I'm beginning to feel very discouraged with what the blogosphere is turning into for me.
Unless a blog is strictly a "doesn't care about driving traffic-to-itself-type" blog-- a personal journal with no ulterior motives other than to express themselves to any size audience--or no audience. Does anyone blog for that reason anymore? Or is it all about networking? Eyeballs landing on your pages, long-tailed posts, keywords, popular search terms, SEO, SERPs. All this business-stuff. Can't I just write? For pay or not? Apparently only if I don't care whether anyone reads what I've written.
Blogs that are interested in making money are looking cluttered with traffic-monitoring widgets. It makes my head spin thinking about what I should leave in, take out. With the predicted de-indexing this blog will cease to exist for most of the blogosphere so I'm trying to get good content up here. And be particular about my widgets. Sadly, the one I find most "clickable" is the one that I'll probably not be approved for and I'll have to take it down.
The very people who I was going to for information about what to do--"reading" is more accurate--with some commenting back and forth--are saying we have to strap ourselves in for this sea change with their mantra being write more good content. They say this and then add, "There's a lot of bad blog content out there." Well hell. I don't try to write bad content. Why click publish? Unless it is paid, is their response. Why bother to work on a paid post when the people paying--the advertisers--don't care what you write? The answer is simple. I care what I write. Me. That's who I write for even if it's paid content. I don't always do as good job as I'd like but why do I try to write something decent when I have a link elsewhere? Maybe so the reader will consider clicking the link. Maybe the advertiser doesn't care but the content on my blog is reflective of me.
I suppose after this rant what I'm really realizing is that many of so-called/self-styled experts are winging it almost as much as I am. This leads me to believe both that some of them know a lot less than what I was giving them credit for and conversely, sometimes I know more of some aspects of blogging than I'd realized. I suppose the sheer act of producing material for this blog has given me that. Experience. And with that, practical knowledge. And I should trust while being open to new information that I can implement it--or not--based my opinion of what's best. I've been busily doing every thing I can as I perceive the big G about to execute the final blow to Cyn City. But in truth it feels like little of it will matter. Content is King. That much I agree with. The rest--no matter who is saying it-- ultimately doesn't count for much.
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