Audience or Traffic?

Well it's all kicking off in the blog-o-verse over a post on Andy's Blog titled "Blogging for traffic not design"(🔗archive.org) for his take on how people should think about blogging.

From my particular echo chamber you've got the likes of Jeremy, Kev Quirk & JEDDACP who all very much disagree with things he said.

The thing is everyone is right, sort of, hear me out.

Traffic

Some people will see their success as lots of traffic to their blog and not think about who or why they are getting it. Others are happy to get feedback from the people that visit, and they share knowledge and have an enriching discussion with said people.

You can't have both, something I've seen with people who build a following on YouTube is that there comes a point where the person making the content simply can't answer every comment so they just reply to a few and like the rest but as things continue to grow even that is unsustainable, and eventually they just focus on making the "Quality Content™️" that people came for.

But then they're confused why they are losing subscribers? The content didn't change, it must be the haters. No, the people you're losing are the ones who were here in the beginning that liked the community and the interaction with you the creator. Interaction you can't provide beyond a certain size of audience.

What I'm getting at is that if what you want is to do something that has numerous customers awesome, aim for traffic and exploit the hell out of them. Go on, you deserve it for all the hard work you put in.

Audience

Do it for the fun of it. This is your content, a part of who you are. Have fun with it. Make it your own. Be unique, different, special make your blog a one of a kind special snowflake, and show the world what you can do.

Don't feel like you have to make things to keep people around. Interact with the people who show an interest. Or not it's up to you. This is your home.

It can be your happy window into your soul. A way to show other people what you love or use it to vent your frustrations with the world. Be a rallying cry for all that's unjust.

Or make a blog for your Hello Kitty Doctor Who crossover Fanfic, I bet someone is wondering where that blog is right now. 😜

The point is it's yours and no matter what sort of blog you make someone somewhere is going to want to see it and when they do, they'll let you know how much they needed it.

But there is a problem

The one problem that I saw with the original post, wasn't that he thought that he should use WordPress otherwise nobody would find it.

It is that he's not the first person I've found who thinks that you can only get traffic from someone's random search in google.

That unless you let a search engine spider your site it is essentially not on the internet.

The only way is Google or Twitter or YouTube or Facebook or Amazon we are only here because of them. Without them, we are nothing.

Now I might just be the old man shouting at the cloud (Someone else's computer®️) but the internet that we had before Web2.0 was hard to navigate and slow and just so full of badly designed websites and I contributed my fair share of them. BUT it didn't go anywhere.

The internet is still out there, just because you didn't find it on Google/Bing/ChatGPT it doesn't mean it's not out there, see Rule 34.

You just need to find other ways to find things that make you go Hmm.

I read other peoples blogs and follow the links they share. I find a lot of stuff on Mastodon. Likewise, I've found Tutorials on game design in forums. There are blog rolls, newsletters, word of mouth. Just look for things in different places. Explore the world of stuff.

When you comment on other peoples blogs/posts/forums include a link back to your blog. The IndieWeb has lots of ways to back link to your stuff and forward to other peoples stuff. The internet is full of interesting people and things. You can find it just stop expecting a corporation to spoon feed you things. Because all they've managed to give people is fear of the unknown, and the bland beige slop of the lowest common denominator.

Be brave and look under some rocks

/rant>