You know when experts say certain things are must-dos? Well, there’s a lot of these that I am personally not into, and thus will not be doing in the foreseeable future – even if they work.
Sticking to a single niche
HA. Maybe in another life.
Popups asking you to subscribe
Do unto others what you have them do unto you.
Email lists
In my experience too often email lists are crap – people do them because they ‘should’ but don’t actually have anything worth offering.
Video
I may be in the minority but I know I’m not alone in shunning video content for the most part. I’m not into vlogs. I’m a word person. Unless there is a damn good reason to present it in video form, I want to consume your content in written form, thanks. In my experience working in online media, too often people do video for the sake of it, not because it’s actually the best medium for the specific content.
Agreed with all of these! Particularly the video/podcast thing. I don’t have time to listen or watch them where I could sneak a few minutes to read through an article, so I stop frequenting blogs where the focus is on the audio-visual media.
I agree with all of these. I’m not understanding the email lists.. there’s only one email list that I actually enjoy.
Ditto. I am too all over the place and Anonymous to be famous.
I agree, although I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting lazier and stupider, but I am really getting into video, although to be fair home design is pretty visual…
I agree. When a person wants to subscribe, he’ll find a way. It’s irritating when something pops up and I don’t easily find the X to close it.
Very true. The pop-ups are so annoying, especially the ones that follow the screen as you scroll. But it appears you’re doing pretty well without all those gimmicks. You may not make it to the big leagues, but your site is still more popular than 90% of the finance/travel blogs out there. 🙂
oh god I hate watching videos. And email lists. And pop-ups. And awkward ad placements for products that have no relevance and are potentially harmful to some readers…
So why would I do any of those on our blog?
I agree with all of these especially the video content. I read a lot of blogs at work; the last thing I’m going to do is listen to a video. Even at home I rarely take the time to click on them. Also agree about the email lists. I seldom open them anymore and have unsubscribed to most of them. And If your site has too many popups you will just annoy me and I’ll click off before getting to the content.
Yeah, I’m not into video content, either. I’d rather read it because it has more impact and I can recall it quickly and easily that way. And I am not a fan of those pop-up boxes for subscriptions, either.
Couldn’t agree with this ENTIRE list more. Esp videos and email lists!
It’s like you were reading my mind! I hate those popups you can’t ever seem to get rid of. In fact, quite often I quickly back out of those sites.
Ha ha! If FaM readers could actually SEE me (poor souls), they’d run off like rabbits! Rockets, even.
I am so with you on the video thing — especially for courses. Please let me read the stuff instead of having to fight with my goldfish-like attention span when it comes to watching videos!
I admit, I hated on the pop-ups and email lists, too — but I’ve been won over. I try to have them not go off for a while after one pops up. They do work. It was good for me to know that others read my blog aside from just bloggers. I am okay with video, but savor the word as well. I can’t stand when there are video pop-up ads that play automatically — and then you can’t find it, and you are like, where is the sound coming from?
I totally agree with this post. Email list isn’t my thing either. I mean, it’s like you’ll follow a blog if the content continuously interests you, right?
Yup, totally agree. Unless you’re really good at videos (Tonya from budget snd beach comes to mind- she’s brilliant) it just doesn’t make sense. The other thing I’ll add to your list is podcasts…
#1 definitely resonates with me. It’s hard for me to pick a niche – I just want to write!