Make money online
Would YOU read your own articles?
Few months ago I wrote a similar article on my Romanian blog and the feedback was pretty interesting. I try this experiment with you here now. One of the things I really like is reading. I started reading at 5-6 years of age and I would read 1 book / day at 12 and for many years. Yes, I caught that time one would have an actual bookshelf in the room with many books (all of them already read), subscription to the local library and so on.
I kept this habit even in the IT era, when I have to admit most of my reading is done online. As you could guess blogging attracted me fast since I can now satisfy my hunger with all the articles I can find in hundreds of blogs. I “waste” time daily from my design clients or own projects to be able to read something new on a blog. I like reading the biggies and also some smaller blogger since, when it comes to QUALITY content size doesn’t always matter (I find many big bloggers to be boring and am attracted to some smaller ones who are just great).
And when I find something worth reading, I stop and even comment. The problem is that I RARELY COMMENT. It’s not because I am a mean person and I don’t like to be in such a nice relation to the blogger I visit, it’s just that I hardly find something worthy of reading and commenting in most blogs. This lead me to the thought that maybe we do sometimes write articles WE WOULD’T READ OURSELVES, if we visited that blog.
What do I DISLIKE in blogs and won’t get me commenting too soon?
- youtube videos, placed there
- splog articles, things thrown there just to get a higher adsense click or because the word was a successful one in that day when it came to searching Google.
- paid reviews (I do consider them to be a sort of a prostitution, and, as much as you’d hate me for saying this, I’ll keep my sites out of these tricks).
- news copied from other placed. I read the newspaper (most of the time I hate these already, won’t like them in a blog, that’s for sure)
- lists of affiliates and other “artificial” content to plug another “money-maker”
- anything that seems not original or is “borrowed” from somewhere else.
I never cared of the blog’s traffic or PR, since my own blog has to start from zero. But I do care for the content. I love a good article, about something I might already know or something totally new, but written in a PERSONAL style. A bit “bitchy” for instance, as I am on my blog, maybe a bit hilarious .. it’s just that I want to FEEL YOU. I want to know what YOU think about the topic, tell me how you tried something and failed, or how you achieved success.
Do it in a natural way, tell me something worthy of my time and I will comment. I will also bookmark your blog and come there daily. Even if you are not the ultimate specialist in your field (most of us aren’t), just write me from the heart and your OWN mind.
Everytime I go to the admin panel I think to myself: “OK, Ramo, you’re gonna write about something. Do you really think it’s interesting? If you found this article somewhere, would YOU stop and read it? Is it too “fake” to be worth your time? What do you want your readers to gain from this? Are you telling something personal in a nice manner and they might get their own feelings disturbed by your story? Are you giving them a small secret you learnt in your years of site creation? What good does your article to their lives?”
And then it’s simple. I write: with anger sometimes, with happiness, with dismay. I just pour down my thoughts and hope someone will feel the same. Or maybe think it’s wrong and tell me about it. It doesn’t matter in the end if we agree or not, it matters when YOU are not indifferent to my articles.
So .. we shall ask again: Would YOU read your own articles?
Very thought provoking! I’m embarassed when I look back at some of my earlier posts, and while I do try to lighten up, I know my style is very dry. Years of writing grant applications and research papers have done nothing to help.
A.’s last blog post..Gender gaps
Hello A and welcome to the blog
If you say your earlier posts weren’t as good as you would like, then it’s great: it means you have learnt a lot from those days and that you understand posting in a blog way better.
I also feel I am not pleased with my style and my problem is that I am not a native English speaker. Even if I spent 20 years trying to refine it, my Romanian style still shows most of the time. We have different way to see the sentences and the way to create the statements. This shows and my grammar is horrible most of the time. Not to mention the typos and weird words I create in a mixture of Romanian-English
What I found out to be a good idea is to have a sort of an orality style. I am a radio DJ in my “normal” life and I learn a lot about making your point fast and precise, with a nice catch too. It helped me write articles too. I try to be “clear” with my information and also present it as if I was in front of my readers, chatting about the stuff. I love a friendly approach and as little “dictionary” talk as possible. Instead of writing as in manuals, I try to just explain (even in layman’s terms if needed something) and still keep a good level of information.
I am attracted more by articles who present something in a relaxed manner (maybe with a pun too or something to make me smile), while also giving me all the information needed. I see a tendency of using “big words” in many blogs (the big ones and the ones trying to mimick them) and so many are arid and “beat round the bush” if I might say. I can understand it’s hard to write many articles a day about some niches that in the end are LIMITED as information is concerned, but sometimes I just get tired of this style and take refuge in some small blogs with a very precise attitude. Love them a lot …
Have I said welcome?
And thank you so much for stopping by
I write too little. I mean, my writings are concise and without flourishing too much. I’d read my own articles, because I like small bits of text that say much, instead of the same idea in a huge chunk of text.
This site is quite cool. I guess I’ll subscribe