. I would need to do some further experimenting (my pessimistic views in this regard) would say that once I've conquered their way of search indexes would change once I've found them out lol. I mean google do actually change their way of indexing at least once a year, though not exactly sure how often (they don't tend to tell anyone, least an expert friend (mentor) told me they said that if a consultant (marketing especially) says they change x number of times, then they're basically lying to get money for their work, they don't know (according to again my mentor)).

There's some great tips here about keeping visitors coming back, or appeal to more users, I am thinking of doing some really in depth blog posts about particular pieces of work (well things I think could improve some peoples understanding of various web and software development and probably teach myself at the same time, like memory management in C & C++).

Coupled with my advanced modifications to wordpress, thinking of going to one of those WP community talks soon too (one of the modifications to a theme being adding the posts to another static content tab, which doesn't look hard at all, just got to get around to completing it).

Thanks ever so much

shmeeko69

Basically that's a great idea (though (hopefully without sounding at all patronizing) before you start your blog of course), or even after, if after if you've got your name and blog in the addresses/domain, try typing in without the word blog and see where you appear in the search results, sadly it probably (unless you have some killer SEO knowledge will probably be quite low in the results).

That's just not the case just because it's a free blog. If you do a search for most things in the fitness market like treadmills... or in the technology niche with LED TVs then, you'll see a fair number of free blogs on page one of Google for related search terms.

There are going to be updates and big changes with Google in January 2014, but as it stands currently, you can still rank highly for free blogs on the understanding that, you've done some keyword research and have unique content on the blog.

NeverInDebt

:spam: by wholesale numpty

Poppycat

I have reported that poster Wholesale xxxxxx to abuse for spamming forums advertising their warez both in signature and in their posts

MattGoku

shabbadoof13 wrote: »

yeah I tend to try and aim for 750-900 words in each post.

Am only doing 1 a week at the moment as I feel that is enough.

Following some 'mum blogs' on twitter and people just seem to make a post. Tweet about the post all week and then at the end of the week go on about it again.

I feel this may be overkill but maybe that is what I am meant to be doing.

On the plus side it seems search engines have picked me up now and using the JetPack plugin in WordPress I can see people are finding me quite easily (obviously depending on the search terms they are putting in)

I played around with google adsense for 5 minutes to see what it looked like and wasn't impressed at all.

Another problem was becuase my site is called The Money Shed but is actually about road testing 'at home earning methods' all the ads I got on the site were about Sheds!!! - Not sure how to rectify that

Once you have a decent amount of quality content on your site, you will see more suitable ads appear (providing that your keywords are correct). Please do persevere with adsense, the revenue potential is high.

flubberyzing

My dad has a hobby that he started a blog about around a year ago. By accident really, he discovered there was quite an interest in it. Now, via Google Ads, he makes about £40 a month at the moment. So, not exactly huge money, but absolutely better than a kick in the head!


Thing is, you don't know if there is an audience for your blog until you start it.


Also, my dad's blog is mostly photo-based with captions of anything from a couple of words to a couple of sentences. So, with the right topic, you don't need to spend hours on writing.