by Skellie
Photo by Violator3
I like blogging, but there are a few things about it that drive me a little crazy.
Maybe you can relate?
1. Your daily traffic plummets
Links and social media votes dry up and so does your incoming traffic. It will rarely disappear completely, but if you’re like me and don’t get a lot of search engine traffic, a bad day can see half your usual visitors fail to show up. Remembering one thing can help you avoid letting this get you down: it’s completely normal. They say traffic comes in waves, and it behaves like them too: every blog and website will experience periods of high and low tide. Your main concern is long-term trends and monthly averages. Are you getting more traffic, overall?
2. Your subscriber count fluctuates up and down
This drove me crazy in the first few months of SKW’s existence. What could I have possibly done to make 50 people unsubscribe? A few months later I learned how Feedburner determines its subscriber count. Rather than a holistic total number of subscribers, Feedburner gets figures from each feed reading service, some of which base subscriber numbers on the number of times your feed was read rather than total subscriber numbers. That’s why your feed count tends to drop or stagnate over weekends, and spike a little the day after you’ve posted.
Looking at day-to-day counts is fun, but looking at graphs for the last few weeks and ‘all time’ is more useful to identify long-term trends and whether you need to be trying harder.
The graph below is the ‘all-time’ graph for SKW, with my, err, narration. Oprah has ‘Ah-ha’ moments, I have ‘Uh oh’ periods, also known as plateaus. You can see that most plateaus are followed by a steep spike where I put a redoubled effort into the blog to get things moving again.
3. The thought of updating Wordpress
This seemed pretty scary to me for a long time, but it’s actually not that hard. I’d suggest using an FTP program to download a copy of your uploaded files on to your computer as back-up, and if you’re really paranoid, you can back-up your database (which includes all content and comments). I used MYSQL GUI Tools to do this. Not because you should expect anything to go wrong, but you’ll probably be less stressed during the process if you know you have a back-up.
Skellie’s thirty-second how to upgrade Wordpress guide:
- De-activate your blog’s plug-ins.
- Open the .zip file for the version of WP you want to upgrade to.
- Cut the WP-Content folder and wp-config-sample.php from the .zip file and Paste them to your Desktop.
- Save the .zip file and double-check those files are gone, then upload the .zip to your blog’s root directory, unzip and overwrite the files on your server with the files from the .zip.
- Upload the contents of folders wp-content, plug-ins and themes into the same folders on your server, but not the folders themselves. Uploading the folders will overwrite your theme, plug-ins and any customizations you’ve made.
- After you’ve done that, visit this URL immediately and finish the process:
http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php
4. Plateaus
Your stats and subscriber count seems to freeze, producing the same results day-in, day out. Plateaus are one of the main reasons I suspect bloggers decide to give up. When your actions produce no results, it’s easy to wonder why you’re bothering at all.
While this mind-set isn’t hard to slip into, you should always remember that plateaus are a normal part of growth. If you look at the ‘all-time’ graph for SKW’s subscriber count above, you can see some major plateaus, even some dips. They do end eventually, as long as you interpret a plateau as encouragement to work harder, rather than ease off the accelerator, or worst of all, take a hiatus.
5. You finally get Dugg… and your blog goes down
The first time SKW got Dugg the server took it like a slap to the face: the blog was down for 24 hours and connections were severely limited for some time after (sorry about that, to those who remember). If your blog hasn’t been on the front page of Digg before, there’s one major positive: you have time to install and enable the WP-Cache plug-in, which will allow your Wordpress blog to survive a stint on the front page even on a shared hosting account.
6. The odd nasty comment or insult
It happens. In fact, there are only two variables guaranteed to increase as your blog grows: email and nasty criticism. I appreciate constructive criticism a lot, but criticism with the intention only to hurt was always something that played on my mind. My skin has become thicker over time, though, with the help of the following methods.
- If the comment goes into moderation, delete it. You’ll find that most of those who leave nasty comments are first-time, hit and run visitors, and if moderation is turned on you’ll have a chance to nip the problem in the bud. I think of it like this: my blog is my property, and so is my house. If I wouldn’t let someone say it in my house, I won’t let someone say it on my blog.
- Respond only once. There’ll be some situations where the criticism is published in public, either on your own blog or another blog. The key things I’d suggest are: a) don’t respond straight away, b) make sure your comment is shorter than theirs, c) respond rationally and professionally, rather than emotionally and d) don’t give them something to argue with. In other words, if someone says your blog sucks, you shouldn’t list all the reasons why it doesn’t. Instead, you could respond with: “I’m sorry you feel that way.” They can’t argue with that, so it short-circuits the argument. It also creates the impression that you’re completely unbothered by their comment. I’d only break rule d) if someone says something libelous, in which case you should correct them.
- Ignorance is bliss. Nasty comments can’t bother you if you never read them. I don’t read Digg comments, I just enjoy the traffic. If a post I write elsewhere elicits a nasty reaction from some people, I’ll give my defense and then stop reading comments on the post. Unlike constructive criticism, nasty criticism has negative value — it’s only purpose is to unsettle you. Once you’ve said your defense, there’s no reason (or obligation) to expose yourself to more of it.
I’ve also written in more detail on dealing with criticism.
7. Not enough time
If there were ten of me, I would have started twenty blogs instead of two. Anyone who takes blogging seriously will have felt that there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things you’d like to do. I’m not sure there’s a cure for this. I suspect it’s the inevitable result of ambition and inspiration meeting with its arch-nemesis, reality. You can make the problem a little better, though, by cutting the fat from your blogging routine.
8. Blogger’s block
I wrote this post five days ago, relative to the time you’re reading it. I write all my SKW and Anywired posts on Fridays, in one batch of about 10,000 words. Blogger’s block is the reason I spent most of the morning watching YouTube videos!
Ideas are fickle things. Sometimes they come in spades, sometimes they take time, other times you can look back on a pool of ideas you thought were fantastic three days ago and see no merit in them now. My strategy is to devote at least one hour a week to inspiration and brainstorming. Ideas tend to be sheep — once you get one, others usually follow — but you need to give yourself enough time for the trickle-down process to occur.
My favorite posts on SKW dealing with this topic are:
Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas (written by Leo Babauta)
110+ Resources for Creative Minds
I also loved Darren’s post on how he comes up with so many ideas: Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas For Your Blog with Mind-Mapping. I thought idea-drought would be an issue for someone who writes dozens of posts a week but when I asked him about it, it turns out that he actually has too many ideas. Sucks to be him, right? 
9. When it feels like you’re shouting into a vacuum
Anyone who’s started a blog from scratch has experienced (or might still be experiencing) this feeling. No-one comments on your post, or votes for it, or links to it. You wonder if anyone actually read it. You wish you could have used the two hours you spent writing it to go out to dinner with someone you’re fond of instead.
Well, all is not lost. Sometimes a post doesn’t blossom until a few months after it’s been published. Search engine traffic might start trickling in. You can also link to under-appreciated posts in future and help it receive comments and votes that way.
The problem is more troubling when it’s long-term. If your posts consistently seem to be getting no reaction, I suggest you use SKW’s search bar to look for ‘the five barriers to success series’, which will explain why this might be happening, and what you can do about it.
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51 Comments, Comment or Ping
Ian McKenzie
I can relate to the Wordpress update point. Somewhere along the line, a couple of years ago, I did something to Ian’s Messy Desk that makes updates difficult. I’m being vague, because I really don’t understand what or why and don’t know where to begin to look how to fix it. However, on a newer blog, where I’m running the most recent version of Wordpress, I’m using the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin >>http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html and it works like a charm.
Feb 15th, 2008
paidtwice
What a great (and true!) post!
But what I wonder is more specific - when you hit one of your plateaus (the uh oh Xs on your graph) - you say you redoubled your efforts. What I wonder is - what does that mean? What specifically did you do? Write more content? Use more social media? Other things?
I don’t think I’ll ever see the front page of Digg so i don’t have that worry lol.
Feb 15th, 2008
Mrs. Micah
Yeah, I can identify with pretty much all of that.
As for upgrading Wordpress, I use this plugin (wordpress automatic upgrade): http://tinyurl.com/yqtal3 and activate it each time there’s a change. It then lets me walk through the steps really simply. I get a chance to download backups and it takes maybe 2-5 minutes of simply clicking “Next.” You can run it automatically, but I’m the paranoid type.
Feb 15th, 2008
David
As for updating, I use the plugin “wordpress-automatic-upgrade” on all my sites, and have never had a problem. It works like a charm and doesnt require anything other than activating and pushing a few buttons!
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/
Feb 15th, 2008
David
Ah, so does mrs. micah. How funny.
Feb 15th, 2008
Michael Martine
I also recommend WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. It’s a dream come true!
One thing that drives me crazy is people who can’t write and don’t know what they’re talking about.
A second is keywords in the commentator name field. I can’t do anything about the first one, but as far as the second one goes, well, I now have a new comment policy in place, and if you don’t put a real name in there, your comment goes buh-bye.
Feb 15th, 2008
Giun Sun
Yes, I could imagine running out of things to talk about after a couple of years, but there’s so many ways to brainstorm that eventually you can find something amazing to write (you just need to be a little more creative in your thinking :D). There’s always those occasional blog blocks. I run into them myself where I spend a whole Saturday afternoon and come up with only 1 or 2 blogs. Sometimes I feel they aren’t that great either so I delete them! You definitely get the feeling of “why did I waste my time doing this while I could be hanging out with my friends…ugh”, but it’s all part of the process. It happens to a lot of people (I think? anyone agree with me? :D), and you have to learn to handle this feeling or else you won’t get far.
A word about upgrading WP, it can be done rather easily and automated with this plugin: http://urltea.com/1eiw
I use it all the time on my blogs, and it has worked great! Plus if anything does go wrong, it gives you a link to download a backup of the database and WP files!
Feb 15th, 2008
Corey
Thanks for your counsel again Skellie.
Ever since I ventured into the blogging world, I have been obsessed with the stats, visitors, subscribers, etc. I used to check them several times a day. Now it is only once or twice. I’m getting better. When there are dips, I wonder what’s up? It’s good to hear I should just chill.
Since my blog is relatively new, long term stats are no available. But the trends are good thus far. Thanks largely to your coaching. Keep it up.
Feb 15th, 2008
Devon Lambert
Skellie,
This is a great post for just about every blogger out there!
I know for a fact that I have felt the lows and it ain’t pretty. Thanks for the inspiration and keep up the good work!
- Devon
Feb 15th, 2008
Naomi Dunford
@ MM - I can’t tell you how hard it is for me to stop myself from running over to your blog with some ridiculous keyword name, just to see what happens. It would be really cool if it came back with something like, ‘Unfortunately, I do not accept comments from people who are trying to cheat my readers and steal my traffic. I’m not sure what kind of Mickey Mouse operation you think I’m running here, but you suck. Your IP address has been blocked. Have a pleasant day.’
Feb 15th, 2008
Dan Cole
Yeah… I guess every blogger go through that kinda stuff. The problem is, is that being human we tend to look at the negatives more than the positives.
Feb 15th, 2008
Dave Shaw
Great post. Thanks! Even though I’ve just started my blog it was encouraging to read that blogs much much bigger than my own struggle to keep growing at times, have plateaus too and struggle to get comments and votes etc. Great point about…”sometimes a post doesn’t blossom until a few months after it’s been published”. I’ll just keep on going trying to make good posts!
Feb 15th, 2008
CatherineL
Hi Skellie - this post is reassuring. When my traffic goes down I worry about which post sucked the most, or what I’ve said to upset people.
And I’ve had the odd rude person making clever comments, but you get that in real life too. I just hate when they do it anonymously. i actually had one that said Anonymous to Avoid Confrontation.
Feb 15th, 2008
Mrs. Micah
Michael (other MM)
I hear you on that. My biggest pet peeve for commenting recently was someone who left a really mean comment on my blog. The thing is, she is another personal finance blogger, not one I’d really been close to, and was pleased as punch to leave other legitimate comments (from the same IP again and again).
My new policy is that I have the right to change any commentator’s name if they choose to leave a mean comment under an assumed name.
I think Skellie’s right about ignoring most unhelpful negative comments. Sometimes constructive ideas can be packaged in mean words, so one has to sort before deleting.
Feb 15th, 2008
Coqui
Great points.
But I would be happy with even just half of your visitors :o)
I have to strongly agree with ‘updating wordpress’ I have just learned this the hard way… Middle of January my site got hacked (and I’ve only just figured this out). Now I’m way down with google search (probably a penalty of some sort). Now I have to upgrade WP and try to convince google that my site is a great site.
Now my daily search referrals are almost zero, because of this hack
Feb 15th, 2008
Naomi Dunford
Mrs. Micah — What a great idea! A little underlined “Poo-Head” with a link to their blog. I love it.
Feb 15th, 2008
joseph hollak
Aw, you sent a shiver up my spine Skellie with #3.
That reminds me, I need to back-up my blog and my SQL database.
One more item on the to-do list for today.
All the best,
Joe
Feb 15th, 2008
Johny B. Goode
So you spend time writing these articles? On Fridays, you say? :). It shows. The articles on this and anywired are fun to read and very informative. I noticed you also do simple things such as wordpress upgrades…. Overall you have a tone and a purpose.
I normally have too many erratic posts in my blogs. It is intended to be running commentary but obviously isn’t interesting enough. It’s purpose was to be without purpose which is ending up not being aimed at any audience. Will be using that search feature you mentioned in the last point.
Feb 15th, 2008
skellie
Hey everyone — thanks for the comments! Good to hear these points resonated with a lot of you.
I’d love to respond to everyone but today is my ‘Write 10,000 words in one day’ day. I’ll try to participate again tomorrow.
@ PaidTwice: It usually involves writing content with more value packed into each post, and guest-posting again. Now I don’t have much time to guest-post anymore, so I take it as a reality check than my content isn’t providing as much as it could, and I focus on that. Often I’ll write something that I’ve designed to do really well on SU.
@ Mrs. Micah: So this person changed her name to leave a mean comment, then went on to pretend like nothing had happened under her real name? How sneaky and childish. I would have blocked her I.P. ;-).
@ Joseph: Sorry, I didn’t mean to cause shivers. But you’ll feel better when you do it.
Feb 15th, 2008
Mrs. Micah
Yep. But she hasn’t commented since I posted the new comment policy.
Feb 15th, 2008
Linda R. Moore
I’m glad to see that others find the keyword/blog name in the name field annoying. I actually have a comments policy that suggests that when people do this I reserve the right to either edit in their real name (if it’s on the blog) or a made-up name.
I haven’t gotten *really* mean yet. But I have, on occasion, stripped out links from the main body of the site and given people a name they wouldn’t pick for themselves yet.
Feb 15th, 2008
Elizabeth Able
You have a way of gathering up fuzzy worries and making them into a road map. Kudos!
Feb 15th, 2008
Barb McMahon
Thank you for the great ideas and the encouragement!
I have three blogs. They all seem to be at a plateau at the moment. It was driving me crazy. I’ll sleep better, knowing it’s normal…
Feb 15th, 2008
Warren
Words cannot describe the tension I feel when that little text at the top of my admin pops up saying “A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.”
Then by the time I finally will myself to upgrade, a new one comes along a week later. Can’t they fix more problems at once and update less often?
Feb 15th, 2008
Andrew
Really good post. Some days you do feel like pulling your hair out, don’t you?
Feb 15th, 2008
David Bradley
1 Thing That Drives a Blogreader Crazy
1. Posts that are just linkbaity lists with numbers in the title
db
Feb 15th, 2008
Rob Diana
Shouting into a vacuum sounds very familiar. That is definitely the hardest part for me right now. I got a comment on two different posts yesterday and got all excited. That and stumbleupon are probably the only reasons that I will continue.
Feb 15th, 2008
Hans
really enjoy this kind of information which steal us a little smile just because we recognize ourself in these particular situations!
My blog is not well known yet, but I’ll follow some of your advice very carefully. Maybe if time doesn’t drive you crazy in the next few days, I’ll appreciate to have some of your feedback!
Keep up the great work!
Feb 16th, 2008
CatherineL
Skellie - my arms would drop off if I tried to write 10,000 words in a day.
Mrs M - how do you manage to find out the identity of the anonymous attackers?
Feb 16th, 2008
Caitlin
“What could I have possibly done to make 50 people unsubscribe? ”
Haha! Is it sad that just recently I was quite excited that I had 50 subscribers total?
I definitely relate to your point about speaking in a vacuum! It’s all part of being a new, relatively unknown blog (I don’t imagine someone like you or Darren has posted anything with 0 comments or links in a while!), but it’s tough. I’ll write what I think is a good post, and the only response is the online equivalent of a tumbleweed.
Feb 16th, 2008
David Bradley
By the way, I’d recommend Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin and I certainly agree about Feedburner count bounce, you’ve got to look at it long term and forget about day to day…
db
Feb 16th, 2008
Ty Brown
I can relate to number 8. Sometimes it is tough getting material. And I’m just starting out!! Oh no.
Feb 16th, 2008
Mrs. Micah
I don’t know if you use the WordPress platform, Catherine. If so, mine tells me the IP address of every comment in the Comments section. I wrote down the nasty one just to see if they ever came back. Then I got a comment from them the very next day. So I went through all this person’s comments and they were from the same IP. IPs can be dynamic, but apparently this one hadn’t reset yet.
Feb 16th, 2008
Sonia Simone
I was going right out of my mind until I started only checking Feedburner stats twice a month–on the first and the fifteenth.
Now I go right out of my mind twice a month, which is better.
Feb 16th, 2008
bugsy
You have a line break before each item, except for 9. Just pointing it out if there is supposed to be another line break..
Good post. Rock on.
All the best.
Feb 16th, 2008
Lex G
Very recognizable …
Since I started newmediatype I at least came across all of the points mentioned above …
It shows, that in the end, it’s more then a few things that make blogging harder then it initially seems …
Being too perfectionistic with a post is one thing that drives me crazy as well … I’ve quite articles regularly cause of the fact that they became impossible to ‘untie’ in my head ….
Lex G
Feb 16th, 2008
Ruchir Chawdhry
I think silence and ignorance from the top bloggers drives me crazy more than anything…
Feb 16th, 2008
Andy MacDonald - SEO & Marketing Blog
A fantastic article Skellie. Perfect for the newer blogger like me. I have already experienced a few of them, and hopefully, my blog will become as popular as all the other good blogs like your’s. Darren’s etc etc.
Keep up the great work. Love your posts.
Feb 17th, 2008
Prix Dekanun
Hi! My blog don’t come even near your statistics, but I think I suffer with the same “crazy feelings”
- Speacially about comments… I start recently with the “moderate comments”, against my will. I thought that people should be free to express themselves about my thoughts anyway they like… And then some people start express themselves, usually angry, but not bold enought to let not even their real name. So, I had no other choice. Sorry for the terrible English, but its getting a bit rusty over the years. I really love your blog, and I expect you keep going, no matter all the crazy! 
Feb 17th, 2008
Shankar Ganesh
Hahaha!
Feed Readers Count drives me crazy all the time!
Feb 17th, 2008
Chris Laskey
Ugh, finally the Feedburner count makes sense.
Subscriber counts are both uplifting and deflating. Since I’m still in the early stages of blogging, I was having quite a number of Uh-Oh moments about the feed count fluctuating from day to day.
Thanks for another great post Skellie. I’m off now to finally update wordpress.
Feb 18th, 2008
Geld
10. Over 3.000 visitors that read a post and not one comment on the post.
This drives me crazy all the time!
Feb 19th, 2008
Claudia D'Arcy
I would almost say “yep” times nine, but I have to admit that I enjoy a good snarky debate with a clueless “anonymous” commentor. I get them often on my personal blog due to the content..speaking the hard truth about Adoption gets some folks all riled up, but I use the “kill them with kindness” mantra.
I name my Anons and then address them point by point until I get bored. If they look like they really, really want attention then I will do full research on who they are and where they are from and then give them a whole Post dedicated to their nonsense. That ususally scares them away.
I use to try to keep track of who was who, but now I think most of them know that I will play right back at them. So I don’t get hate emails or drive by commentary anymore.
I would add number #10: Blog guilt. Sometimes I just don’t have it in me..and then I feel very neglectful.
Feb 19th, 2008
jim
Awesome picture BTW… Upgrading Wordpress is always a white knuckled affair for me, even though they make it painless and simple.
With #6, I don’t really understand why people even leave nasty comments like that. It’s as if the anonymity of the internet gives them to right to tear someone else down…
Feb 22nd, 2008
(\_/) bunny ears
some people are mean and some are nice. i wish that everyone was nice and then no one would be driven crazy. i love bunny ears!!!! they are so awesome.
thanks
Mar 26th, 2008
John McCollum
Good article, but I would recommend that for #3, it’s not just the paranoid that should be backing up their database!
Having accidentally blown up a few databases in my time, it is very, very good practice.
Jul 27th, 2008
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