Making comments on blogs is claimed to be a great way to increase traffic to your site. Here is how it is suppose to work:

1. You write a quality comment on a blog post.
2. Other visitors reading the post notice your comment. They find your comment interesting and click on your URL to find out more about you and your site.

What is a Quality Comment

Writing comments to increase traffic to your website only works if people click on your URL. People will only click on your URL if they are interested in what you have written. I always thought this point obvious. But reading some of the comments on blogs it seams that some people do not understand this fundamental point.

For example, this is a comment left by someone on a blog I frequently visit:

You hit the nail on the head on every point. All of those points are just as important as each other.

This person has no idea what commenting is for. Why did he take the time to leave this comment? Besides the obvious ambiguity of the comment (are the points important or not?), this comment does not provide any value. Who cares that the commentor likes the post. Who cares that commentor thinks all the points are equally (not)important. The only reason anybody might click on the commentor’s URL is to find out if their site is as pointless as the comment.

The commentor read somewhere that to increase traffic to your site you should leave comments on blogs. And like a 4 year kid who climbs into the drying machine because his big brother tells him to, the commentor goes and writes comments on blogs without thinking about why. A commenting zombie with only one thought running round and round his head, “Must make comments, must make comments, must make comments”

What this commentor has failed to understand is that for the comment to have any effect on his blog’s traffic the comment must entice people to click on the URL. It is the whole point of commenting. A comment is a sales pitch. You are selling yourself. You are saying, “Look how smart, interesting, funny I am. Visit my blog for more of the same.”

A quality comment is one in which you make the reader interested enough that they click on your URL. So before clicking the submit comment button ask yourself – why am I climbing into the drying machine.

Longer Comments are Higher Quality Comments

By making a single simple assumption we can test whether quality comments increase traffic to a site. The assumption is that longer comments are higher quality then short comments. Assumptions are usually a bad thing but in this case I think it is a safe assumption because the more text a comment has the better chance there is value in it. Short comments consist mostly of the “Great post, will do on my site.” type – no quality comments. Longer comments have something to say so they tend to be more interesting – quality comments.

Do Commentors of Successful Sites Leave Longer Comments

To determine whether quality comments lead to more traffic to a site I did the following:

1. Going back 1 years on Problogger’s archived posts, I took the URL’s of the commentors for the month of July 2008.
2. The retrieved URL’s were run through the website webtraffic24 which estimated the amount of traffic that the URL currently receives.
3. For each URL the average amount of characters per comment was calculated.

By doing the above I can determine whether there is any correlation between a commentor’s comment size and the success of their site 1 year later. What I expected to find is that successful sites have a higher average comment size then failing sites. In other words, currently successful sites should have on average larger comments (quality comments) then failing sites.

The results:

	Comment Length
Total Average Comment Size:	384
Average Comment Size of Dead Blogs (Less then 200 visitors a day):	363 (table)
Average Comment Size of Successful Blogs (More then 2000 visitors a day):	412 (table)

Commentors of currently successful site had only 13% larger comments then commentors on currently failing sites.

I was a little surprised by the small difference in comment size. I expected the comments of the successful sites to be at least 50% bigger then the failed sites. I really do not know how to explain it. There are two conclusion one can make from the result:

1. Larger comments are not higher quality comments
2. Making quality comments does not have any real effect on the success of your site.

My hunch is that number 2 is the real case. I have never had good results by leaving comments. Even when my comment is one of the top 5 comments on a high traffic blog like Problogger, the number of visitors I receive is around 10 – and of course my comments are high quality. 10 visitors does not make a site a success. I guess if you made a comment every single day on 20 high volume site then the numbers become significant. But if you are making that many comments you will be left with little time to work on your own site.

The lesson: If you need to tell the world that you think that a post is great and that you will apply it to your site then go ahead. Nobody cares – but if you feel the need to say it then say it. On the other hand if you spend 45 minutes making a high quality comment that makes people laugh, cry and nod their head in agreement then write it – but do not expect it to make your website a success.

A suggestion for a comment on this post: what percent of your traffic comes from leaving comments?

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

This blog just had its 6 months anniversary. There was no celebration at this house. Nothing to be happy about. After 6 months there are still only a few visitors, there is little revenue and the future looks as blurry as it did the day I started. Actually, it was better when I started – 6 months ago I had more enthusiasm.

I use to search the internet for tips and advice on how to make my blog a success. Every new piece of information was consumed with gusto. At the beginning I thought all I have to do was this and that, and then my blog will be a success. The reasoning was that my blog is not a success because I still have not done this and that, but once I do it then the blog will succeed – my traffic stats will roll like the number of McDonald’s hamburgers sold.

Like most people I got my advice from Problogger. Darren Rowse, the owner of Problogger knows what he is talking about – he is one of the top blogging gurus. His indisputable credential is his very successful blog. Almost everyday he gives out advice on how to improve a blog. And it is good advice, it has to be, he is a success.

Readers of problogger are all looking to improve their blogs. This is evident by the most common type of comments readers leave:

• Great advice! I will have to implement that on my blog.
• I have been meaning to do this to my blog. Now I know it needs to be done today!
• A perfect post. Thanks Darren. I will do this to my blog ASAP.
• You are a constant source of motivation. My blog has been doing poorly but I can see that with a little work I can make it better.
• Good point, going to do this now! Thanks Darren.

Can you feel the enthusiasm! The readers are learning from the master. They are doing something wrong on their blog, they learn from Problogger, and then claim they will fix it.

You would expect that with all these people constantly improving their blogs there would be a lot more successful blogs. If everybody is doing what Problogger is suggesting then success should be everywhere. But it is not. Blogs are continuing to fail – just like mine.

After 6 months this blog has made very little progress. It still hovers around 50 visitors a day and daily revenue is still measured in pennies. The only aspect that has increased is the number of hours that I have put into it. But that is just me – how do I know that other blogs are also failing? Specifically, how do I know that Problogger’s readers are failing even though they are aware of and claim to use problogger’s advice on their blogs?

In my previous post I showed how in 3 years 71% of blogs are dead. To recap, this is how the number was derived:

1. Going back 3 years on problogger’s archived posts, I took the URL’s of the commentors for the month of January 2006.
2. The retrieved URL’s were run through the website webtraffic24 which estimated the amount of traffic that the URL currently receives.
3. It turned out that 3 years after making a comment on problogger 71% of blogs still had less then 200 visitors a day. (for details of how the data is gathered please see post: What are the odds that your blog will fail?)

The data clearly showed that Problogger’s commentors are not doing to well after three years.

Does Commenting on Problogger Improve Your Blog

Now I want to use the same approach to determine whether Problogger commentors are really improving their blogs. They state, ‘great! I will take your advice and do that to my blog’. But are they really doing it? Are they improving their blog?

There is a easy way to test whether reading Problogger’s advice improves blogs. Here is the approach:

1. Gather URLs from current Problogger commentors and find out how many blogs are failing. These are people who just got the advice and still have not had time to implement.
2. Go back 6 months in Probloggers posts and gather the commentors URLs and find out how many blogs are failing now. These are people who got the advice 6 months ago and have had 6 months to implement the advice.
3. Go back 1 year in Probloggers posts and gather the commentors URLs and find out how many blogs are failing now. These are people that got the advice 1 year ago – plenty of time to implement and reap the results.

Using this method we should expect to see that the older blogs have a lower failure rate then the newer blogs. For example, a commentor on problogger 1 year ago stating, ‘Awesome post Darren, I will do that to my blog right now.’, should be better off today then a commentor you just a few days ago stated, ‘Great advice, I will do that today’. People who took Probloggers advice a year ago should be reaping the benefits today.

Here are the results:

Visitors who read and commented on Probloggers advice	% blogs failing today (less then 200 visitors a day)
1 month ago	55.00% (536 out of 976 URLs)
6 months ago	57.00% (502 out of 877 URLs)
12 months ago	56.00% (485 out of 866 URLs)

 

No difference. A Problogger commentor who 6 months ago, or 1 year ago, learned some great piece of advice from Problogger has no statistical advantage over someone who became aware of it yesterday and is about to apply it to his/her blog.

2 Possible Reasons Why Problogger’s Advice Does Not Improve Your Blog

There are two ways to interpret the data:

1. Problogger adds no value to bloggers. Implementing advice does not increase your chance of having a successful blog. The advice might of worked for Problogger but it will not make your blog better. You might aswell not read problogger’s advice because it will not help you.
2. The advice is good and it works but people do not apply Problogger’s advice to their blogs. They state, ‘great post, will do to my blog’, but they don’t. They tell the world that they will follow Problogger’s advice but in the end they just leave their blog as is. Not implemetening the advice leads to failure.

Unfortunately there is no way to tell which of these two is reality. Problogger is a success and Darren knows what he is doing – but maybe his advice applies only to him. Just because it works for him does not mean it will work for you. Bill Gates can tell you everything he did to become a success, but it does not mean that simply doing what he did will lead to success. It might even be that by doing what he is doing lowers your chance of success because everybody is trying to do it.

The more likely situation is number 2. It is so much easier for commentors to write, ‘Will do’, then to actually do it. They say they will, but they don’t. This should not be a surprise to anybody since this is normal human behavior. After leaving a motivational seminar the audience will be chanting and clapping with enthusiasm – ‘yes I can, yes I will, I will do it’. They even continue to chant this in the car during the drive home. But as soon as they arrive home their chant changes to, ‘where is dinner, where are my slippers, where is the remote’.

Misery Loves Company – My 6 month Anniversary Present

6 months ago I also made a comment on Problogger so I am part of the statistics. After 6 months my blog belongs in the failure category. But there is some good news: According to webtraffic24 this blog gets 64 visitors a day (which is pretty close to the actual value). I checked how many people that commented on problogger 6 months ago have less traffic then me. It turns out that 39% of the commentors are currently doing worse them me. I am not at the bottom and there are a lot of failures around me. It is not a great present but I will take it – it is the only good news I got.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, So You Want To Be A Webmaster...Get in my Head, What YOU Expect vs Reality

Ever since I created this blog I have wanted to know what my odds of success are. Out of 100 people that have a blog how many fail? After searching around the best I could find was 99%. You see it everywhere, 99% of all blogs fail.

This is an interesting number but the problem is that there is never any data to back it up. The number comes from nowhere. Maybe it is just intuition – the people that have been around a long time notice that most bloggers come and then they go. To them it seems like 99% of them disappear.

Intuition gone wrong is the cause of the current 50% divorce rate – intuition is not good enough. I would like to see some data to back up the claim. I can find out the chances of killing myself skiing, so why can’t I find out the chances of success with a blog?

Blogs Die Without A Trace

There is a good reason why there are no actual statistics for becoming a successful blogger. The problem is that blogs do not leave a body when they die – they disappear. They are like aliens in a computer game – once you shoot them with your photon laser they disappear. No trace remains, no clues that they were ever there, no dead bodies to count.

To find out my chances of dieing on a ski hill is easy. All I have to do is to go to the ski hill parking lot and wait till the end of the day. On a piece of paper I draw a line down the center. On the left side top part I write ‘Alive’ and on the top right side I write ‘Dead’. At the end of the day I make a mark on the left side of the page for everybody that leaves the hill with their skies and for the skiers that leave in a body bag I make a mark on the right side. By doing this everyday for the entire season I will have nice set of statistics. By adding up the marks on the left side and the the marks on the right side I can easily figure out how many people out of a hundred die skiing.

Unfortunately this kind of data gathering is hard to do with blogs. There is no way to count dead blogs. Looking around the internet there are only two types of blogs: successful blogs and those trying to be successful. The blogs that have died leave no trace, so there is no way to count them, there is no way to gather marks for the right side of the paper. All you see are the living blogs.

Problogger to the Rescue

Problogger is a very popular and successful blog. The owner, Darren Rowse, has been doling out advice on how to write a successful blog since 2005. His audience is thousands of eager bloggers trying to figure out how to make their own blog more successful.

Everyday he writes a few paragraphs of advice and tips on how to improve a blog. Most of the visitors are beginning bloggers – bloggers who just started their blog and want to learn how to make it better. These advice seeking bloggers consume his wisdom in the magnitude of approximately 15,000 visitors a day.

With this kind of traffic it is no surprise that each of his posts have lots of comments. People leave comments for many reasons: 1) To give praise. 2) To show disapproval. 3) To increase their own traffic. By leaving a comment the person also leaves a link back to their own website in the hopes that somebody will click on it and visit their site. This is great for them, but it is also great for us because they leave a foot print – a permanent record of their existence.

Problogger has an archive section on which is stored all the posts and comments since 2005. Anybody can go and look at the posts from 2005. The posts are there and so are the comments. BINGO!

We can go back in time. We can go to 2005 and have a look at the comments for each post. Each comment has a link back to the commenter’s website. In 2005 the commenter was a beginning blogger seeking Darren’s advice on how to make his blog more successful, full of hopes and dreams. Regardless of what his dreams were in 2005, now in 2009 we can find out if (s)he succeeded or not.

A Website That Estimates Traffic to a Website

Lets imagine you are sitting at the bar and next to you is a beautiful and sexy girl listening to you as you eagerly describe your blog. Her eyes are wide open with wonder as you talk about your blog. You are an honest guy: you tell her how much work it is and how slow it is going, how you have been trying to get more visitors but it is a ongoing struggle. She smiles and touches your knee – she seems to like you. Being an optimist you start to think about what you will make her for breakfast in the morning.

But then disaster strikes. In walks a fast talking, Fabio haired, blue eyed, muscles bulging from his tight shirt lady’s man. He has it all – he rarely leave the bar alone. He sees the girl next to you and makes his approach to her with a complete disregard of your feelings. He runs a hand through his bangs slowly, making sure the girl notices his camel back biceps. After introducing himself and making a lame joke he begins to talk to her about his blog. He claims that it has 10,000 visitors a day and that he makes $100/hour. The girl is impressed – you are screwed. Looks like it is going to be another night of checking your pathetic blog stats alone.

But all is not lost yet. Fortunately you never go to the bar without your laptop. You pull it out and go to the website webtraffic24.com. It is a website that provides an estimate of how many visitors a website gets. You simply type in a URL and click a button. webtraffic24.com will then check the page rank, alexa rank, backlinks, etc of the website and using an algorithm return an estimate of the amount of traffic the website receives. It is not perfect, it is just an estimate. But an estimate is usually all you need – you need to know whether a website gets around 10 visitors a day or 10,000.

After typing in the stupid brute’s blog address you get the results – 20 visitors a day. Just as you suspected – another bullshitter making false claims about their blog to pick up girls. Proudly you show the girl the results. Seeing the number she slaps the brute and turns back to you – ‘tell me more about your blog’.

 

Combining Problogger’s Archives with Webtraffic24.com to Count Dead Blogs

Using the URL left behind by the commentors in the problogger archive with the webtraffic24 tool we can count dead blogs. All we need to do is to go back to the old comments, for example in 2006, and using webtraffic24 see how the blogs are doing now. To simplify I have broken up the amount of daily visitors a website receives into 3 main states:

• Dead (0-500 visitors/day)
• Serious Injury (500-2000 visitors/day)
• Alive and Well (2000+ visitors/day)

Webtraffic24 is not 100% accurate but it is good enough – it can separate the dead from the living.

How to Find Out the Success Rate of Blogs

To determine the success rate of blogs and websites I have done the following:

1. From the problogger.com archived posts comment section I have taken all the URLs for the month of January 2006. There was a total of 2514 comments for that month.
2. I had to do some editing:
   • When somebody put a link to a specific webpage I edited the URL to just the homepage. For example, if the the URL was www.mywebsite.com/my-dream-of-having-a-great-blog.html I changed it to www.mywebsite.com.
   • I excluded Darren Rowse’s comments.
   • I excluded all URL’s that were email addresses.
3. After getting rid of all the duplicates (same person who made more then 1 comment that month) I was left with 693 distinct URLs. 693 eager bloggers and webmasters hoping to be successful one day.
4. Using webtraffic24 I checked each URL to see where it stands today. Is is dead, injured or alive.

I gathered all the data into a single table (download table). Each URL and its statistics are recorded. With the table complete it is a simple matter of adding up the living and the dead.

 

How Many Blogs Become Successful And How Many Die – The Results

• Total URLs: 693
• Dead: 497 (download table)
• Serious Injury: 81 (download table)
• Alive and Well: 115 (download table)

If you were a commentor on problogger during January 2006, here are the odds of what state your blog will be in three years:

Analysis

72% chance of total failure. It is high but not as high as the 99% claimed by people who ‘just know’. Another way of looking at it is you have 28% of your blog not being dead in 3 years.

I was quite surprised by these results. They are much better then I expected. Even while working on this blog I was under the assumption that there is a 99% failure rate. I am glad that it is not that bad.

To answer my original question: 72 out of every 100 blogs die.

Of course this experiment has some flaws. The biggest one is that there is no way to tell how well these blogs where doing at the time they made the comment (January 2006). It is possible, although very unlikely, that all the Alive and Well blogs where alive and well in January 2006. The only real conclusion that can be made is that in 3 years 72% of the commentor’s blogs have died.

The second flaw is that problogger commentors do not represent the entire blogging sample. There is a lot of commentors but they do not represent the whole. It is possible that by being a problogger commentor you improve your blog and your chance of avoiding death. Maybe problogger commentors have a 72% chance of death but bloggers as a whole have 99%. Unfortunately there is no way to tell because there is no means to count dead bodies on the entire blog population. This experiment applies to all blogs only by assuming that problogger commentors are bloggers just like everybody else. But if you want the certainty of a 28% chance of avoiding death then become a problogger commentor.

More Then Dead

497 blogs are dead. Above I defined dead as having less then 500 visitors a day according to website24.com. Having anything less then 500 visitors a day for a website or blog is only virtually dead (you probably will not be making too much money) because even 3 visitors a day is still not dead. True dead is 0 visitors. 0 visitor happens when website24 cannot find the domain – which means the owner of that domain canceled the hosting and the domain is unused. Out of the 497 dead blogs 192 are truly dead – 28% of the total and 39% of the virtual dead.

Further Study

The data for this experiment was only 1 months worth of problogger comments. Of course it would be better to use a whole years worth of comment URLs. But, as you can probably imagine, that would be a lot of work. For 2006 problogger probably has over 30,000 comments. If you eliminate the duplicate URLs you might be left with at least 5000 URLs. I cannot imagine anybody wanting to collect all those URLs and then run them through website24. I would be glad to see it, but I am not going to do it.

What I might do in the future is to check how many blogs die within 6 months.  Instead of going back 3 years I will go back 6 months.

Acknowledgments

• Thank you www.problogger.net for having such a great archive.
• Thank you www.webtraffic24.com for not blocking my IP during my 693 website checks.
• Finally I would like to thank Robby G for his post http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/28/perseverance-will-save-your-blog/ because it gave me the idea for this post.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Optimistic and Motivational, There is a HOW TO in the Post, What YOU Expect vs Reality

Lets assume that you just started a site, or are planning to.  You are looking for advice and ideas.  The first instinct is to do a search on Google for your niche.  Click on the top results and have a look at what others are doing.

This website’s niche is making money online.  There are about 5 big players for this niche.  Websites and blogs that get thousands of visitors a day.  They are an outstanding success.  Make lots of money.  The Walmart, Mircrosoft, and Kellogs of the make money online niche.

All of them give advice on how to make money online.  They give tips about website design, what to sell, how to write, basically they answer the question: how to have a successful website.  They can do this because they have authority – their website is successful.  Do what they do, follow their advice.  It worked for them so it will work for you.

Wrong.

True – they know what they are doing.  They did all the right things.  The proof is their success.  If your goal is to have a website exactly like theirs then follow their advice.  Design it like their website, write like they write, post when they post.  Follow their advice and end up with a website very similar to theirs.  It will identical in all aspects except for one – the most important one.  Your website  will not be a success. 

The fundamental flaw in doing what the successful websites do is that you are setting yourself up to compete against the best.

Following Advice Of The Successful Leads To Failure

Lets say its the year 1300.  You live in a bustling medieval city.  And you are sick and tired of your day job – there is no point in plowing the local prince’s field.  You want to go into business for yourself.

You wander around town in your woolen tunic with hands clasped behind back, looking for business ideas.  You come across the city market.  Little stalls selling assortments of goods.  Mmmmm, maybe I should open up a stall.  But what would I sell, how will I sell it?  You look around for the busiest stall. 

Careful not to step in donkey shit, you make your way through the maze of stalls.  Most of them have one or two people haggling over trinkets.  No big money there.  Then suddenly you see it.  A stall with a lineup.  At least 20 people waiting in line, all of them happy and waiting eagerly to make a purchase.  The owner is gleaming as the money moves from the customer’s hand to his.  You have found a successful stall.  The sign above the stall reads, “Prowalkers – The best and biggest walking sticks in the city”.  The plan is to wait for the end of the day and seek advise from this great business man.

Hello, my name is Fergus.  I am tired of my day job.  I want to be successful like you.  What advise can you give me.  Being a kind and patient man the business man goes into a long lecture about what makes his business successful.    He tells you how to build the stall, how the merchandise should be arranged, how to advertise, and most importantly  – always smile at the customer and ask them to come back.  You thank the man for all the great advise.  Skipping home your main concern is whether to have the house re mudded or to buy a new apple cart once the silver coins start rolling in.

The next few weeks are busy.  Following the advise of the business man you set up your stall.  You are very pleased.  It looks almost identical.  The design is the same, the layout is exactly how he recommended.  He sells 9 foot tall walking sticks, you sell 9 foot tall walking sticks. 

Monday morning…the grand opening.  You wake up early and rush to the market, setup your stall, and wait eagerly for the masses.  The only worry is whether there will be enough room in front of the stall for all the hordes of people lining up.  Probably not.  But you console yourself by realizing that if they squish together then at least 30 people can stand in line.   The church bell dongs and the market opens.

By the end of the day you are in tears.  You sold only one walking stick and that was to the village idiot.  Weeks pass with little change.  Your stall receives very little traffic.  And the few that do visit already have a 9 foot tall walking stick.  Where did you get that you ask.  Proudly the man looks at his walking stick and replies, from Prowalkers of course.  He has been around for years, has the best walking sticks – everybody buys their sticks from him.

Two weeks later you are back in the fields digging up the princes potatoes. 

Do Not Follow The Successful

When your are starting off, it is very tempting to look at the successful site and do as they do.  This is a mistake.  By doing what they are doing, by following their advice, your site will be similar to theirs.  And that puts you at a major disadvantage.  Because then you have to compete against them.

The best way to use the successful sites is to try to find something that they are not doing.  Do something that they never mention.  Or best yet, do something that they recommend against doing.  Since everybody will follow the advice and not do it,  you will be the only one doing it.  While everybody is thinking about how to improve the horse carriage you will be creating the Model T.

The greatest opportunities and surprises are down paths least traveled.  Paths which start with a warning sign, “Danger, path unexplored – enter at own risk”.

What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

The first few months of being a webmaster are challenging. Especially psychologically. All new webmasters should be ready to deal with the following:

Silence

You pluck away for hours creating new content.  After reading it and re-reading it, adding sentences and deleting others.  Making sure every sentence flows gracefully from one to the next.  Creating perfection.  Finally it is done, your Saturday is spent, but it is done.  You post your creation online and wait. 

Nothing.  No comments.  No emails.  Like it was never written.  Like it does not exist.  Silence.  The tumbleweed rolling through a ghost town kind of silence.  The time spent trying to please the masses was for nothing.  There is nobody out there.  Like Robinson Caruso writing a beautiful story, putting it into a bottle, and throwing it out to sea.

As a new webmaster do not expect praise or feedback for your work.  Expect nothing.  Write it, post it, and then write another one. 

Zero

For the first few months expect to see a lot of the number 0.  Especially when it comes to revenue.  With so few visitors to your site, most of the time your revenue will be zero. 

Normally this means that once a day you are disappointed by seeing 0.  But you will see it more then once a day.  You will see it at least 10 times a day.  Because every free moment you have will be spent checking your revenue.  Waiting for the coffee to brew…good time to check the revenue.  A commercial on TV…good time to check the revenue.  Three o’clock in the morning coming out of the bathroom and walking past the computer…good time to check the revenue.

You will come to despise the zero.  Its size, font and color will be ingrained in your head.   $0.00.  As the revenue page is loading you will have a slight emotional high.  The expectation that maybe this time it will be some other number.  But the page loads and there it is.  $0.00.  You close the window and sigh.  For a   fleeting moment you consider the possibility that a mistake has been made.  Maybe the servers are not refreshing and the value is not being updated.  But your energy is drained – you do not care enough to do anything about it.  Acceptance comes at last – it is true. $0.00.  30 minutes later the process starts all over again.

The Unknown

Normally when you perform a task successfully the feedback is immediate.  The boss gives you a raise.  The teacher puts a big A on the test.  The dinner guests compliment your spicy spaghetti.  A website is different.  For the first few months you get no indication whether the website is good or not.  You think it is good – that is why you visit it so much.  But the real test is whether other people think it is good.  At the beginning there is no way to tell. 

For months you build with no feedback.  Similar to building a prototype machine.  Spend lots of time designing and assembling.  No way to test whether it will work.  You have to build it first.   Day in and day out you faithfully work on the prototype. Hoping that when it is complete it works.    Only then will you discover whether all that work was worth it or not.  If in the end  it works then it was time well spent.  If not, then you have to acknowledge that is was a waste of time.

Thomas Edison had the same problem.  He had no idea whether a filament exists that enables a light bulb to burn for days.  He just hoped there was.  His only option was to try as many different filaments as possible.  After trying the 500th filament he was no closer to the answer then he was after the 2nd filament.   No indication if he was on the right track or even if success is possible.  Days, weeks, months passed and he was no closer to finding out whether a filament exists.  No feedback.  Only the hope that one day he will find a working filament drove him to continue.

A webmaster must work the same way.  Not knowing whether what is being attempted will work.  Whether the website will become a success or not.  A webmaster’s motivation must simply be the hope that it will work. 
       

You Have No Idea What You Are Talking About

To have a informative website you need to know what your are doing.  You need to be a authority in the field.  But you are not.  You cannot be.  You just started your website.  Only when the website is a success and only after a few years can you claim to be an expert.  It is a catch-22.  You need to know what you are doing to become a success, but only by succeeding can you know what you are doing.

Fortunately the fact is that you do not need to know what you are doing.  You only need to appear like you know what you are doing.  All that matters is the audience believing that you have authority in your field.  It is an illusion that is not too difficult to produce.  Do your research and the audience can be convinced with ease.  Nobody will know that most of your information is coming from books and not your head. 

The real problem is that you actually do not know what you are doing.  This causes a confidence issue.  It is hard to wake up every morning with confidence in your efforts when you yourself know the truth – that you have no idea what you are doing.  Doubts begin to form about whether your website can work.  “How can I be a success, if I do know what I am talking about?”

The answer is that for all things new – for all things that where created first – like your website, the first person had no idea what they where doing either.  They were just bumbling along, making guesses, trying things.  But all along appearing to everybody else like the expert.  All creators need to sell the appearance of confidence and knowledge about their product.  And then if it works, and the product becomes a success, they become the true expert.  Just like your website.  When it becomes a success, after many years of writing about the topic and discussion, you too will be an expert.

About Revenue, Earnings, Money, About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, What YOU Expect vs Reality