Every month I give a quick report in my income reports on whether traffic to this blog has gone or up down.
Some months my traffic goes up. Some months it goes down.
My reports on the growth of traffic to this blog have been uninspiring (to say the least). It is painfully obvious that I need to do something about it.
My Blog Traffic Has Stagnated
Below is a screenshot of daily visitors to this blog from 19th July 2014 to 19th January 2015. As you can see, traffic goes up and down every week, however my average traffic over each month has not changed throughout that period.
In my income reports, I have spoke publishing more content in order to increase my readership and increase my daily traffic.
As you can see from the list below, I was successful in increasing the number of articles I publish on this blog on a monthly basis.
- July 2014: 12 Published Blog Posts
- August 2014: 21 Published Blog Posts
- September 2014: 22 Published Blog Posts
- October 2014: 31 Published Blog Posts
- November 2014: 39 Published Blog Posts
- December 2014: 34 Published Blog Posts
Sadly, my blog traffic has not increased at the same rate as my posting frequency. What this means is that I am spending more money, and spending more time updating this blog, and not getting any return on my investment.
It is a little depressing for me to admit all of this; however, facts are facts. My plans on growing this blog are not working out. I need to stop procrastinating and take action.
Grade B Content
I was able to increase my posting frequency since I hired many authors to write articles for me.
Some of those articles were very good, though many were average.
There was nothing inherently wrong with what many authors contributed. They were around 1,000 words long, grammar was good, and they contained several images and links.
When I first started blogging, those articles would have been considered high quality. But times have changed.
In a world where the volume of content being published online every day is getting higher and higher; those articles were not doing enough to stand out from the crowd. This meant they were soon lost in my blog archives.
I cannot criticise the authors about this as my articles were rarely better. I never spent time writing the long in-depth articles that I am known for writing on other blogs. Most of my articles were short reviews or random thoughts. I never took my time to focus on high quality articles that take days to write.
A Higher Quality of Content is Required
The problem with pursuing a higher posting frequency is that you feel pressure to maintain it. I have always advised others not to rush out articles for the sake of it, but there were times where I chose to publish a short 500 or 1,000 word article instead of just not publishing content that day.
In the short term, I do not believe that publishing shorter articles is a big problem. However, over time it may reduce the overall quality of content on your blog. And if your main goal is to convert visitors into subscribers, publishing anything but your best content is doing yourself a disservice.
So what does this mean for me moving forward?
It means the end of pursuing a high posting frequency and the start of pursuing a policy of publishing high quality content.
Rather than publish five short articles in a week that are 1,000 words long, I will instead spend all of my time working on a detailed tutorial or list post that is several thousand words long.
I will still publish income reports. I will still publish reviews from time to time. And I will still offer readers the opportunity of winning prizes through competitions.
The difference is that the majority of my time on this blog will now be spent writing premium articles instead of writing multiple articles of a shorter length.
This may mean there may be times when I only publish one article in a week or one article in two weeks; but the articles I do publish should be more useful to readers. It also means that my articles will be more likely to be shared and that visitors are more likely to subscribe to this blog.
I also want to stop myself from working on this blog when I am tired or simply not in the mood to write. I have always enjoyed blogging and I want to continue to enjoy writing on this blog.
If I am too tired to write, I will not write; as the end product is never good when writing feels forced and you are just going through the motions. I want to enjoy writing for this blog. Otherwise, what’s the point in updating it.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin