[higham exposed] this blog and others discussed

A couple of years ago, my mate in Russia asked me two things, after looking through my blog:

1.

"Yes, very nice but where does the money come in?"

"Er ... it doesn't," I told him.

"Well, what's the point of wasting all that time?"

2.

"The annoying thing about your blog is that it only rarely has what I'm interested in."

I replied with the Tom Paine line: "James' posts are so frequent, his interests so varied and his contacts so extensive that his blog is rather like the Scottish weather. If you don't like it now, just wait a few minutes."

"Well, that's your problem, you see. Someone like that foul-mouthed friend of yours gets regular readers because he publishes the same type of thing all the time. You post on all different things and so your audience is fragmented and no one would know the other person."

"Yes but he's one of the top bloggers. He's established and he writes well on the type of thing people are thinking. I often post an outrageous point of view no one could agree with. Plus my targets are often sacred cows."

"Yes but take me, for example. I would only come to a blog which had something on ceramics or fitness. When was your last post on those?"

"Point taken but I still want to post on anything interesting."

"Interesting to you."

"Well maybe but I hope the majority would interest someone."

"Can't see how you're going to build up a readership that way. And how are you going to make money?"

I think he had a point. With the advent of RSS and with me posting so frequently, the only way to actually follow this blog here is to scan the headings in RSS and come in when you see something of interest. As for core readership, it's very small, particularly when ex-friends part company with you.

My friend here said much the same things today as the Russian did two years ago plus how the posts are too long. We were talking about how the uniques in the last two days were about double what I had four weeks ago, so something has obviously happened. At the same time, the number of comments has drastically decreased.

This puzzled him so he speculated how many uniques were image searches. Well, I could answer that. In every hundred visitors during the day, about 35 are image searches, about 45 are searches for an old post and a bit under 20 are other bloggers. Yet people who have been following the blog in their rounds are popping in from RSS land more and more.

Therefore, the conversion rate from visitors to comments is about 0.04% on revealed visitors. This puzzled him a lot and he asked why so few comment on my site. I don't have a clue. Maybe people don't want to get into an argument with me; maybe the material's just not interesting.

Another thing I pointed out is that many old blog friends will visit fellow bloggers and their Mybloglog avatar is in view. Then, when they come here, they turn off the avatar and comment as Anonymous. One is of particular interest- she comes in as Anon but then leaves her name. I'll have to ask her why some day.

We started to look at other blogs.

Well, with Iain Dale's, a lot of that is that it's the blog to go to, along with Guido and DK. Americans like Vox Day get enormous hits and comments as well but he gets some of that from WND. Jon Swift and Gates of Vienna are two others which spring to mind.

They all have their finger on the pulse and they do what they do consistently well. In Theo's case, I don't think it's all tit and bum - the people who go there like a rollicking sort of irreverent blog with a lot of common sense. We were talking about Tim Worstall but he's a bit different. To him, his blog is a business venture and the story has done the rounds how he built a house in Portugal on the proceeds, although I suspect a lot of that came from the articles he had in journals as well.

Then we get into the medium bloggers whom I've now slowly joined and what's happening to me now most likely happened to them - the offers started to trickle in, mainly from America.

The Anonymii seemed apoplectic, before ceremoniously breaking my sword in two and stomping off, that there is no debate on this blog. True - I think it's difficult with the "picture blog" lovers and the "start the revolution now" types both converging and not taking to the others' points of view. I had to laugh that almost no one seems to have looked at the Russian dancers youtube. I have, I can tell you.

Finally, to the newer bloggers, you probably don't need advice but for what it's worth - visit and link. They're the key rules, otherwise we end up muttering in the corner to ourselves.