Derek’s article isn’t about writing less, it’s about being clear and concise.
For some reason, it’s generally regarded by most successful bloggers that long blog posts are more important/valuable.
But that’s not true. Most really useful verbose blog posts are actually full of lots of fluff and filler.
Why dance around in your content when you can get right to the point?
Here’s an experiment for you:
Next time you read a really long blog post think about how much of what you’re reading is necessary and how much can be edited out.
My articles still start as 1,000+ word tomes, but I edit, refine, edit, refine, until they’re as short as possible while still broadcasting the same message.
There’s an old saying in copywriting:
Write as many words as it takes, and not a single word more.
That’s why some sales letters are 1 page and some sales letters are 50+ pages. No fluff. No filler. Just sell.
In my past life I’ve had a short sales letter pull in over $35,000 in sales in 1 day, and I’ve had a long sales letter (sent to the same market) pull in less than $1,000 for a whole month.
There are obviously other factors involved when selling online, but the point is that the long sales letter was probably too full of fluff to be effective.
The same advice is relevant for blogs.
Refine Your Signal, Cut The Fat
If you need 4,000 words to get your point across, no worries.
But if you don’t need any more than 300, why write 3,000?
What’s the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person? Shocking, but simple, answers inside…
I was talking to a friend recently about meeting deadlines and he said something that hit home:
“Just fucking write.”
No matter what your profession that same statement is relevant. Just replace “write” with whatever it is you want to do.
If you’ve ever read War of Art by Steven Pressfield or On Writing by Stephen King (both highly recommended) you know they say the same thing. Maybe with a little more tact. ;)
Sit down with a goal in place and don’t stop writing until you reach that goal.
If that means it takes you all day, so be it. If everything’s flowing and it takes 30 minutes, great. The point is to make it happen.
If you’ve always wanted to write a novel and have dragged your ass, National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November.
No matter what you want to do in life you can always make an excuse not to do it.
Instead, why not make an excuse to do it?
10 years ago I remember listening to a Robert Allen audio program and he was discussing success mindset. The difference in mindset between being successful at something and being unsuccessful is subtle.
An unsuccessful person will state “I can’t achieve X.”
If we tell ourselves something is impossible it’s going to be difficult to plow past that negative statement.
A successful person, on the other hand, asks “How can I achieve X?”
See the difference?
Declare a statement and that’s that.
Reframe the statement as a question and you’ve set yourself up to create success.
A meta post about the direction of Ridiculously Extraordinary…
This is a meta post (a first!) about the direction of Ridiculously Extraordinary and changes I’m making.
As I was getting ready to post a new article today (in keeping with my new Tuesday/Thursday posting schedule) I decided against it and I’m posting this instead.
I’m going back to posting once/week. Not because twice/week is too much. It’s not. Although even the short post this past Tuesday (Enjoy The Process) took 3-4 hours to write/edit (did I mention I’m a very slow editor?) this blog doesn’t take an exceptional amount of time every week.
Note about editing: Enjoy The Process was a very lengthy, 1,000+ word article at one point. I edited and edited until it got down to less than 500 words. That takes a while.
The reason I’m going back to a once/week posting schedule is I’m actually writing more than ever before. But all that extra writing which I had planned for this blog is now going to go out as guest posts on other blogs.
If I want to get anywhere with this blog (I do) I need more readers. Writing guest posts for other blogs will expose this blog to more readers. Simple enough, right?
As of now I get most of my traffic from search engines and 2nd most from RSS subscribers. My goal is to make it so my #1 source of traffic is other people/Web sites.
Don’t get me wrong, having just 1 regular reader is awesome and I’m grateful I have quite a bit more than that. But if my goal is to change 100 lives (it is) I need at least 10,000 regular readers.
Why so many?
Coming from a direct marketing background I know that, unfortunately, most people don’t take action. 100 is 1% of 10,000 and a 1% response rate is regarded as a generally good response rate. In this case, we’ll call it an “action rate.”
Lots of you have asked how exactly I’m going to help those 100 action-oriented people achieve Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom.
Besides the free content on this blog (which I hope will help a lot of people) I’m eventually going to sell specific products about achieving Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom. As of right now I have no products in the pipeline, but I do have plans for products, books, and workshops.
The last time I sold an informational course (EasyProfitMethod.com) was over 5 years ago. It sold out 30 spots (10 at $997 and 20 at $497) in an hour.
Quite a few of the people who joined that program ended up making an extra $50-$100k.
It’s proven that I can produce results.
I just don’t have the big audience I once had. I had almost 50,000 double opt-in e-mail newsletter subscribers at one point until I essentially deleted them all (some of you are still following me, hello and thanks!) and quit the information marketing business.
This is all a long way of saying, if you’re going to be a Ridiculously Extraordinary Reader you should know that eventually there will be something for sale here.
I will let you know (probably via Twitter.com/KarolGajda) when my first guest posts start hitting the blogosphere. I don’t have any confirmed yet, but they’re coming.
And if you’ve got a blog about freedom, health, business, or personal development and need a guest post (maybe you’re busy, going out of town, or broke your fingers in a freak typing accident) let me know: KarolGajda AT Gmail.com. I’ve got your back. :)
Oh, and just to be clear: my goal is to have those 10,000 regular readers by October 23, 2010 (1 year from today).
My notes from Tim Ferriss’s How To Build A High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself presentation at WordCamp. I hadn’t planned on launching my blog with a post about Tim or anybody else, but…
Don’t write about what your readers tell you to write about. Write about what you’re passionate about. – Mark Cuban
I’ve written over 30,000 words of Ridiculously Extraordinary content thus far and hadn’t planned on launching with a post about Tim Ferriss or anybody else. I had planned on launching with my own content, of course.
Why Post “Rehashed” Content?
I felt compelled to post these notes since I learned a lot from Tim’s presentation that will help launch the Ridiculously Extraordinary brand.
Keep in mind these notes aren’t necessarily comprehensive. While I did take notes regarding most of the things I already knew about (to reiterate them to myself) I may have missed some things that will benefit you.
On the whole, there are a lot of useful nuggets of info synthesized from a 50 minute viewing to a 5 minute read.
With all that out of the way, following are my notes on Tim Ferriss’s How To Build A High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself presentation from WordCamp.
The full 50 minute presentation is available at the end of my notes.
(Timestamps on the left are approximate.)
3:20 – Use blogging for access to people / resources. Not necessarily income.
3:45 – “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” Mark Twain
6:15 – Measure the things that matter. You can spend all day testing and tracking every little thing on your blog but spend most or all of your time tracking what will benefit you the most. This has to be in line with your own goals for your blog.
7:00 – Best times to post to the blog: 10 am EST and 6 PM EST. (In the video Tim says 7 am PST and 6 PM EST.)
Best days to post: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday
8:20 – Changing Category to Topic improved click activity / average page views per visit.
9:20 – Current Hits on his upper right sidebar changes every 30 days. If you put all the focus on All Time Hits then it’s self perpetuating. They will always get clicked, and always have more visitors. Top posts in past 30 days gives you a better shot at spreading the page view love.
10:00 – Removed Twitter link from upper right hand because working hard to get a visitor and then sending them away from your blog isn’t a good idea.
10:40 – 7 Reasons To Subscribe (to RSS) link is on upper right. Tim says RSS subscribers are fickle and not optimal if your blog’s goal is advertising revenue.
11:20 – RSS subscriptions are becoming less relevant with microblogging tools like Twitter. (This confused me a little because on the one hand he’s promoting RSS over Twitter, and on the other he’s saying Twitter is better than RSS. Disclosure: Tim is a Twitter investor.)
12:00 – Clicks on Top Nav: 1) Gear (page is empty, he put it there as a test) 2) Resources and 3) Forum Note: Tim tracks with CrazyEgg.com for heatmaps; Google Analytics and WordPress Stats also
12:15 – The date is missing from the top of old posts. Posts on home page have the date at the top, but single post pages have date at the bottom. Dramatically improved visitor’s time on site.
13:00 – Test against convention. In other words, if everybody else is doing something one way, test doing it a completely different way and see what happens. Completely useless if you’re not using stats programs to actually track.
14:33 – How I Research: Twitter, Slinkset, Evernote
15:40 – Twitter for polling and quick research. That research is then shared for the benefit of followers. Also uses Twitter as a sort of personal diary.
16:00 – Evernote is used for saving thoughts, ideas, drafts. You can copy text / images to Evernote.
17:00 – How I Write
17:40 – Tucker Max (from TuckerMax.com): “Important thing is not being a good writer, but having a voice.” Tim: communicate your personality to the written word. This probably won’t happen right away and Tim says his writing has gone through a few phases before finally settling into his real personality.
18:16 – Passion beats polling and focus groups. Mark Cuban (blogmaverick.com, owner of Dallas Mavs): “Don’t write about what your readers tell you to write about. Write about what you’re passionate about.” Tim says that when he’s followed what people have wanted him to write about the results were always subpar.
19:00 – Po Bronson (author): “When you’re blocked write about what makes you angry.” Tim: “Caveat: don’t attack other people.” Attack the problem, not the person.
19:40 – Biorhythms: measure output. Tim does his best writing from 1 am – 5 am. Collects data during the day and writes at night.
20:30 – For important posts edit by hand. Type, print, edit. Remove 10-20% of post with each revision.
20:45 – Ignore SEO on 1st draft because it stifles writing quality/flow. Then edit by looking up synonyms in Google Keyword Tool. Sort by average monthly volume and use the highest traffic words. Use these words where relevant in your posts.
22:15 – Video/Photos: Time spent does not equal impact. Some of his videos that he spent lots of time on have gotten marginally less traffic than quick spur of the moment videos. His examples: Chocolate tasting vs Egg peeling vids. Egg peeling has ~2.5 million views, his biggest hit and least amount of time spent.
23:00 – No video only posts. Have value added text below the video. Text spreads quickly and sticks around (gets indexed).
23:50 – StumbleUpon: cheapest source of traffic and works well. (I feel like Tim is an investor in SU but he didn’t mention anything about that so I’m probably off base. That said, I’ve heard lots of people say nothing but good things about SU traffic.)
24:30 – Don’t chase news. Write evergreen topics that will stand the test of time.
24:50 – Where to get good photos. Flickr > advanced search > select creative commons > sort by most interesting
25:05 – Comments: The Living Room Method
26:15 – Your blog is like your house/living room. Keep it clean. Poor etiquette? You’re out. Tim utilized a zero-tolerance policy against negativity and attacks.
26:45 – Save good blog comments in Evernote. ~10% of comments should be good enough for future posts in their own right.
27:07 – Comment rules at top (end of post, before comments) and bottom (after comments) to encourage quality comments. Also to discourage using keywords and URLs in posts which looks like spam and will get deleted.
30:08 – Thing Big But Play Often. Take Fun Seriously!
30:40 – Listen to people who’ve done it. That is, if you want a successful blog take advice from people who have successful blogs.
Q&A section of presentation
34:52 – How Tim Manages Twitter
– Doesn’t use desktop app
– 10-15 minutes on @replies
– Follows a minimum of people. Currently ~140.
– Uses Greasemonkey script to view multiple pages at the same time. i.e. no need to click at the bottom of twitter to get more posts.
– Open each link in a new window because when you click home Twitter takes you back to the top of the home.
– Go into Twitter with a specific purpose.
– If you’re wasting time but you’re having fun you’re not wasting time. That doesn’t mean you’re being productive though.
39:00 – Brand blog in broad terms so you can write about multiple topics. Tim’s blog isn’t just about the Four Hour Workweek even though that’s the domain. He branded it as Experiments in Lifestyle Design.