Comments by Cristhian Bedon

jennifer , this is a wonderful blog and it helped, if I may add. all this time I was thinking I had writers block come to find out, I was just procrastinating. I’m a pretty good writer when I’m in the mood to do so. I think also that this plays a good part too why we prcrastinate. you have to be in that frame of mind to want to do this and when all fails you already know we PROCRASTINATE. so thank you for this blog. it is because of tis blog I am able to write again.

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thanks for compiling this – glad you found some of my content helpful!

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few more thoughts – I guess I’ve tried to listen to people and figure out how – but things change as a blog grows and changes. What I used to do in replying to lots of comments and visiting lots of blogs…. doesn’t work any more.

So some of the things I’ve tried to do to make myself more available have included having open streaming video times when people can come ask questions and I answer them for an hour or two, spending time on Twitter, opening a forum etc.

I guess all of these types of things have been an attempt to interact with people in a more personal way. None are perfect but they’re all attempts to try put myself out there in a way that is interactive but also manageable.
Darren Rowse´s last blog ..A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One

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I hear you Brad and on some levels agree – but I guess it still comes down to whether I have time to give that personal attention when all day every day I am asked for it. I do try to respond to people where I can but looking at the 457 emails in my inbox just from today… many of which have questions, requests for help etc… I guess I sometimes honestly feel overwhelmed by people’s desire for personal attention. I try and have managed to help quite a few but the reality is that being personal just doesn’t scale when you hit a certain point. My problem is that I’ve been lucky enough to have three blogs that have success – multiplying the unscalability of the demands. Still trying to make sense of it – appreciate your thoughts.
Darren Rowse´s last blog ..A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One

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it’s a bit of a double edged sword on rewarding comments Sire. While it may increase quality of some it also tends to increase the quantity of spammy/self promotional comments too.

I’ve done this type of things a few times and last time I did it I ended up with 500+ comments, most of which were pretty average.

Ironically then I started getting complaints that ProBlogger gets too many comments and that everyone’s just there for self promotion and that people were not able to read through all the comments because there was so much low quality interaction.

Actually thinking this through is making me chuckle – the complaints I’ve had over the years about this whole area are so varied and opposite extremes that if I were to try to please everyone I’d end up killing myself.
Darren Rowse´s last blog ..A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One

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Brian – appreciate your comments but to be fair, I never said my time is too valuable to respond to people – I simply said that from my prospective I can serve my visitors better by spending a couple of hours writing a tutorial or post that helps them with a problem that they’re having than by reading and responding to comments for two hours.

Responding to 10-20 comments well might help a handful of people but writing a post could help a few thousand.

The reality is that I do respond to some comments, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately via email and sometimes by writing a new blog post (that’ll benefit the whole community) – I could no doubt spend more time doing it but for every hour I do that I’m doing an hour less of something else (usually writing).

Interestingly when I did a survey of my readers last week I had 2000 people give me feedback on how I’ve been travelling as a blog. There were certainly a few comments on things I could do better but the number one thing people asked for was more content. I’m still sifting through all the answers but am yet to find anyone ask for more comments from me in the comments section (there may be some in the last few hundred responses for me to read).

I guess ultimately for it it comes down to trying to work out what my readership wants from my blog – at this point I think they want me to produce more blog posts so that’s what I’m focussing more upon.

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Gordie – I’m certainly human – and not a very good example of one most days as I keep forgetting to eat!

Committing to comment on 5-10% is an interesting idea. It would probably still take me a good hour or two a day but perhaps even a lower % would help.

I know when i do put time aside to comment that I tend to do it in batches to lots of people at once and I can churn through a few, although the whole time I do I feel guilt at not doing some other task that is on my list of things to do for that day :-)

funny you bring Leo up on this – I was just interviewing him this morning on a podcast about this and he talked about the process of switching comments off completely on his blog for similar reasons to what I talked about above.

The guest post thing is good in the way you describe – I tend to have 2-3 guest posts a week on ProBlogger (and do 4-5 days myself) and most of the guests do respond to comments pretty well (better than I’m able to) which is good.
Darren Rowse´s last blog ..A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One

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Sire – it’s interesting that you suggest summarising a general reply because what I most commonly do is write followup posts on my blog to previous posts – based a lot of the time on the type of feedback that I get on my blog.

For instance tomorrow (about 11 hours from now) I have a post scheduled that is based upon a question from a reader in comments that I thought was the type of thing that other readers might be interested in.

In a way I’m interacting in comments by writing new posts rather than just leaving another comment that only a few people will see. Again – for me it comes down to how I can be most useful to the most people possible.

I get your point about hiring staff to share the workload – the only problem with this in my case is that when I bring on people to write for me people complain that I never write on my own blog any more (see comments above for a few people who said that) or that I’m not being personal in replying to comments myself….. it’s kind of a no-win circular problem – outsource and be critiqued further for not being personal or do it yourself and either burn out or… not be personal :-)

I guess in the end all I can really do is be true to myself, do my best to be useful and pay my bills and be at peace with the fact that what I do won’t meet everyone’s expectations or tastes.

I know you’re not having a go at me, I do appreciate the post. Thanks to for taking on my perspective and seeing some of where I’m coming from.
Darren Rowse´s last blog ..A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One

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PS: I just found your email. Not sure what’s going on with my Gmail today but it found it on a second search so there’s no problem with my email, just my overloaded head. Going to take a look when I get home later today from family stuff.

D

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Hey there Larry – thanks for your post.

Let me start with an apology – it’s poor form not to reply to emails – speaking of self flagellation – it’s something that I beat myself up about every day as I look at myself going backwards on the amount of emails I get that I’m not able to reply to. I like most people tend to look after the urgent things, sometimes at the expense of the important things (like your email).

I have just had a search for the email from you though and can’t find it anywhere. I’m not sure if that means it didn’t get to my inbox for some reason or if I somehow deleted it (which would surprise me as I tend to archive all emails unless they’re spam). If you’d like to try resending it you should now have my email address via my comment. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to answer your question – like you write, we’re not all experts in every area of blogging, but I can try!

Onto your post – nicely written. Once I got past the sickening feeling of the first few paragraphs – again, I’m sorry – I think you made some great points.

Many bloggers forget who they are writing to. It’s not just us blogging about blogging bloggers, most bloggers who have some sort of expertise and write ‘how to’ type stuff fall into the trap. I’ve done it on my photography blog and been reminded of the jargon I used by readers a number of times.

In fact it was these reminders that got me develoing Digital Photography School which unashamedly produces 80% of its content for beginners. What I’ve found is that when you do write in easy, understandable language that you actually develop a blog that has a wider audience. More experienced people still get something out of it and beginners breathe a sigh of relief that they’ve finally found a resource that they don’t feel stupid in.

I guess all I’d add is that this doesn’t mean that every blog needs to target the beginner. I think there is certainly a place for technical blogs or blogs that cover more advanced topics. If this is your gift, passion and natural level of writing I don’t have a problem with blogging in that way – but you’ll probably find that your audience won’t be as broad.

Anyway – sorry for this jumble of thoughts. I first read this post at 6am on a Saturday morning while lying in bed (ironically trying to clear my inbox) and am writing this before my first coffee has kicked in and before I dash out the door to take my boys swimming!

Again – please do email me if I can help in anyway and apologies again for either deleting your email or having a contact form that isn’t working.

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Holy actionscript, batman.

Good stuff, complicated looking.

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Thanks for the mention. These days I don’t really spend any time worrying about awards, I wasted too much time stewing on why I wasn’t nominated or trying to subtly convince my readers to nominate for or vote for me and not enough time providing value to those readers. So I tend not to enter into trying to promote myself in them and leave it to others to go there.

There is nothing wrong with awards but I guess I would just rather spend time doing something a little more productive these days.
Darren Rowse ´s last blog ..3 Lessons I Learned Building 4,000 Subscribers in 12 Months

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Gizzer – it’s not an adsense ad – its an ad served by Google’s ad server.

I don’t run AdSense on ProBlogger and have not done so for a couple of years. I do however run them on my photography blog as they do convert pretty well there.

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I really wanted to jump on this one but after going to the site and seeing the all too familiar, scammy looking website, I was opposed. Is there any reason why the author decided to market this book in such a manner. I mean it’s kind of insulting to me as a person. You back this one?

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I’m not sure we’ll get to 10,000 members, partly because some members will come and go but also because we will put the price up once we feel the numbers are getting hard to manage.

We’re also not looking at adding advertising to it – I’m not up for people paying to see ads.
Darren Rowse´s last blog ..3 Principles of Effective Communication

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