Blogging authors can break the”blog rules”!
by Anne R. Allen
Authors get lots of conflicting advice about blogging. Most of it isn’t terribly useful—and some can hurt or even destroy your career.
It nearly happened to me.
That’s because most of the blogging advice out there is:
- Out of date.
- Aimed at bloggers who want to “monetize”—that is, get paid for blogging via advertisements and affiliates.
But the primary reason for authors to blog isn’t to make money with ads. We blog to interact with our readers. It’s the book sales that pay the bills, not the blog itself.
Some blogging authors do try to sell books and monetize as well, with mixed results. Some have been successful, but probably not if they started recently.
As blogging author Delilah S. Dawson said at a seminar last year:
“How do I build a platform and make money with my blog?” a woman asks.
“Build a time machine and go back to 2005 and start your blog then.”
But, ever the optimist, I decided to try it last fall when we moved this blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site. I thought I’d try to get some ads and/or affiliates in order to pay for the hosting and tech work.
That turned out to be as bad an idea as Ms. Dawson implied. I admit I pretty much knew that—I advised authors against monetizing in my book with Catherine Ryan Hyde, How to be a Writer in the E-Age.
But the old Blogger blog had been hacked and we’d reached the point where we needed the security of a self-hosted blog Unfortunately, hosting costs money. So I thought I’d give the monetizing thing a shot. That meant getting some affiliates (companies that pay you a commission if a customer clicks through your site to theirs) and maybe some discreet advertisements.
I may have made worse decisions in my life, but none come to mind. It nearly killed this blog, my career…and me.
Authors Don’t Have to Pay to Blog
First I should say that unlike people in the tech community, I like Blogger (blogspot.com.) Techy people don’t, because Blogger is not, well, techy.
You don’t have a lot of choices with Blogger. It’s like going to the corner Mom-and-Pop store instead of the big box superstore. It’s fast and convenient, but if you want cereal, Mom and Pop have maybe oatmeal and cornflakes. If you want quinoa, amaranth and flaxseed clusters with gluten-free sorghum flakes and dried acai berries, you’re going to be seriously disappointed.
Me, I’m okay with oatmeal. I like to keep things simple.
I still recommend Blogger to new bloggers who aren’t into tech. It’s free and you only have to be minimally tech-savvy to use it. If you have a strong password and change it often, you won’t have the hacker problem I ran into. Also it’s efficient and fast (way faster than WP) and it’s owned by Google, so it gets you in search engines quickly. It allows some affiliate marketing, but doesn’t support much lucrative advertising.
WordPress.com is free, too. (The paid, self-hosted version is WordPress.org.) You have to put up with a few discreet ads from WP, but most people aren’t bothered by them. It’s a little more technical, but it has good tech support. (Blogger does not.) Making comments is easier on WP, too, so it has its advantages. It forbids you to run ads. But if you’re not monetizing, no problem.
I recommend new bloggers use one of these—or put a blog on your website if you’re already paying for a website.
There’s a Big Difference between an Author Blog and a Monetized Blog
The difference between them can be the difference between a literary salon and a pitch from a carnival barker.
Each is useful in its place, but whatever works in one will probably not work for the other.
Author blogs need to be inviting, fun, and above all…make readers feel comfortable. Ideally, they form a community. Their purpose is to provide a place where readers feel welcome to get to know the authors, the books, and other readers.
They offer value TO the reader.
Monetized blogs—especially the big, flashy ones that provide “make big bux blogging” advice—are usually impersonal. They’ll have clickbait headers. They give advice on how to manipulate readers and boost your traffic so you can get high numbers to attract advertisers. They are all about SEO, stats, and clicks.
As soon as you load one of these sites, you know you’re in high-pressure territory. The text is in a no-nonsense sans-serif font. You’ll see lots of exclamation points and starbursts. It’s hard to find the content, because the ads draw focus. The design will be mostly white with high-energy primary colors, designed to discourage lingering. They want you to click and buy now!
They get value FROM the reader.
Pyramid-Scheme Blogging Has Passed its Sell-By Date
Blogs that dole out “blogging rules” are often nothing more than pyramid schemes. They are asking for big bux for courses that tell you how to teach courses that make big bux from other wannabe-bloggers.
But as Delilah Dawson said in the quote above, you probably won’t get much of a ROI (Return on Investment) on those bux you’re paying, since the whole get-rich-blogging-about-blogging thing went out with late-night discussions of the latest absurd plot twist on Lost.
Pyramid schemes have a limited shelf life. The wannabes have already been scammed and moved on to buying phony Facebook likes and pouring money into overpriced marketing schemes.
Just look at the things blogging gurus are still telling people to do:
- Lure readers to sign up for your mailing list with free “ebooks” that are .pdfs. Who wants a .pdf these days? It’s like offering a free VHS tape. They also claim you can “make millions from ebooks” as if ebooks are different from other books. This is 2016. Most books are available in ebook form. And they are hardly a path to easy money.
- Offer high-priced video courses. Overpriced courses are over. Even Udemy has banned those absurd $500 courses (that were usually discounted.) They now require prices to be set under $50.
- Bully people into subscribing to a barrage of unwanted newsletters with insulting headers like “Why Your Blog Sux” or “10 Reasons I’m a Zillionaire and you’re Not.”
- Offer rambling, unscripted podcasts that are as exciting as waiting for 1990s dial-up.
These techniques may have worked a decade ago. But the world has moved on.
Authors Don’t Want an Adversarial Relationship with Readers.
Authors need to be friendly and welcoming, not cranky and greedy.
When we first moved to WordPress, it was a scary, bumpy ride. One of the things that appeared was a dreaded pop-up subscription box. Ruth and I hated it and got it taken down, but the tech people couldn’t believe we didn’t want one. Pop-ups are part of the “blogging rules.”
Blocking your own content with a pop-up seems just plain stupid to me. If your content isn’t enticing enough to get people to subscribe, try improving your content, not blocking it. Why is this even a thing?
How long do you think your local grocery store would stay in business if it put a guard at the door who wouldn’t let customers in unless they gave up their addresses and personal information? Or if it put a fence around the produce section and wouldn’t let you buy a rutabaga unless you signed up for a boring newsletter?
Reconsider Pop-ups
Pop-up designers are always inventing new ways to torture visitors. I visited a site this week that had THREE pop-ups that fought any attempt to read the content:
- Some pop-ups block all content until you sign up for the tenth daily copy of their newsletter.
- Others block you from reading beyond the first paragraph unless you give out personal information.
- A creepy new one puts the words “get notifications” into a thin blue popup that covers the scroll bar on the side of the screen, so if you try to scroll down to read the content, you’re subscribed.
- Another appears at the top of the screen and says they’ll send you “updates” from the site unless you click “no.”
- Some can’t be closed until you click on something that says “I’m already filthy rich and don’t care about making money” or “I’m a moron and I never want to educate myself about this subject.”
- Others pop up as you’re trying to escape and tell you you’ll never be a success if you leave this website. Some even have a loud, creepy voice-over that calls you a loser for clicking away. So nice to get when the baby is sleeping or you’re on a break at work!
These blog-for-money websites teach you to treat your readers as prey. They see a blog as something to lure and entrap victims. They focus on numbers, gaming the system, and beating the “competition,” not giving value.
As Ezinne Ukoha said on Medium last week:
“I can’t fathom how a sh**load of you [bloggers] deem it appropriate to trick people into thinking that you have their best blogging interests in mind — when you are actually robbing them blind.”
A Note about Travel, Food, Parenting, and Review Blogs.
Not all monetized blogs are get-rich-quick schemes, of course. The offenders I’m talking about are the ones that claim to give expert social media advice and use blogs as a way to sell overpriced courses and services that fleece their readers with get-rich-quick schemes and “guaranteed results.” The ones who invented the “blogging rules.”
Blogs about Travel, Food, Parenting, Reviews, Astrology, Crafts, etc, can be just as friendly and inviting as an author blog and they serve the same purpose—creating community and offering information.
So they don’t have to follow those “blogging rules” either.
How can you Have a Successful Author Blog?
1) Define success in your own terms.
Checking your stats or Alexa rating is fun for monitoring your progress, but those numbers mean very little for an author blog.
Superstar author Catherine Ryan Hyde sells tens of thousands of books a week and her blog has a mediocre Alexa rating of nearly 3 million. This blog has an excellent Alexa rating of around 300 thousand (the lower the number, the better.)
Do I sell tens of thousands of books a week? Um, er, not this week, anyway.
Stats and Alexa ratings are important to advertisers, but you’re not advertising anything but yourself, so it’s all good. A small group of engaged readers can be much better for sales than a whole bunch of drive-bys.
2) Be true to your brand.
Ruth and I have spent years on this blog building a reputation for being friendly, savvy, and straightforward.
Plus we both write upmarket fiction about classy women.
The “blogging rules” tell you act sleazy and bully people. Serious disconnect there. No amount of SEO will make up for alienating your core readership.
3) Be generous with content.
Owners of monetized blogs are often worried other bloggers will steal their content.
But we authors want you to “steal” our content and spread it all over the Web. (Just link back to the blog and spell our names right.) However, when I told the expensive web host I wanted protection from hackers, they put some awful thing on the blog that made it impossible to copy the content and post it to other blogs.
I got called on the carpet for this by some of the biggest names in the industry and I had no idea it had happened or how to stop it. (I finally did get word to the right people and that “protection” went away.)
But I ended up looking like a paranoid doofus.
4) Use networking, not gimmicks, to build traffic.
Learning SEO can be very handy and can help you get a higher ranking in search engines. But when you’re starting out, your traffic is more likely to come from networking and social media. A new blog will get most of its traffic from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other blogs, not Google searches.
People will subscribe and come back if you are engaging and fun. It’s much more important to be friendly and have something interesting to offer than it is to have the right keywords, post frequency, or wordcount.
Networking with other bloggers will probably be your number one source of traffic when you’re starting out. That means making friends, not tricking people. Joining a circle of bloggers can do a whole lot to launch a new blog. I highly recommend the Insecure Writers’ Support Group. (I’ll be blogging for them on July 25th.) Joining one of their blog hops can seriously boost your traffic.
5) Keep control of your blog.
Your blog is the face you show to the world. You will be held responsible for whatever happens there.
I should have taken at least three months to learn to use WordPress before we moved. (I have since taken a great online course from Bakerview Consulting, and I’m beginning to understand how this all works.)
When we moved from Blogger, the content came through, but not the formatting…and I had no idea how to fix it. My tech help became unavailable due to family challenges. So I needed to learn to categorize every post and add appropriate images and keywords. There were 1000s of broken links to sites that no longer existed.
Readers complained (rightly) because the commenting system was a mess and the share buttons were screwy. I tried desperately to fix them, but mostly made things worse. All that stuff was way, way above my tech skills.
I had to spend four months of 12-18 hour days reformatting every page and every post I’d written since 2008. All through trial and error.
Hair-tearing-out, screaming-at-the-screen, kill-me-now error.
6) Never sacrifice your health or your writing to your blog.
Because I was working as an unpaid (and laughably incompetent) techy every waking minute, I had to abandon my two WIPs and cancel all guest posts and promotions for my latest book. My book page was a mess I couldn’t fix. My sales fell off a cliff.
I got a bunch of stress-related illnesses and developed painful arthritis in my fingers. My gouty knees got so bad I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t digest my food. I had headaches that lasted for weeks. My blood pressure skyrocketed to life-threatening heights. I developed symptoms of an amazing array of terminal diseases.
Even my earlobes, which had been pierced for over 40 years, gave up. They grew solid again, because I never went out anyplace where I got dressed up enough to wear earrings. I totally missed Christmas. My friends started planning an intervention. (Thanks Bev and Bill!)
And I never did get the blog polished enough to sell any advertising.
Yeah. #Monetizationfail.
I tried moving back to Blogger, but it turned out to be way tougher than I thought. So I decided to give up the blog. We came within a hair of going dark on May 1st, 2016.
Thank goodness some amazing white knights came to our rescue. I can’t say enough good things about Barb Drozdowich of the Canadian tech company Bakerview Consulting. Jay Donovan of TechSurgeons LLC was helpful, too. And superblogger Kristen Lamb gave me some timely advice.
7) Ignore monetized blog rules
Here’s a reminder of what I knew before I started the ordeal and I needed to relearn:
- A blog shouldn’t become more important than your WIP
- Blog to make friends, not sales.
- For a writer, good writing is more important than SEO.
- Manipulating people may get short-term results, but it’s a bad idea in the long run.
- The most important rule is the Golden one.
8) Blogging authors only need to entertain and inform: content really is king
An author blog can be about anything that interests you and your readers. Here’s a post on what an author might blog about.
Be accessible and be yourself. Nothing else matters. (Well, correct spelling and grammar are a good idea, too 🙂 .)
I’m slowly getting my life back. To those of you who have stuck with us through this whole messy period, I give my heartfelt thanks. I know your comments got eaten and you couldn’t share posts or scroll past the last six entries. You’d click on a link and it would take you to a post from 2010 that was totally out of date, but the date didn’t show.
Recently we had another crisis when hacker-bots made massive attack on the blog, so we went dark for about 12 hours on June 24. They were trying to install ransomware to take the blog hostage and make us pay to get it back. But they didn’t get in. Our host’s security shut us down to keep out the hackers and it worked. We do apologize if you tried to visit and found us down.
9) When you need help, ask for it.
A number of you offered to help me early on, but I didn’t realize my tech arrangement wouldn’t work out. After that, I was afraid to admit defeat. We’re only here because of the wonderful people who stepped up and made the offer again.
We are now at a new self-hosted WordPress.org site, with a simpler template, and we are not monetized. Our generous host is Bakerview Consulting, who are donating the hosting to us because they are long-time fans of the blog. Please check out their books and services. They are reasonably-priced, savvy, and very, very helpful.
I will forever be grateful to tech-wizard Barb Drozdowich, the owner of Bakerview (who also has a book review blog, Sugarbeat’s Books.) She will be guest posting next week and will tell you more about what she does and the importance of blogging in an author’s career.
Barb believes authors shouldn’t monetize (except for maybe a relevant affiliate like Amazon) and now I realize she’s right.
I was so worried about losing this blog during the transition that I started up a brand new Blogger blog. It’s fun and easy and it’s been a nice little success. I will be blogging about my experience with it later this summer.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) July 3rd, 2016
What about you, scriveners? Do you blog? Have you been told to follow these outdated rules? Have the “rules” kept you from blogging?
Please note: We do not monetize this blog in any way. The only payment we get for our work here is when you buy our books. Do take a look at Anne’s book page.
On my book blog this week I talk about the mysterious poisonous plant known as White Snakeroot. And Ruth has a great post on how women can become “invisible” in middle age.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
No Place Like Home
Available at all the Amazons and NOOK,, Kobo and iTunes It’s also available in paperback from Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Barnes and Noble, in regular and LARGE PRINT. LARGE PRINT is also available at Barnes and Noble.
And NO PLACE LIKE HOME IS ALSO AN AUDIOBOOK!!
Nearly 8 hours of hilarious entertainment!Only $1.99 if you buy the Kindle ebook for $3.99.
Very nice post! I HATE popups and will leave a blog that has them–I mean you want me to subscribe to your blog or newsletter before I even read your content? Um, no.
I have moved from Blogger to WP and WP to Blogger and have found both to be a huge pain in the @ss! Moving to WP tends to be easier ’cause they build plugins to fix a lot of the problems (and it’s best to go Blogger>WP.com>WP.org. Yes, a silly three step process.
HR–Is there anybody who actually likes pop-ups? I’m glad you click away too. Maybe they’ll get the message some day. Our grandparents used to call that “buying a pig in a poke”. Nobody wants to buy something sight unseen. Why is that so strange to these people?
I agree that all the blogging platforms are kind of a pain, but Blogger got smoother over the years. We probably would have done better if we’d gone to WP.com first, but we were going for that monetizing thing. Such a bad decision. 🙁
Two bloggers have told me that they keep the newsletter popup because it has generate more people subscribing. I just don’t believe them. :/
Oh, and I meant when moving to WP.org, if you filter it through the .com site first, it seems to correct a lot of the formatting issues. Weird right? So, I moved to .com then moved to .org the next day, deleted the content of .org.–Or I should say it used too. Everybody is always “fixing” things and then nothing works.
That’s a good tip about moving to WP.com first. I wish we’d known that. And I don’t believe those people either. I doubt very much that they’ve tried a nice, friendly subscription window in the sidebar instead. I’ll bet it will get them MORE subscriptions. It did for us.
Hi Anne & Ruth – This is excellent, practical, and realistic advice for author-bloggers. I’d like to offer something from my experience. I’ve found my successful content size has moved from short form to long form. I began blogging 4 years ago when the trend was sort, around 5-600 words, but over the last 18 months I’ve had much better traffic, shares, and comments with long form of around 1800 words. Last year I was picked up by the Huffington Post as a regular contributor. Their backstage guidelines still recommend blog submissions to be around 800 words, but I’ve never been rejected by the Huff for long form posts, even up to 2800 wpp. Thought I’d pass this on. My view is regular followers expect and appreciate a decent read of 10 to 15 minutes – just enough time for their fresh coffee to be cool enough to sip 🙂
Garry–Absolutely! Our posts run about 2500 words. I remember when I started 7 years ago we were told posts should be 300-500 words and we should post at least once a day. Bad old days. Things really have changed. People want real content, not just drive by musings.
I like your observation that it should be just about coffee-break length.
Congrats on being a regular at the HuffPo! Even though they don’t pay, they are one of the #1 ways of getting “cred” for selling your books. And they’re very competitive.
Long posts do get more hits. Some of our post that have had over 100K hits are over 3000 words.
I’ve noticed that too (about longer posts). Those “blogging rules” change all the time too. 🙂
Thanks for mentioning the IWSG! Looking forward to your visit this month.
In searching for writing sites to add to the IWSG database, I’ve come across quite a few that have multiple popups. Most are for updates or a newsletter, but still – I have to close them out to read the content of the page.
And despite all of the advertisers who have contacted me, I still refuse to put an ad on my site. Any ads you see are for my blogger buddies – those who engage with me on a friendly level. Because connecting is what it’s all about.
You’ve fought hard for this site. Keep fighting!
Alex–I’m with you. I’m much less likely to recommend a site that assaults a reader with pop-ups. They work against a blogger in multiple ways. I think they actually discourage subscriptions, because you only want to subscribe AFTER you’ve read the content, and then there’s no subscription window, because you’ve closed it.
I used to get those advertiser emails all the time, but they’re almost never for something I think my readers would care about. I’m happy to promote books by our guest bloggers and put likely opportunities in the alerts section, but that’s to be helpful, not for payment.
You’re right that I’m pretty battle scarred. Bloody but unbowed! 🙂
Yes, I do blog. At the moment, it is every day (posts under 200 words, mostly, which only takes 15 minutes). It was a way of bolstering my productivity on the fiction–sort of like a kickstart to the writing and setup a streak.
One of the things I ran into early on is that experts on blogs didn’t understand that fiction writers have different requirements. A time management business can blog on the subject and get big and bring in business. But a fiction writer is told to blog on the subject of her book, like if it’s set in wine country, to blog as an expert about wine. I tried that with my first book a thriller set during the Civil War. My cowriter blogged on CW firearms. The only interest we got was a lot of people emailing to ask how much their gun was worth. My current book is SF about a woman who is hired to go to another planet because she can see ghosts; my last book was a contemporary fantasy set on Hawaii. Someone told me I could blog about Hawaii. Right. This is why beginning writers default to writing how-tos about writing, trying to be an “expert” when they’re still too knew to the writing.
When I decided I was going to blog every day, I opted for two military posts a week. That is my most popular topic. I also do two writing-like posts a week. Not on how to write, but other things, like an article about libraries on cruise ships, building book covers, etc. The other three are light topics. I’ve had videos up about dogs and cats, a link to NASA (free space books!), the Enterprise at the Smithsonian. The most important things are:
1. Have fun.
2. Don’t endlessly revise the blog posts. If you write a 500 word blog post, it should take you 30 minutes. If you’re spending 5 hours on it, fix your process because it will cut into your regular writing.
3. Don’t use your regular writing time for blog post writing. Keep them separate. Liberally use the timed posts to your advantage. A writer complained about how long blogging was taking. She would wait until the post was due, then write it during her writing time. I suggested she used timed posts, and she actually sneered and said she refused to be a hack! Your time is valuable. It’s worth money. Treat it as such.
Linda–Excellent advice here! Whatever works for an author blog is what works. 200 words a day or 2000 words once a week: either one can give you the “hub” you need for your readership to get to know you.
I used to buy that “niche” blogging advice too. But the truth is your brand is YOU, so anything that interests you might interest your readers. Throw stuff up there and see what sticks. (But writing advice is the least likely thing to stick.)
Being a soldier is part of your brand, so it makes a lot of sense to blog about the military twice a week.
And absolutely: don’t let your blog take time from your WIP. I had to relearn that the hard way!
Thanks for this. I’m a new blogger but I’ve been reading blogs for a while so I know what I hate. There is at least one author blogger that I used to enjoy that I never read any more because of the ads on her website. And nothing upsets me more than having my read of something interesting interrupted by a pop up.
It’s nice to see “rules” that don’t recommend doing something that I dislike.
I found Barb Drozdowich of Bakerview Consulting become you tweeted a link to one of her posts. I will be forever grateful for your doing that.
Greenhat–I’m so glad I was able to steer you to Barb. I think she’s fantastic. And so easy to work with.
And about those ads–they pay very little. If you think about how many readers are being driven away by ads and pop-up–and how many book sales are lost, the bottom line is going to be a negative. I know I lost a ton of sales going through these two big moves. i hope things will finally calm down.
Any “rule” that tells you to disrespect your reader is bogus. Just ignore it.
Yes, I blog. I started in 2011, as a comedy blog, uploading my sketch comedy and standup comedy from the 90s and early 2000s. My ten books are all comedies (as you know, Anne – because you write similar!) and so it seemed a good fit. I blog once a week. Over 150 comedy posts have appeared on there, and I often have guests. Hits are pretty good, and definitely consistent.
I laughed out loud at your “build a time machine and go back to 2005 to establish your blog” – because that is exactly what I tell my Crafting a Novel students. The blog-o-sphere is pretty crowded now. I found a niche in 2011. To start up now would be daunting.
Melodie–Writing funny stuff can be a blessing and a curse, as you know. So many people are humor-impaired and get offended by anything that isn’t literally true. So congrats on your successful humor blog. It’s great.
Starting a blog now is tougher than it was, but everything is, because the playing field gets more crowded all the time. But I discovered with my little Blogger blog that in 5 months I’ve been able to bring down the Alexa rating every week with one post a week. I’ts gone from 14 million to 1,260,000. I’m getting a few comments, and best of all, it sells more books than this one. So it’s still worthwhile for a new author to start a blog. You just have to go out and find your audience. I’m mostly finding my people on Twitter.
“If you want quinoa, amaranth and flaxseed clusters with gluten-free sorghum flakes and dried acai berries, you’re going to be seriously disappointed.”
Dear Anne,
I’ve been disappointed with technical-food choices all my sorry life, but I never understood the depth of my sorrow until I read this article from you. It’s those darned sorghum flakes I’ve been craving! They are a Sicilian delicacy, right? Please say yes. Don’t you dare disappoint me further. My writing career is on indefinite hold until you reassure me.
Love,
AVT
Antonio caro, E vero! You haven’t lived until you’ve had a Sicilian Caponata with collard greens and sorghum grits! Hey, Sicily is Southern, right?
Wow, Anne – I had no idea that you had so much trouble with the blog transition. I went through the free to self-hosted blog nightmare a couple of times but smartly always maintained my free wordpress blog. Thank goodness because I ended up going back to it. I eventually got the hang of the self hosting blog but really, unless you’re willing to do all the maintenance or have someone who will do it for you, it’s not worth the trouble.
Loved the rant on pop-ups. There isn’t anyone on earth who likes them except the idiots who design them. Unless I’m desperate to read the content, I just click away from blogs with pop-ups.
Ditto on all the ‘blogging wisdom’ advice. I never took it and always thought it was a load of crapola. Apparently, it is.
At any rate, I’m glad that you’re back on course. Yours is one of the few blogs I read regularly and I would really miss it, if it weren’t around.
Hope you’re feeling better soon and back to work on your WIPs as well.
Take care and Happy Independence Day.
Annie
Annie–It makes me feel better to know that you went back to your original blog! I agree self-hosting is not worth the trouble unless you really love tech.
It’s amazing how many otherwise sane people get talked into those %&*! pop-ups. I hope they’ve reached peak saturation now. Some blogs have five or six. I’m sure some tech person gets paid a lot for every reader that gets driven away. I wonder if any of those poor bloggers know that’s what they’re paying for. Ha!
Thanks for saying you appreciate the blog. It is finally back to its laid-back self, I’ve got a new doctor, and I’m 30K words into my new WIP, so things are looking up.
Hi Anne,
My experience with blogging has been somewhat different from what you describe, but I’m not a fiction author (I’m working on a novel, but that hasn’t been the main purpose of my site).
The main thing I want to share is this: I find pop-up subscription forms super annoying, too. And yes, I heard for a long time that they work. And guess what? They do. They work far better than the sidebar sign-up box I had for so long. Roughly 2000x better, in my case. I have mine set to 30-40 seconds or so (I forget at the moment) after a visitor arrives so they’re not hit with it right away. And it’s made a huge difference. Does it make my skin crawl? A little. Does it mean some people leave? Sure. But pop-ups don’t bother everyone. So I’ve stuck with it.
What about authors like Joanna Penn at TheCreativePenn.com? Plenty of writers/authors monetize their sites and are quite successful.
Or maybe I’ve misunderstood, and you only mean the really sleazy black hat sort of sites.
Leah–Thanks for letting us know your experience. I guess some people like being bullied. Go figure.
Joanna Penn has a great blog and she was my role model when I tried to monetize. BUT–she started many years ago. To do what she’s doing, I’d need that time machine. Alas.
My pop ups are bullying people? Ouch. Oh well. Have a nice day. And good luck.
Leah–I didn’t mean to say you are personally trying to bully people, but just that a lot of us feel bullied when the popup blocks content and we can’t read it until we subscribe. But obviously they’re working for you.
Ah, I see. If you can’t read the content if you don’t subscribe, well that’s not a good practice. That’s not the case on my site or even most sites with pop-ups that I personally visit (writing or other blogs I like). And yes, they work for me and many others or we wouldn’t use them. The value has to far exceed the potential annoyance factor.
I must be one of the only people who isn’t annoyed by pop-ups. I just click off them. Although I WOULD be annoyed if I got automatically subscribed, that’s just dirty business. I think its good to have links (affiliate links) to Amazon for your own books, don’t you think. I don’t think that’s the same as monetizing, but I think its worth mentioning that affiliate links aren’t in the same boat as full on ads, or is that my misconception?
And how about give-aways? I’m doing one first one, real live product (not just a downloadable). It seems kind of fun and creates some buzz for a book launch.
Thanks for you sage advice again. I’ve got a lot to think about .
Swiveltam–I guess people are getting used to the pop-ups. We’re sort of like boiled frogs. After a while some people just don’t notice the heat is rising.
Amazon affiliation is monetizing, but it’s a very minor form, and as I said above, it’s the only kind the Barb recommends. But there are drawbacks:
1) You’re not officially allowed to review on Amazon if you have affiliate links, because you’re profiting financially from your review. Amazon has only recently been enforcing this.
2) People with non-Amazon devices may find it difficult to find your books. With the large number of people reading on iPhones and iPads and other non Amazon devices, this could cut into your sales.
Giveaways are something else entirely. That’s about creating buzz for YOU, not a random advertiser. Whether it’s a gift card prize or a hardcover book, people really like them. So go for it! Best of luck with your launch!
Hi Anne!
Lots of hugs for your kind words! I must admit you hit the nail on the head again with this post. I advocate an author blog is a place to make friends – there should be very little difference between a chat over coffee with friends and a ‘chat’ on your blog. It shouldn’t be a bill board and it shouldn’t be a monologue. You don’t want to bore readers into buying your books! If you are a new writer starting out in today’s publishing environment, you need a way to share with readers. Show them that you are a really nice person who writes great books. Hopefully they will give you a chance and spread the word to their friends.
My 2 cents for this week is that all writers need to remember that every red cent that they spend on their blog/website – from a domain, to hosting to design to technical support is something that you declare on your tax return. I don’t believe in giving the government one penny more than I have to. If people are unfamiliar with this – contact a writing organization in the country that they live in and they will likely have country specific guidance.
Barb–This is too funny. I just found your comment in the spam folder! Here you are, in charge of the whole domain, and you’re not allowed to comment. I hope by approving you now, I’ve fixed that.
Are you telling us that we can’t bore our readers into buying books?! Oh, my! 🙂 I guess we have to start being interesting now.
Thanks for the reminder that a website or blog is a tax write off!
Boy, do your posts resonate with me, Anne. The back end of the production of my most recent work ––editing, copyediting, proofreading, and finally formatting––was SO HORRIBLE that I took a vow that I would not start another book for six months. That will be November, 2016. The book’s final version is gorgeous and all that I hoped for. The launch will be late July rather than mid May. No one died because of the delay, except me, almost.
Like you, my body started yowling about its resentment of my unreasonable demands. The rebellion of my hands, knees, and back wasn’t quite on the scale of your body’s revolution, but it’s taken me this long to be able to write a response to a blog article like this without pain.
This provided a great opportunity to review my life. I do have a blog, but neglect it. I may neglect it a lot more. Best wishes to you always! I’m going to look up some of the resources you cite.
Sandy–We are told you have to do it all and do it NOW and if you drop dead, who cares? Well, we care and we have to, because nobody else does. 🙂 I’ve just had to accept that a good deal of what I read online is probably going to be self-serving stuff that is more likely meant to con me than help me.
I would rather write a handful of books I feel really proud of than dozens I wish had been more polished. I’d also like to live to see 70. If that makes me stupid and worthless, so be it. 🙂 The pressure from tech people to do more and more and more tech makes me want to scream. Life is about more than playing with electronic toys.
Such an excellent post. And seriously, WHAT IS UP with the pop-ups!? I did try one for a week and I really hated it. The ones that appear immediately are especially silly. Yeah right, I’m going to ask for extra mail in my inbox after being on your blog for .5 seconds.
Nina–I’m glad you agree. Some of the commenters here say they get a lot more subscribers with pop-ups, but it wasn’t true for us. The only pop-up I ever subscribed through was a polite one that came in at lower right side. But I notice that blogger has removed it. But I’d read the blog several times before subscribing. i always do. The few I subscribe to after one or two reads, I usually regret and have to unsubscribe.
Thanks, Anne – I just keep blogging on about words at csperryess.blogspot.com. I’ve found I enjoy the research time (though I may moan about it directly beforehand). My readership may lack in numbers, but it excels in loyalty. And all is well.
CS–A small engaged group of loyal readers is much more important than a bunch of drive-bys. So what you’re doing is working for you. As I said, we have to have our own definition of success!
Anne:
I always read your blog (that’s why I started mine four years ago. However, as you (and a few others) have noticed, I haven’t blogged in almost four months. And that’s because I had a bad fall, broke my leg and also got a blood clot, and I’m still recovering. But I’m going to Blog again, and hope it will bring in new readers who might like to read my latest books. And I’m writing another book for my Olivia Grant mystery series, so there will be three of those soon. Thanks for making this one of my few good days.
Phyllis–I’m so sorry you’ve been going through these awful health challenges. It’s awfully hard to keep up a blog when you’re dealing with a major illness. I’m glad to hear you’ll be able to get back to your blog and keep Olivia Grant sleuthing! Good to hear this is a good day!
Excellent post! I HATE pop-ups! I also do not like tacky advertising, thus I haven’t gone down the google-ads road, not that I’d really earn anything from it despite what “they” tell me. I just came across your blog on twitter, but I must say that I SO sympathize with your technical woes. I feel as though I can spend weeks and months at a time trying to figure something out, reading through all the tech forums, posing questions, waiting for answers. In the end, I’ve often found that the reason I’ve had so much trouble finding an answer is that it’s either a fluke of the program or some strange constellation that is reeking havoc on poor, unsuspecting bloggers who just want to get out some interesting material. My book’s non-fiction about a little-known region in Italy – a niche of a niche, as is my blog. I didn’t know anything about blogging or social media before I started it less than two years ago. “Everyone” said it was a must, but I’ve felt behind the whole time. Your 2005 date rang so true – with all of these platforms. I don’t know that I’ll ever catch up with it all, but I’m going to keep plugging away at it, doing my thing.
Karen–Welcome! I love Calabria. I’ll have to check out your blog.
Like all tech, blogs don’t come with instructions, and we have to hunt for them. My problem was that I counted on tech help that evaporated and I was left like one of those cartoon characters who runs off a cliff and doesn’t realize for a few minutes what bad shape they’re in…until they look down. 🙂
I should never have made the move. I had a huge following on the other blog and lost all the people who followed me via Blogger’s rss feed. And the hacker turned out to be a pirate who just wanted to use my content to sell ads in Brazil. I should have simply let him take it. Well, he did anyway. So the move didn’t help.
I knew from talking to lots of bloggers that they only make pennies with AdSense and affiliates, but I was told it would be different if we moved. Simply not true. The grass is not greener. 🙂
I do have some tips for author-bloggers that make blogging more enjoyable and less of a mystery and I’ll be coming out with a book on the subject later this year. Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot of blogging tips on the blog, so check them out with a search.
Wow! Someone who knows about Calabria! Thanks for your response. I’ll check out your tips. By the way, when I started seeing my blog numbers dramatically rising in Russia, I found out that what I thought was security that came with my paid hosting site, was really just an emblem and I had to pay extra to make the security actually function (hopefully).
Instructions – who needs instructions when you can spend hours pulling out your hair instead??
Thank you for your post, Anne. So glad your nightmare is over and that you had a happy ending.
In the beginning, I probably would have fallen for those “rules”. But I was mentored by two blogging rock stars. The number one lesson: build community.
You’re not alone. I have my own blogging nightmare. I renamed my blog (even though I was told this wasn’t a good idea). The original name was The Sweater Curse and too many people thought it was a knitting blog. So many that it drove me crazy. So I did it I killed my blog. Starting over was a nightmare. I lost followers, the page hits disappeared. I thought I was done for. But my new blog–Author Leanne Dyck–rose from the ashes.
Probably everyone who blogs has a nightmare, but the most important thing is that we overcome.
Leanne–I remember when your blog had that name, and you interviewed me and I had to explain to people it wasn’t a knitting blog. 🙂 It was an honor to be on your blog. it was very popular. But in those early days, everybody’s blog had a cute name. It wasn’t until Kristen Lamb changed her blog name from Warrior Writers to Kristen Lamb’s Blog that she got the word got out that authors need to put their names on their blogs.
I had named my blog Anne R. Allen’s blog from the beginning, but that was just lack of imagination. Haha.
So sorry to hear you had a similar tragedy to mine when starting your blog over. We are building an audience again, but it will take time. I’m glad you’re finally “back from the ashes.”
.
Thank you, Anne. And I agree Kristen Lamb is an invaluable resource for bloggers–and many things “writerly”.
First, let me say I love all of your posts and really missed you during the times you were away.
My husband is the techy. I don’t do well with learning curves on high tech stuff, but have always found WP to be easy to use (Since 2013)…until they started messing around with it and changing the editor. They’ve made it ridiculously difficult to edit posts.
I wouldn’t want a pop up on my blog. They are terribly alienating to me. My greatest satisfaction from blogging is the interaction. However, lately on WP, I’m finding it more and more difficult to get newbies to interact in comments and return visits to my blog. Seems like people out hear are generally less friendly than they used to be. (Maybe everybody is more pressured for time than they used to be?) I used to spend thirty minutes a day perusing other blogs, commenting, socializing, and people would respond, visit my blog, and we built relationships. Many of these old-timers are the only ones who seem to regularly come by my blog now. I can spend a half a day, yes, four hours, perusing blogs, commenting, and attempting to socialize and never see them again…even if I go back to their blogs repeatedly. Seems the fabric of the WP community is torn.
On an unrelated note: At Sleuthfest, I listened to a presentation about email lists and how important they are to authors. The speaker said we need to have a WIIFM (what’s in it for me) to offer. I came up with some ideas and started a mailchimp account. But they tell me my gmail email account is no good for that. I have to have a .com account (which I am assuming I could have if I used my domain name to start a self hosted website) as gmail currently blocks third party subscribers. Do you use Mailchimp? Am I understanding this correctly? Do you know anybody who uses WP for blogging and has a gmail email account that might be able to help me figure this out? Maybe you can do a post on email lists and mail servers. Maybe you did already and I missed it.
Hi S.K. Do a Google Search for Google Business Apps – relatively easy way to get a domain based email address. Costs a bit of money/month but not as much as most of the hosting companies charge. I’m techy but setting up email gives me hives 🙁 And yes – Mailchimp wants you to move away from Gmail and other free email addresses….
SK–There you’ve got some solid advice from Barb, who knows soooo much more about the tech side of things than I do.
I’m still ambivalent about email newsletters. I hate getting most of them, but I know authors are being told they are all that matter in marketing and “the person with the biggest email list wins”.
But Catherine Ryan Hyde is one of the bestselling authors on Amazon and she abhors email newsletters. So far,I’m following her advice: write good books, keep a friendly, open blog, keep in touch on social media an leave the barrages of newsletters for the more desperate authors. Newsletters are not interactive, but blogs are, and I think engagement is important.
Maybe someday I’ll find a newsletter useful, but right now, I’m back to the Golden Rule thing. I don’t like getting them, so I don’t send them.
You’re right that the blogosphere doesn’t seem as friendly and open as it used to be. That may be because of the monetizing/ popup/ adversarial relationship with the reader thing that’s going on. Blogs have become more about marketing and less about making friends. Also the initial indie-author movement is fading as people find it’s really hard to make a living writing books.
But I think there’s still a community, even though it’s smaller than it was.
There is, Anne, and a most helpful community. I really write for fun more than to make money, but it’s nice to, at least, get reimbursed for my efforts. I’m not big on newsletters. People claim they sell books and I only receive a handful a year from my favorite authors. I’m always pleased when one of them drops a line to let me know when their next book is going on pre-order or they have a new project in the works. I have heard a quarterly newsletter is best, but I’ll only be doing a couple a year.
I went to Google Business apps and set up an account. Their tech support was SUPER and had my domain verified through Blue host (helped me enter all the TXT and MX codes) and set me up for a paid email account. It’s only $5.00 per month. Then went ahead and transferred me to the sync dept. where a nice gentleman helped me get my email set up on MS Outlook…so I’m good to go.
Unfortunately, they use groups rather than subscriber lists for email listings and you have to manually add every group member by hand. Not something I want to even begin to try. So I’ll still finish off with MailChimp to get links on my blog and wen site (which I haven’t made yet).
LOL…who woulda thunk all of this would be necessary to sell books. And maybe it’s not. I’ve put off the whole list thing for three years, but things have kinda stalled and I have a new series coming out. Figured it couldn’t hurt to try. Thanks to both you and Barb. You’re always providing valuable content and I greatly appreciate what you do for authors.
And a definite NO to popups!
SK–Thanks for the valuable info on Google Business apps for groups. WAY too much work there for most of us, I think.
A newsletter that just goes out for new releases sounds like a good idea for authors who write at a fairly fast clip. Me, I haven’t had a new title in almost a year, so people wouldn’t remember who I was if I did contact them. But I do see the benefit in that kind of mailing list.
Hi Anne
Wow – I didn’t realize how bad it went for you. Usually the process is much smoother, though there is often something to cause trouble. In my case, it was images that lost their formatting. I was able to use a database script to update all the internal links, which I use a lot.
Part of the issue can be incompatible themes. A friend of mine wanted to copy an entire post to their site and did so, but what a dogs breakfast it made of the formatting. It would have been easier to just paste the text and reformat it.
I’ve gotten a lot of pressure to “better market” and monetize my site but have resisted it. Sure, some people may subscribe if they think they have to to see content. But will they be regular readers, or just lower your open rates. I find it more valuable to see people reading the articles they subscribed to and staying on the site to read others.
I notice Facebook has also started pushing logins for “public” content, making it a still worse platform for your work. Sure – have your posts show up in Facebook for that market but I’d not recommend it as a primary platform.
Myself, I recommend people start with WordPress.com. That way, the migration to self-hosted is usually pretty straightforward. But blogger does have it pro’s.
David–I had a super popular blog getting over 100K hits a month on Blogger. I don’t know if it would have kept up those stats, but it was working for me. I lost over half my followers with the move. I’d been there for nearly 7 years.
But I only recommend it for authors like me who are not interested in tech stuff.
Definitely the choice of WP theme was a lot of the problem. When Barb moved us to a simpler theme things straightened out a lot. But on the day of the move in November I had over 500 “dog’s breakfasts” to manually copytype and reformat. Not a nice way to spend the holidays.
You make a really good point that it’s not just the number of subscribers. It’s the number of click-throughs and opens. And with MailChimp I actually want to keep the subscriber numbers down. I don’t want to pay the $30 a month it costs to have a high number of subscribers. i go through and weed out the dead wood every month. Subscribers do not equal book sales. My tiny new blog with less than 200 subscribers makes more sales.
Facebook is another issue altogether. Nobody should use FB as their main online presence. It’s too greedy and unreliable.
Fantastic article as always Anne. So glad to know I’m doing things mostly right. I moved over to self hosted WP 2 years ago, got rid of a useless web host, and learned a lot of things by myself, now using a managed WP web host as well. I never delved into affiliate ads, and don’t have the inclination. In fact I don’t often even check my SEO stats. My blog has grown immensely through the years and the friendships I’ve made with readers, visiting many blogs, commenting, and sharing good info, I do only wish I could find a way to cut down on blogging for more writing time but I can’t seem to want to keep my peeps waiting too long if I go absent, lol.
But one huge thing that irks me are those ‘SIGN UP’ ads, without getting to a first sentence, those big ads block the content before I even know if I’m going to like what I read. One blog I went to didn’t even have an ‘x’ on the top bar to click it off, so I couldn’t see anything, so I left. One would think common sense would prevail without jumping all over someone before they even get a taste for what they’re about to read. So thanks for reiterating! 🙂
Debby–I think you’re doing things exactly right. You’re one of the hardest working social media people I know. you’re everywhere. And you’re making friends, not pushing you’re own agenda. There may be a point when you can pull back on that and put more time into your own work. A lot of us know your name now and we’ll recognize it when you’re promoting your work.
Those newish pop-ups that block the whole page are the worst, aren’t they? That’s bullying, pure and simple. But it does backfire. I say, “fine. you’re going to make me pay to play?… I won’t play! You lose.” If your content doesn’t get read, what do you really gain?
Thanks so much Anne for your kind compliments. It’s just in my nature to share. I like to give back. I do things without being asked, and I guess that is a magic formula in some way, because people reciprocate back, and that’s more than I could ever ask for. The ‘do unto others’ approach seems simplest. I’m always delighted to find my work shared or a surprise interview someone has done by plucking my bio info from my pages without my knowing until I’m informed there’s a post about me. I think that’s what social sharing is all about. Nobody wants ‘buy my book’ plastered anywhere. And yes, about those annoying sign up boxes, well I know I don’t stick around, so there must be plenty of others. I commend you on your decision to keep pumping out great informative blogs for us all without annoying boxes in our faces. And I sure hope your WP woes have simmered down. I do know how annoying website issues can become such a time suck. But we always seem to rise above. 🙂
Hi Anne, late comment on the holiday weekend (and- cough, cough- just finished my novel draft,that too!). I was laughing along enjoying myself until I got to the part where this debacle affected your health. My stomach turned, that’s simply dreadful. And to your credit, you simply alluded to the tech problems in some posts, and any health issues in others, all in the right way and very professionally. It’s greatly to your credit- I’d have been squealing like a pig and blaming the world for both sets of problems. Brava, and here’s to better days for your blog and bod.
Blogging is SO much fun for me, and I think it can contribute to a virtuous cycle of creativity at times. I focus on writer-advice topics with a salting of self-serving references to my world, and the need for one often feeds the other. I would say at least a third of my blog posts derive from an effusion of enthusiasm I’m feeling about some topic or other, doesn’t feel like work at all. Everything you said about personal connections and giving people some value, spot on as always.
Will–Congrats on finishing your first draft! Always a major milestone, no matter how many books you’ve written.
I agree that blogging contributes to the “creative cycle.” That’s a great way to put it. It works the same for me. One kind of writing stimulates the other. And so much of participating in social media is simply hanging with your peeps and talking about what’s on your mind. Personal connections: they are the number one reason for blogging.
Anne, thanks for being so honest about your blogging experience. This has been the best advice I have seen about blogging. All of it has been very helpful and useful as I start my own blog where I recommend people read yours, too.
Stanley–I’m so glad this helps you as you start your own blog. Make sure to search this blog for more blogging advice. And if you feel so inclined, I have lots of blogging advice in the book I wrote with Catherine Ryan Hyde, HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE. I give much better advice in that book than I took myself. 🙂
Yes. I blog. Sighs. Only because they say a writer should have a blogsite. Sighs.
I’ve paid too much for courses on how to scrape your readers. Blech.
Now, I just want to stop and put all my garden into pressurized jars in the basement and clean my house.
I really liked this post. Thanks a million!
Tell me there is life after this discouragement. How did you pull it off? What one thing kept you going? Or got you going again? My book is fading from my memory and other books are beginning to talk to me. Arrgh.
What a beginning. I once had an interested editor.
Also, why did you not use wp.com? Is that a bad thing? or just your personal choice? Or more advice from someone?
Thanks so much for writing this. Did I already say that?
Katharine–I DO recommend WP.com rather than WP.org. The reason we went to WP.org was that WP.com doesn’t allow monetizing, and we thought we wanted to monetize. But now that I’m 6 months older and so much wiser, I don’t recommend that. 🙂
I know many fine writers with good readerships who have been hooked by those courses and all they got out of them was smaller bank accounts. I’m not saying that all marketing courses aren’t useful–Barb’s course on how to use WP was a lifesaver–but the best are not usually the most expensive. The more hype, the less value, IMO.
It sounds as if it’s time for you to put the blog and marketing stuff on hiatus–or maybe go to once a month blogposts–and focus on your writing. Get back to basics. That’s what I did. I actually decided to let the blog go and just write..
I had to get back to my core motivation: my books and my stories. Everything else was noise. When I did get offered a golden opportunity to keep the blog going, I realized I would miss it. Not because it sells that many books–my little book blog sells more–but because I have friends here and I’d miss them.
So.
You would not self-host if you had it to do over. Wow. That is a load off. Always feeling guilty about that. Guilt is a drain, into which we pour all our aspirations. This will help.
You have no idea how much I admire and respect you right now. Now only do you know how to write, very well, but you also know what to do about it and are glad to share, and to explain to the point that even I can understand. And we agree with each other. This is so rare, for me. .
Thanks, again.
Oh, my goodness, nothing is as important as your health! I am so sorry that you had to go through such a rough patch and it really is an eye-opener for all of us. This was very honest – thank you for that, and summarises pretty much how I feel about it all.
Marina–As Ruth and I say, “we made the mistakes so you don’t have to.” And I seem to keep making them. 🙂 But things are getting better now.
It’s all about keeping to your core values. I realize now that if anything breaks the Golden Rule, I want no part of it. My soul is more important than my bottom line. (And I believe that ultimately, they will be in sync.)
Anne – holy vow, I knew it had been a bad experience, but had no idea it was that bad! I’m so sorry!
I only know self-hosted WP because I learned how to set them up them for my classes, but with them I have a) limited audience, and “hidden” from search engines, so really no worries about hackers, and b) a captive audience–the students have to use them for their lecture material, so I never worried about SEO or subscribers or anything. I just got good at making them pretty, and how to categorize the content (is the Wars of the Roses material “wars” or “Early Modern Period” or…) and stuff slowly. … 😉
So my author blog is pretty, but not much else, sigh. I struggle a lot with content, and have completely violated the regular-is-better idea. I started a History in Science Fiction series, inspired by your wonderful poisons posts, but am afraid I tend to revert to lecture mode, and that’s probably not good, either. So then I just sort of peter out…
BUT I’m glad you didn’t give up, and am so sorry it was so bad. As always your advice is invaluable and I’m super excited for the new how-to!
Feel better!!!!
N.E. Your blog IS pretty. And you have spiffy videos and everything! I’m impressed. It’s just right for a sci-fi blog. I’m happy to know my poisons posts inspired you.
The way I keep those going is to keep things light and try to inject something fun and imaginative like how to use poison dart frogs in a James Bond-type thriller–so it’s not just all boring facts. That could get old fast.
I may go to once a month on that blog once I finish with the poisons though. Or I may do a series on the Tarot. The new WIP is all about Tarot readings, which Camilla now has at her bookstore.
It’s Camilla and her friends who keep me going. I think that’s core for most novelists. It’s all about our characters. They’re our friends, and we don’t want to let them down.
Than you! I just need to remember the “rules” aren’t rules, so I don’t do the “break the diet” thing — I didn’t post recently, so I might as well never post again . . . I hope you do the Tarot one! That would be super interesting. But once a month is good, too — way better than three in one month and zero the next, which is sort of what I do.
I like that thinking–they are our friends, aren’t they? I’ll try thinking about it that way…
Happy Fourth!
N.E.–Let go of that “diet mentality” and it will help a lot. I always say–you haven’t failed at regular blogging, you’ve succeeded at “Slow blogging”. (Which is only blogging when you have something to say.)
Anne – it’s not fair that you had to go through all that hassle in order to teach us about what not to do! It’s not until I see it all written down together that I realise just how bad it was. I’m glad you’re having fun with your new Blogger blog and I hope it’s taking away the sting somewhat.
I’m a bit ambivalent about popups. Some blogs use popups which irritate it me no end, others don’t. I think the difference for me is in what’s behind them. If it’s a blog which offers funny, useful or truly original content, I tend not to mind so much (although having to refuse a free book for the 5th time that month gets verrrrry tedious). But if I have to endure a pop-up, only to get through to content which in itself offers no payoff, I get annoyed and they’re on the naughty list of pushy authors whose marketing makes readers cry. Plus, if my first ever impression of someone’s blog is a pop-up, I tend to write them off in my head and be harsher in my judgement of pretty much everything they’re doing. I err on the side of caution myself by avoiding as much marketing noise on my blog as possible.
Tara–Yes! You’ve hit on one of the main irritations of pop-ups. They treat all visitors as first time visitors, so if you’re a regular, you have to refuse that “free ebook!” every. damn. time. . And if that involves checking a box that says “I’m a moron. I don’t want free stuff.” I’m just not going back there, no matter how much I’m enjoying the content.
A subtle pop-up–or better, a pop-sideways, can be just fine, and actually I tried to get us one of those, but for some reason that wasn’t available. If it doesn’t block the whole screen and assault people or insult them, a subscription window can be handy. But if you’d hate meeting it on somebody else’s site, then I say don’t put it on yours.
It’s the Golden Rule thing again.
You have one of the most entertaining blogs around and I think that’s because the content speaks for itself and you don’t need “marketing noise.” .
Wow. I’m so glad you didn’t go under, and that you’re finally getting your life back. So many times I’ve wondered just what makes a good blog, since I’m still experimenting myself. Many thanks for sharing your experiences and for being so open. I wish you continued success, always!
Jan–Thanks! I think there are as many different ways to have a successful blog as their are bloggers. The best are the ones that speak in an authentic voice.
Very nice post, Anne, filled with your down to earth common sense, and why we love your blog! This is one I’ll be reposting on WiDo’s Facebook page to share with our authors. I like that you figured out WordPress, but it still looks just like your Blogger blog, so I’m not sure if it’s WordPress or Blogger or some combination of the two but whatever, it works and you’re feeling great, that’s what counts!
Karen–Thanks for sharing this on WiDo’s website. (Did you see WiDo is on the list as one of the best small presses for mystery authors?)
This is a WordPress.org site, hosted by the generous people at Bakerview. We had it designed to look as much as possible like the old Blogger site so readers wouldn’t think they were in the wrong place.
I’m not feeling exactly great, but I’m working my way back to health. Things are finally going in the right direction and that’s what’s important!
Great post, Anne. So glad that you are feeling better, though you have had your worries with this entire blogging thing. In 2009 I started with WordPress and probably about 3 years later I went to .org so that I own the content. I’ve been happy with everything, though I might check out your host as I have
had trouble with Host Gator. I too hate pop-ups. People can defend them all they want, but it cries out advertising and I want people to enjoy reading my work. That’s my goal. I don’t have many subscribers and I do get people who sneak by the spam filters, but we recently deleted a lot of them. Again, my goal is to have a place to post and tweet and use FB. So far it is working. Quality versus quantity is my goal. I belong to various groups online and they check me out now and again even if they don’t subscribe. Thanks, again, Beth
Beth–I think I was awfully spoiled. Our Blogger blog soared to superstardom in 2011-2012 with almost no effort on my part and I sort of thought it would stay there forever without any work. But when you’re on top, people want to knock you down. And we did have a bit of a fall, but I think we’ll get back up there
Spam will always be with us. A lot of it leaked through on Blogger. Not so much on WP, but I got a couple this week. I don’t worry about it much. It’s easy to delete. One was really creepy, though, because it said “Thank you for being a member of blankety-blank and supporting blankety-blank” which were sites I’d never heard of. At least they weren’t porn. Haha.
The most important function of an author blog is to make you Googleable and accessible to your readers–and have an online presence. Everything else is gravy. You have lots of gravy, from what I’ve seen. 🙂
Hi Anne,
I always learn something from your posts. I am always referred to you by Sunny Frazier. Originally I had one website for my first book back in 2005. That was for a paid plan on ix webhosting. I created another site with them, but the truth was that I literally had no traffic there, except a few friends checking in, and it was not a blog. I was pushed to leave there when the plan pricing was increased two-fold in order to keep what I had going.
About 2011, I bailed out to move to WordPress blog and plan, was on the free one originally, then changed to a pay plan. But, I am on a “.com” not “.org” …So, I understand what you described, but ……. I don’t think anyone would think my sites are monetary or monetarized, as I have kept things fairly simple. At the end of each of my blog posts I have links to two other WordPress sites, one a book and writing site, the other an art site, and a link to my amazon author page.
I always use a graphic, and have fairly short blogs, so, it was interesting to read your views on the blog length history.
It’s sort of unbelievable the changes in media in last five years. Glad things are better for your sites and work.
Tim–Sunny is great! She’s great at keeping in touch with her peeps and creating community.
A lot of the advice writers get tells us that we should pay, pay, pay for everything and that the more you pay the more successful you’ll be. I recently read a heartbreaking post from a new author who paid $7000 for a “publicity package” from some bogus outfit that basically sent out a few tweets of her book.
But the truth is most of this stuff can be done for free if we just learn the ropes. I have a lot of advice on this blog on what generally works in an author blog–from subject matter to post length to headers–but you can try them all out and see what works for you. I’ll be putting the posts together into a book later this year.
“Monetizing” a blog is a specific jargon term that means selling advertising or making an affiliate deal with a company that gives a blogger a commission for mentioning them on your site. It’s possible to have very classy sites that are monetized. But those commissions are tiny, so most people don’t make much from them. The really high-paying advertisers want you to have 100s of thousands of subscribers and that’s not the kind of numbers a writing blog is going to attract.
Thanks for posting this, Anne.
I never really thought about how ads can get in the way of selling books. But now that I think about, it makes sense that ads would just distract the reader. That’s what they’re designed to do. Especially if an author puts their books in the side bar, they’d want the reader to click on the book, not the ad. Why make intentional competition for yourself? I’ve gotten rid of any ads on my blog now, and you’re right, they really don’t make very much money.
Great post.
Emily–I don’t mean to say there’s anything wrong with a few discreet ads. Plenty of websites have them and they’re not always a distraction. And Amazon affiliation is fine, although you have to be very careful to obey all of Amazon’s rules.
My problem was that in order to get high-paying ads and affiliates, I had to jump through impossible hoops. And the others didn’t pay enough to be worth the hassle.
So my advice to authors who are considering monetizing is: it’s probably best to concentrate on sales of your own products.
Anne, I have been on nearly the same blog train in the past few months. I’ve always had a WordPress self-hosted site. But the last WordPress upgrade made my theme obsolete. At the same time new covers for the Detective Emilia Cruz series led to a rethink of my whole online “look.” So what did I do?
Yes, although I have a WIP and a publishing deadline, I decided to redesign the blog, using the Genesis framework beloved of developers. Not being a developer, I had everything installed by a developer. The wrong developer.
Upshot was a huge mess, unresponsive communications, and zero documentation with the theme once the developer said they’d done their bit. And trouble ensued. Two weeks later, I had some (not all) of my money back, Genesis was off the table and I’m using the Divi theme, which gives much of the same speed and capability without having to learn more code. But like you, I have to go back and update 150 posts,.
The good news is that during all this tech drama, I was able to rethink the story I’m telling with the blog and come up with an approach to better balance the time put there as opposed to writing the novels my readers are waiting for. It is sooo easy to read the big blogging guns who tell you that in 5 posts you can earn $100,000/year. But the proposition for fiction authors is different and you made the key point very well: an author blog is to get the word out. Use it to build your email list, stay connected, and have a “landing zone” for readers, agents, and others who are with you on the writing journey.
Carmen–OMG we’ve been on identical journeys to Hades, including Genesis/wrong developer/communication woes, etc. I’m surprised I didn’t see you there. 🙂
Like you, I did rethink the purpose of an author blog during this experience, hence this post. A blog is a “hub” for our careers, not a goal unto itself. Our focus has to go back to our books.
Best of luck for you and Emilia!
What a super post, Anne. It’s definitely going to be included in my roundup of the week’s best posts on Friday. Love your honesty and a lot of what you say is right on. Authors do not ever need to worry about monetizing their blogs. That’s not what author blogs are about. Social media — and I include blogging when I say social media — is about building relationships. That’s it. Make money with your book sales and Facebook and Twitter ads to sell more books if you want. Authors should never use their precious blogs to create more income. Your blog is to provide the type of content that your readers love and to build a community. That’s it. So create the content that your readers adore, put it on your blog, start a conversation, and keep it going. Voila! You have a successful author blog.
Frances–Thanks so much for backing me up here. It’s great to hear it from a social media expert. I’ll much appreciate the shout out. The truth is that an author blog is a marketing tool, not a goal unto itself, and anything we do on a blog that draws attention to our books or raises our author profile is a good thing.
And that means that a blog can be all about having fun and making friends, so there are no rules: whatever works, works.
Gosh I do remember your problems. I really relate to the pain – nothing more painful than losing control of your website and your dedication is such that you’d pour 12 hours into it to fix it! I would’ve given up a long time ago. Not a fan of pop ups myself, though the marketing gurus say it’s a proven technique. I think whether you want to use it or not is up to you, and if you don’t, that’s fine. If you do, also great – I don’t people are going to lose readers if you do use it.
Now, what I don’t agree with is people who put pop ups and use passive aggressive language when you click ‘No’. For example, instead of a link that says, “No thanks”, they’ll write: “No, I don’t want to be a bestselling author” or “No, I don’t want to improve myself.” I mean, SERIOUSLY. That’s such a dick move. It almost ALWAYS sours my mood when I see options like these. So, authors, if you do want to use a pop up, keep it neutral and POLITE.
I have been blogging since 1999. Yup, long time. And I’ve gotten into self-hosted websites since 2004. And it’s right what people say – if you don’t know the tech or have someone on standby to fix stuff for you, be prepared for a steep learning curve or lots of hellish nights trying to a) protect your website from hackers viruses and godknowswhat b) fix whatever goobledygook errors that pop up once in a while.
WordPress used to be really user-friendly, but it has gotten into a huge, lumbering code monster. This is what happens when millions of people have tinkered with the code. There are lots of open doors that you’re unaware of. To maintain a wordpress blog be prepared to shell out for WP protected hosting, app and a developer. Truly. Esepcially if your blog gets as big and popular as Anne’s.
Best to either stick to Blogger, WordPress.com – though it does have downsides too. Alternatives are hosting web services like Typepad, Weebly and Squarespace that use a program that is niche and not as widely available as WordPress and have a flock of programmers at your beck and call to fix stuff that goes wrong. On top of that it’s their job to keep the sites secure cos it affects their bottom line. They are not cheap, but the same can be said for the money you’d have to spend to keep your wordpress blog protected and secure.
Cheers from a blog/web geek,
Liz
Liz–Thanks for the useful tips! You’re one of the people who offered to help when I was still trying to keep a stiff upper lip and thinking all would be well if I kept soldiering on.
You’ve been blogging since 1999!! Wow. I don’t think I even knew what a blog was until about 2005. I’m impressed. You’re a true tech person.
We were the victims of our own popularity, that’s for sure. All the moving around and glitchiness has lost us a bunch of readers, but right now, I’m looking at that as a plus. The blog is easier to manage now, so I have more time for my book writing.
Thank goodness for that! Glad it’s all okay now.
It sucks when your WIP is affected by your blog. I’ve taken to drastically cutting back my blogging, stockpiling posts and such 🙂
Hi Anne,
You seem to have a knack of writing a blog post that describes what not to do just as I am contemplating if I should do it. I so appreciate your wisdom, I just hate my good fortune comes at your expense. I hope you will soon have everything back to normal and so grateful you didn’t give up your blog!
I followed you when you changed from blogger to WordPress, only I have a .com, free hosted site, and left my old blog up, (call me sentimental but I just couldn’t let it go). I changed my domain over to the WP site and left a similar one, cindymjones@blogspot.com up and running, with a note at the top to take a look at my new blog. (Not a pop up : )
I was days away from importing all my blogger posts and closing it down and taking my CindyMJones.com WP site and turning it into a .Org to add affiliate programs. I somehow got suckered into a free blogging webinar that told me for $50, I could learn how to turn my blog into a money making machine. (Hand slap to my forehead here)
After reading this, which your blog is the ONLY one that I ALWAYS read, I felt a huge relief. But I have several questions and hope you or one of your readers can help.
1. Is there ever a time that I should consider moving from a free WP hosted site to a paid one?
2. If so, what hosting companies would you suggest? I’ve heard mixed reviews about BlueHost and Gatorhost.
3. If I do want to offer say a downloadable E-book, will I have to upgrade from a blog to a website, and how in the world do I do that?
4. I’ve only had short stories published, but I do have a WIP. My main profession centers around content provision, copywriting and social media management, that’s what I blog about along with working from home and tourism. At what point is it a good idea to focus on material associated with my WIP and can I intermingle that with what I’m doing now or does it need a separate space of it’s own?
5. Should I import my blogger blog to WP or if I should just let it be. Will having an older blog out there hurt me in the long run?
Thank you so much for your time, I do consider you “my friend” even though we’ve never met : ).
I really do enjoy your new blog! Blessings in all your endeavors.
Cindy–I’m so glad you read this before you took the plunge. I’m not saying that all those “make money with your blog” people are scammers–far from it, but they are putting their own bottom line before yours. And the big BOOK marketing people say that monetizing an *author* blog is a distraction that ultimately takes away from your book sales.
But if you’re writing exclusively nonfic how-to books, not fiction or memoir, this can be a different kettle of worms 🙂 , so investigate more fully. Always follow the money. Like who is making it.
If you have what is primarily a travel blog, you have a different situation. You might make more money selling ads for luggage or Expedia or whatever. That I don’t know about.
In answer to your questions.
1) Move to a self-hosted site if you want to sell product directly from your site. if you’re selling webinars, courses, etc, then you need a .org site. Also if you’ve got big enough traffic stats to attract major advertisers like Expedia or TripAdvisor and you’re likely to make enough money from click-throughs. (check percentages and compare it with your traffic. Usually, it’s not worth the cost of the hosting.)
2) BlueHost is known for being inexpensive. I don’t know about Gatorhost. Barb uses SiteGround for this blog because of its excellent security.
3) If you want to offer a free ebook, why not put the book on Smashwords and give out a coupon? Easy-peasy and you don’t have to do a techy thing. Or just have people email you and send the .mobi or .epub file as an attachment. Or a .pdf if you want to party like it’s 2005.
4) Your WIP should be private until it’s ready to launch, IMO. If it’s nonfic and you plan to self-pub, you can certainly include bits in your blogposts. But you don’t have to say “soon to be a major publication.” 🙂 If it’s fiction, wait until it’s ready to launch and then create its own page. Your short fiction should have its own page too, with links to stories that are available online. I find putting a not-ready-for-prime-time book online a little amateurish.
5) KEEP YOUR OLD BLOG!! That’s what I wanted to do and I got talked out of it and I will always regret it.The old blog has major cred with Google. All you have to do is keep your notice there that directs people to click to your new blog. One more click is all it costs and you save years of hard-earned Google ratings. You lose nothing by having it there and gain all your old followers and all those old links.
Best of luck!
I think of our readers as friends too. When somebody suggested I sell the blog rather than close it down, I said “that’s like selling my friends. NO WAY!”
Thank you so much for all the great advice! So glad I asked.
Perhaps I can help.
1. U can move anytime u are ready. By ready I mean if you have tech help at hand and are free enough to deal with the tech issues or learn the software.
2. Depends on your needs, though I would recommend Wp managed hosting services if u want to use WordPress. They are not cheap but does manage your tech headaches. Also consider non wp hosting like Squarespace, weekly and typepad. I use squarespace and it’s much easier to build ur site without tech help as it’s a drag and drop system. Their support is fantastic too. No I don’t get paid to say this.
3. Squarespace does help u with that tho wp enables you u to do so too via apps. This requires a page to answer and involves a mailing list and such.
4. I do everything under my website which bears my name. Ultimately you want people to know you, so why not all of you?
5.if you mean having a copy of your blog online after transferring to a new site, just be aware that Google penalises any site that contains copy duplicated from elsewhere. Your site would not rank highly in web search results. You can choose to remain on blogger, but the common wisdom is to own your content. It’s ideal, bit may not be realistic or busy writers. Always keep a copy of your copy online in some form even in plain old text form. Frankly I see no harm in staying put.
Hope this helps.
Thank you Elizabeth for all the helpful info. ; )
Cindy, I’ve maintained an “official site” and the blog site, on WordPress. I finally decided that it was a good idea to merge the two sites onto WordPress. The reason was pretty simple: My host for the official site has website software, but it was designed assuming that I would update my website once a year. I self-published 12 books since April. The software was so difficult to use that I wasn’t updating the site with my new releases. WordPress was far more friendly for multiple updates, since it was designed for bloggers. You can start out with a free WP site, then go to paid and get a domain name through them when you’re ready.
Thank you Linda, wow, 12 books! That’s amazing! Who would you suggest using as a paid sit? I have my domain name and free WP site.
Wonderful piece – I’ve found a lot of the blogging advice obnoxious, but wondered if I was being foolish to ignore it. Reading your post gives me more faith in my own judgement.
I use WordPress, too, and I’ve found I can only absorb so much at once – I’ve learned how to use various features little by little over time. Migrating an entire mature website sounds like a horrible experience. I hope you recover.
Kate–You can tell even from some of the comments here that people who are heavily into tech and monetized blogs can’t even get their minds around the idea of an easy, fun free blog where an author can interact with readers and no money changes hands.
I wish that author blogs had a whole different name, so the advice from for-profit blogs wouldn’t keep getting into the mix.
The origin of the word “blog” is “Weblog.” So maybe we should call an author blog a Webhome or a Bookhub or something like that.
Yes, I am recovering nicely. Thanks!
I don’t like popups either. I visit a blog to read what the writer/author has to say about indie publishing, promoting, etc, before i “follow/like/comment”, so if I can’t read at least one or two articles first, I am out of there. 🙂
I added your site, Anne, to my FeedReader. As soon as a new article of yours pops up I open it in my browser and settle in to read it. Always educational. Thanks for your articles and good luck fixing all your broken links.
DJ–The broken links are long since repaired. Everything is good now. Those 18 hour days were not wasted. 🙂
Rss feeds are still a great way to follow blogs. About half the readers of our old Blogger blog used to read our posts in an rss feed.
We lost all of them in November when we moved. But I might as well have been speaking Klingon when I talked about this to my “monetized blog” people.
To them, the object is not to be READ, but to have a LIST. That list is what you use to sell to advertisers. It means nothing in terms of how many people actually read your words though. It’s just one more gimmick.
I’m learning something about popups in the comments to this post here and elsewhere. People who respond with anger to my statements, seem to hate popups too, but they don’t hate subjecting other people to them. They just don’t believe in the Golden Rule.
Also, I think people who are reading a monetized blog have built up visual filters for ignoring stuff. They’re not as easily irritated, because they read lots of irritating blogs.
Book readers, on the other hand, tend to be less likely to put up with gimmicks.
Great reminder to focus on WHY we are blogging, and not the numbers. I sometimes forget that. And I have to say I agree with the great shout-outs to Barb Drozdowich and Jay Donovan–they are my team, too, and they are awesome.
I confess I am reading advice to bloggers in order to improve my blog. I am a published poet with Asperger Syndrome and want to encourage poets and writers with Aspergers, autism and other challenge. I do have a popup ad for my new email newsletter, but it’s easy to get rid of and I’m going for a new version of it soon that will have a 20 second or longer delay so people can get a good taste of my content FIRST. I want to create friendly relationships with my readers, and help them and encourage them, not act like a cheesy used car salesman.
Nissa–We bloggers are always looking to improve our blogs, aren’t we? That’s why I decided to take the big plunge into monetizing after 7 years of a pretty successful blog. I forgot that old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
If your popup is getting lots of sign-ups, and nobody complains, it may not be a problem, so you may not have to “fix” it.
Or you could try putting it in the sidebar like ours and maybe ask people at the end of each post to sign up. See if you get more or fewer sign-ups. It could be an interesting experiment.
You could even have a little informal poll and ask people which they would prefer.
It sounds as if you have a fantastic purpose for your blog and you will be building a solid readership. It’s wonderful to have a positive goal you know will do good for a lot of people.
On Sunday, July 17 I’ll have a post on how to get more traffic on an author blog. We’re all working on that, too. 🙂 Best of luck with your blog!
Hi, Anne. I just left a rather long comment on your other new blog, the one that with mine now has 5 comments. I love that site. I said I’d be here to respond to this woeful struggle that I recently heard about from Denise Covey. Yes, health is most important. I especially have this as one of my top priorities since I’m 76 and still caring for my disabled daughter. My second comment: Good content for one’s site is also top priority. When I set up a new WordPress blog, my web designer son kept reminding me of this, making me feel good by telling me I had one advantage: I could write. Wow, so can you. As you came to realize as I have, if you need help, ask for it. Glad you finally did. You have a stunning site here. 🙂
Ann–Hi there! I was so jazzed to see your comment on my book blog. It’s great to know you’re blogging again after your “retirement.” It’s so true that one of the main differences between the monetized blog people and the author blog people is that authors know how to provide good content without even thinking about it. It’s only the techy stuff we have trouble with.
Having a web designer son would really help. 🙂
I’m so glad you included your new blog address. I was going to go a-Googling. Thanks!
So awesome to see you again 🙂
Anne–Way back when–that is, when I was actively blogging–none of the sophisticated issues you speak of entered my thinking. My sole aim was to write what I hoped would be entertaining blog posts, period. Not informative or newsy or related to my novels, just what I hoped would amuse readers. The blog was named Drinks Before Dinner, and it was presented as just that, a couple talking over drinks before dinner.
But I never figured out how to attract visitors. The handful I ended up with were very loyal, but there weren’t more than a dozen of them.
I would be the first to acknowledge that, like beauty, humor lies in the eye and ear of the beholder. But the people who might have gotten a chuckle from my stuff never saw it. So, when my author website was set up for me (www.bwknister.com), I tacked on a blog button, but soon stopped bothering to post anything. If I EVER figure out how to get people to take a look, I want to re-cycle the comic pieces I wrote way back when. Why not? No one’s seen them.
Sorry for going on at such length, but the whole blogging thing has been a real source of futility for me. All I ever hoped was that people might be amused, and then be curious about my novels. Anyway, whatever you can offer from your considerable knowledge in these matters will be very much appreciated.
Barry–I saw your tweet on this subject last week and you inspired me to blog about this for tomorrow’s post. So stop by tomorrow and I’ll be talking about some tricks to use to get more traffic on an author blog.
It will actually be a two parter, since I’m getting a little long-winded. 🙂
A little knowledge of SEO can help a lot. Plus the use of headers that search engines like, and properly formatted subheaders and stuff like that can make a big difference. See you tomorrow!
Great to have all those unread pieces “in the hopper.” I’ve got some posts from my first year of blogging that only got about 20 hits. I like having them on hand for emergencies.
Thank you, Anne. I’ll certainly be back tomorrow. I hope you won’t see it as one more de rigueur courtesy compliment when I say–again–that you deliver more information AND insight into information than just about anyone with a site devoted to books.
Hi Anne,
It’s an excellent article and very useful to me. Yes, I am blogging but not as serious as you are. Having read the above article I’m now really inspired and willing to craft better content.
Thanks for sharing.
Gatot – Jakarta, Indonesia
Gatot–An author blog can be as serious as you want it to be. You can post once a week or even once a month if you want. It doesn’t have to be a major commitment. Just be real and interact with your readers.
Anne – Many thanks for prompt and inspiring reply. I was wondering on the use of language – Indonesian or English. But it really depend on how I should target my audience, I think. I will keep using my mother tounge language. – I think.
Many thanks!
Gatot–These days, it’s all about niche marketing. Don’t try to appeal to everybody on the planet. Find your niche and target them, so if you write in your native language, by all means blog in that language as well. On Sunday we’ll have a post on how to target niche markets using Facebook, which is in more markets than any other platform.
Anne – Wow! Thanks for your prompt reply. It helps me a lot! YES, it’s about niche marketing, I fully agree. Can’t wait your new post about it!
Love this post and the one at IWSG’s site. I visited one of your new blog posts last week, and it was fascinating. Thank you for staying true to your content and always giving the best tips!
Tyrean–Thanks for coming over from the IWSG! I love that group. Keep blogging! I think it’s the best use of a writer’s time.
Hi Anne,
Great article! Thanks so much for including my Medium post in it. I appreciate it!
Off to share this on social media!
Ayodeji–Great Medium piece! Thanks for stopping by! Blogging should be about making friends, not tricking people!
Great Post!
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had such a hard time with blog transition. I ran into that issue too when I tried to transition a blog (not an author blog) from a self-hosted WordPress site to Blogger. Not only is it very time-consuming to do, but there was a glitch with my hosting provider and I ended up losing the content on my self-hosted site before my domain was fully transfered to Blogger…so every link that someone had made to me, and all my links from Google, were severed. Years of effort into link-building wiped out. And my hosting company screwed up when it was reinstating everything and then couldn’t figure out what they’d done…my blog was down for 10 days. It was a nightmare.
Which underscores the need to make sure, if you’re going with self-hosted, to make sure that your hosting company is reputable and reliable, with solid tech support.
Glad to hear that you got everything sorted out.
Finley–What a nightmare you went through! I wanted to move back to Blogger from my first WP host and that’s when I discovered Thomas Wolfe was right: “You can’t go home again.” 🙂
If I hadn’t been saved by Barb from Bakerview, the seven years we have put into this blog would have been lost forever.
WP makes it easy enough to move TO WP, but Blogger is not built for anything complicated, so there’s nothing like the plug-in required to redirect urls. I only discovered that when I tried to move back.
What I learned is, never start with self-hosted. Start small and expand. Thanks for sharing your story!
I read every word in this posting snd lots of the comments. If you need any help with codeing let ne know! I can do html, css, a smatering if java script (mainly menus and widgets). I also can make almost any kind of graphic art needed for website/blog layouts.
I charge nothing and just want to help, as you’ve helped me whats in this blog. My only fault it I can be damn slow at finishing up the coding (code has an attitude sometimes). Mainly, this comes from wanting what I made to work and look nice.
This is great advice and so refreshing from what I’ve been reading, which demands you “find your niche and stick only to that.” I’m also glad I’m not the only one turned off by author blogs more interested in making you pay for $400 courses than giving you much help. I went onto a “Free” webinar the other day only for it to be an hour long commercial for one of those expensive courses.
I’m hoping to start an author blog soon. I’ve used WordPress and Blogger before, but which do you think works better for an author who’s only had a few pieces of short fiction published and just wants to get her name out there? Or should I make one on both? I’m sorry if it’s a silly question.
Emi–Those courses make my blood boil. Most of them don’t teach any more than Ruth and I offer for free right here in one blogpost. And if you want more in-depth help, my book “The Author Blog–Easy Blogging for Busy Authors” gives you much better advice than they will for less than $3.00. I do recommend it if you’re starting a blog. It will save you a bunch of time and money. Yesterday a reader tweeted his blog stats before and after he read my book. More than doubled.
Blogger is easy-peasy for new, non-techy authors and it’s owned by Google so it gets you into the search engine faster. But WordPress is the gold standard. Don’t go the self-hosted route. Just use the free WordPress.com. And DO NOT start multiple blogs. It only fractures your audience. You need my book!
My tech adviser informs me that Blogger no longer gets into search engines as easily as WordPress, because Google hasn’t updated Blogger security and it violates its own rules. Sigh. But my Blogger blog still makes it into searches somehow. and it works great for me.
She also warns that WordPress.com sites will have some small ads and you can’t buy your own domain name if you go with the freebie site. (You can’t do that with Blogger or Wix or Weebly either). For me, owning your domain isn’t as important as joining the blogosphere and becoming part of the blog community. I’m recommending baby steps, rather than jumping in with a financial investment.
Even if somebody has bought a domain with your name, you can always add “author” or your middle initial when you decide to make a financial investment in web design and self-hosting. But I don’t think that should be the first step for a new writer.