Stop the treadmill! I think I want to get off!

I’m having one of those days today.  You know the kind of day I am talking about - one of those days when you work hard for the entire day, and at the end of the day, you feel like you didn’t do anything.  I don’t like those days.

I blame Wordpress.

“Why Wordpress,” you say?

Well, I blame Wordpress because it has become like a treadmill that never stops.  First of all, you have a never ending parade of updates to the software.  As soon as you update to a new version and get all the kinks worked out, it seems like there is a new, critical security update that you have to do immediately!  If you don’t update on time, it’s like running around in public naked - you just don’t do that!

Here’s what happened today.  I had a couple of improvements that I wanted to make on one of my sites.  When I went to that site, I noticed that the Plugin panel on Wordpress was telling me that two plugins were out of date.  Oops!  I better update those right away.  So, I went and downloaded the new releases on these plugins, and installed them.  What the….   I just checked my blog and the whole top half of my screen went black!  Hmm… turns out that one of the plugins didn’t work!  So, I reverted back to the old version, it worked fine.  That second upgrade that I did didn’t work either.  So, I eliminated that one.  I have dozens of blogs, so all of this piddling around took me half the day (or more).

The thing is, I am feeling like with Wordpress, it is getting to the point that there are so many Admin tasks that need to be completed, that I rarely have time to produce the quality content that I want to share with my readers!  If I had one blog, maybe two it would not be a big deal, but I have more than that.  It is making me wonder what I should do.  Abandon some of my sites?  Find a new software to run on?

I have been playing with the idea of moving to Drupal.  Today I took the step of installing Drupal on one of my inactive domains, and playing with it.  It only took a few minutes when I realized that if I changed platforms, that meant that I had to re-learn the whole system again!  I had to create a lot of new templates.  Hmm… I have sites with thousands of posts on them, which means that I had to import all those posts into a new platform.  Importing thousands of posts usually doesn’t go as smoothly as it should.

Hmm… I don’t think I want to change platforms.  I also don’t think that Wordpress is the right platform any longer.  Updating plugins and platform software doesn’t bring in any money.  However, if you don’t do the updates, your site will end up getting owned by somebody else who hacks in.  Either way, you haven’t written content that keeps your readers coming back.

For me, the call comes down to what direction to go in order to make the most money.  Problem is… right now I can’t figure out which direction will achieve that goal.

What do you think?

Why RSS?

Do you know what RSS is? Some people say it stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Others argue that it stands for “RDF Site Summary,” and still others say that it means “Rich Site Summary.” The most widely accepted notion, though, is that RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” That is what I mean when I say RSS.

So, if it is Really Simple Syndication, what does that mean? Well, simply put, it means that if you offer RSS on your site, people can subscribe to it and have it delivered to their desktop. When you publish an article on a site with RSS, that article will be pushed to your reader’s desktop in a matter of moments. If people choose to subscribe to your site, the text (and photos) of your articles will be available in the reader’s “Feed Reader.” Feed Reader is a piece of software that collects all of these RSS subscriptions and the reader uses this software to read the articles. Most current software, especially blog software (Wordpress, Typepad and others) and other Content Management software (Joomla, Mambo and others) include RSS as part of the package. I would say that probably about 75% of current websites offer RSS of some form.

So, there are also special programs that a user can have on his PC for gathering his RSS subscriptions. There are dozens of Feed Readers out there. Bloglines, Google Reader and many many others. Personally, I like to read blogs from within my browser, and I use Firefox to gather RSS headlines, then I go to the site to do the reading.

The number of RSS subscriptions that you have has kind of become a way of measuring the success of a blogger. Personally, though, I feel that this is not a good metric for measuring success. You see, in my case, I don’t really push RSS or encourage people to subscribe.

Why don’t I encourage people to subscribe?

Well, if somebody is reading your site through an RSS reader, they generally don’t see the ads on your site. Let’s face it, I primarily blog to make money. I do it for other reasons too, but if I could not make money doing it, I would at lease have a lot fewer blogs than I do. If somebody reads through a feed reader, they don’t see my ads, and thus can’t partake in my advertiser’s products. Yes, you can also place ads in your RSS feed, but from everything I have read, those ads are not nearly as successful as ads on the website. Thus, I actually prefer it is people come to my site, rather than read me through their feed reader.

Now, I am not an expert on every topic, and I readily admit that I might be missing something here. So, if you are better educated on this topic, let me know where I am straying. For a writer who wants to make money from what he writes, how can he successfully convert readers to profits when they are using a feed reader to subscribe? Honestly, I hope that somebody can point me to something that I don’t know about this, because I might be missing some opportunities.

Any opinions?

One quick final note here. When it comes to reading, I love RSS. It’s just that I am looking for input on the writer’s side.

How often should I write on my blog?

Did you ever find a blog that you really enjoy reading, and after you read it for a while the articles just stop coming?  There are so many blogs like this.  So, when this happens, what do you do?  If you are like me, after a blog has gone dry for a while, you eventually just eliminate it from your feed reader.  If it was a blog that I really liked, I might go back there in a few months to see if it has anything new on it, but if it is still the same old articles, I probably won’t go back again after that.

So, if you are a blogger, or have any kind of website, this should teach you an important lesson.  What is that lesson?  Always keep providing fresh content on your site!  If you don’t, people won’t keep coming to your site.  You know, as I’ve discussed in recent articles, getting people to come to your site is not easy, and it takes time too.  If you squander these readers by basically forcing them to leave, then you must keep on trying to gain readers every time that you re-activate the site.  It would be much easier to keep your readers coming back to your site and adding new readers over time, and there is only one thing that you have to do in order to accomplish that - keep writing!

Don’t take me wrong, you don’t have to write multiple articles every single day!  But, what you need to do is to adapt a schedule, and stick to it as much as you can.  Your readers will come to understand your schedule, and they will know which days to check your site (and what time) for a new article.  On most of my sites, I try to write a new article every weekday.  I usually don’t post on weekends, because I find that the weekend posts don’t get as many visitors.  Now, does this mean that I have to take time write an article each day, 5 days per week?  No, not at all!  And, believe me, I don’t do that!  So, if I don’t sit down and write an article every day, how to I post an article every day? Well, that is easy, I use the “Post Timestamp” feature on Wordpress!  Sunday is my writing day.  On Sundays, I will write all of my articles for all of my sites.  Before I publish them, though, I choose what time they will go “live” using the “Post Timestamp” in Wordpress.  I can choose what day and what time the articles show up for the public this way.

So, for me, writing on Sundays works.  Maybe for you, it is Saturdays, Wednesdays after lunch, or whatever.  Just choose a time.  If you have nothing to do, go write!  Find the way and the schedule that works for you, and stick with it!

One thing I hear from a lot of people is that they can’t think of anything to write about.  Firstly, I find that the more you write, the more topics you think of.  Another important thing that I do is that I keep a pad of paper and a pen handy.  If I am sitting there watching TV, or if I am doing something else, and I think of something I want to write about, I write it down!  Maybe I am watching the news on TV, and a story comes on that is on the topic of one of my sites, I write that down, and on Sunday when I am ready to write I look at my list and choose the subjects that I still want to write about.  I find that by doing this, I usually have a lot MORE topics to write about than I need or want.  Also, as I am writing an article, I often find that a new idea, or a tangent of the article I am writing comes to mind.  Quick - write that one on the list!  Also, with my list, if I have 8 or 9 topics and only intend to write 5 articles for the week, I will evaluate the unused topics to see if I want to carry them to the next week.  Sometimes I feel after further consideration that the topic I wrote down is not good after all, but if it is just a topic that is still good but I didn’t write about, it will still be good next week too when I am looking for topics!

The moral of this story is, though… don’t stop writing!  Don’t let your website dry up!  You worked hard to build up the visitors that you have, don’t squander them!