Nobody Reads My Blogs!

I have often wondered what makes the traffic so huge in some of the weblogs while some others lament about the lack of traffic to their own blogs. I assume that this is a common problem with most of the bloggers. They start off with very high hopes and aspirations, but their quest fizzles out when they find that their blogs are not generating the right amount of traffic on the net.

This is very understandable. After all, it is normal human nature to garner publicity for one’s own self. I assume that there has to be some explanation as to the possible reasons for this phenomena.

For understanding, let us look at an equation which would explain it. The Power Law Equation. A term which has been in vogue for much of the last century, but which is finally being understood clearly enough in order to apply it to the societal power relations. The Economist Vilfred Pareto had used this Equation to explain the fact that 20% of the community own 80% of the wealth of the world. I assume that something similar happens in the world of weblogs.

It is not that the rest of the weblogs do not have something that may be read by the community. It is just that the 80/20 principle has not been used to the correct the inequation. For this, let us actually understand what the 80/20 rule is.

The 80/20 rule states that the 20% of the matters that need to be concentrated on generate the best results. I assume here that the blogs generating the most amount of traffic are the ones that concentrate on the 20% of the matters that are liable to catch the attention of the search engines and the readers.

For most of the bloggers who have identified their core areas, this would mean that they have successfully found the areas which would create an interest in the online community. For example, most of the blogs that we see would either deal with the daily existence of the person.

No offence meant to anyone in particular, for I am all for the freedom of speech, and quite truthfully, some of the most successful blogs are about everyday routine life, but there are styles of writing that would make one blog more “successful” than the other. While some identify Style as their mainstay, some focus their attention on Content, while there are still others that focus on the Presentation, that is, how their blog looks like. There are still others who can focus on all three at the same point.

However, I feel that the key to be a Serious Blogger (apologies to Vulturo) is to veer away from the topics that the average person surfing the net would get to read in almost every other page that has been hosted.

Can there be any other way to look at the whole matter? Kevin Laws in his article states that “However, many of the Internet media companies are different. They started out just being a better way to shop (or rent movies). They sold the same things everybody else did, but at better prices. Then a funny thing happened -- suddenly they noticed that more and more sales were coming from the tail. That is, they were selling a lot of the items that physical stores didn't carry. In hindsight this is completely obvious -- of course you are in competition with every single bookstore in the nation to sell Clinton's "My Life", but if you want Gerd Gehringers "The Adaptive Toolbox", there's only one place to go: the Internet… over 50% of Amazon's media profits come from sales past the top 100,000 titles. More than 50% of Rhapsody's business is streaming songs past the top 10,000 tracks.”

This, I believe is another way of looking at the whole matter. Uniqueness is one quality which might make one blog stand out from the others. How it is unique is totally your matter. It might have content which is found only on that blog, it might have a visual appeal which might make the readers come back time and again.

As a small interception, I would beg here to put in my own thoughts on the matter. I believe that all that is there to it is the content of the blog. The look and the technical wizardry does have a temporary appeal. However, it is the content which matters. Look at some of the most popular blogs on the net (I would not be taking names here). They have much more to do with what has been written rather than what it actually “looks” like.

Therefore, for all those who think that there is actually something wrong with their blogs, there is not. It is just that you have not perhaps focused on the core area. Of course, this is taking into account the fact that you actually are interested in increasing traffic to your blog.

Economics and the internet are strange bedfellows…

Peace!

Love, laughter n keep the Faith

S