How I Helped Make a Bland Blog an Overnight Success
Written by Glen, this post has 65 Comments
A few months ago something was bothering me quite a lot. One of my best friends, Diggy, was implementing all of the traffic methods I recommend to grow a blog and was seeing results, but not the kind of results he really deserved for his efforts.
He writes in the same niche as I did when I grew PluginID to 6,500 subscribers, so my traffic advice was both relevant and from experience. For a while I couldn’t work out why his site wasn’t growing as it should’ve been, but a few hours after sitting down and inspecting the blog, I had a large checklist of suggested improvements that have really taken Upgrade Reality to the next level.
After implementing my suggestions, he quickly passed the 1,000 subscribers mark, which is a great achievement in any industry. Now that a few of the issues he had are in my awareness, I’ve been noticing them more frequently around the web.
It’s very possible that your own blog is having the same problems that Diggy’s blog was, too. It’s not that you can’t grow your site – because even ugly blogs with no about page can gain an audience – it’s just that you could probably be getting better results (more subscribers, more sales, more pageviews) from your traffic generation strategy.
I’m going to share some of the exact suggestions that I gave to Diggy which can literally transform your blog overnight and hopefully help you start seeing similar results to those of Upgrade Reality.
Tell Your Story As Quickly As Possible
My sites don’t just grow through mentions of me online; they grow through people talking about me offline as well. I know this because I’ve met a number of readers in person, and many of them said that’s how they found me. Everybody has a great story. In the blogging world you just need to make it obvious, quickly, so people can share it.
I may be wrong, but if you check your analytics stats right now, one of the most naturally clicked pages on your site is your about page. Besides your articles, that’s the first place most visitors will go. If someone is giving you their time by clicking on your site, make sure your about page is compelling enough to keep their attention.
With PluginID, I made it very clear that I was an 18 year old who moved to South Africa (where I didn’t know one single person), worked in the rat-race for 18 months and now make a living online. Putting my ego aside, that’s a great story to have. As I know Diggy personally, I know he has done some amazing things, yet I had to read through 700 words of text just to find out what they are.
Even the most loyal and dedicated blog readers aren’t going to read every single word that you write so why expect first time visitors to do so? Diggy owned and ran a supermarket at 18, runs a very successful internet business and he gets to work from home full-time. That’s a great story to have, so my suggestion to him was to simply make it clearer.
You don’t have to use bullet points like we have, but get your main message across quickly. Feel free to expand on it if people want to read more, which some will, but don’t expect everyone has time to search for why they should read your blog.
Even if don’t think your story is impressive (it probably is) or something people want to share, at least be honest with your aims for the site and why you’re building it.
Keep It Clean, Stupid
I don’t mean that you shouldn’t swear on your blog – after all, my about page is called What the F***? – but by keeping it clean I’m referring to your design. After I installed a new theme for Diggy, he soon began to fill it with ads, unattractive tables, and irrelevant images that didn’t fit in with the rest of the site.
I’m not going to claim I’m a great designer and nor do you have to be, but you can probably tell when your site is cluttered. This idea is a play on the saying K.I.S.S (Keep It Clean Simple Stupid) but it’s clearly aimed at your design, rather than the messages in your content or your story.
I’m one of the few people who doesn’t monetise their blogs but I have absolutely nothing against people who do. In fact, I would rather people made their living through blogging and doing something they love, rather than doing things that they hate. However, if your ads are currently just making you a few bucks per month, it might be a good idea to take them down until your audience grows.
Other bloggers will have their own views on this, so go with your own gut feeling. In the case of Upgrade Reality, there were a few random ads that weren’t really relevant to the site content and hadn’t made money, so they weren’t worth keeping.
The main reason to keep your site clean is so that you can make it clear what you want your visitors to do. If you like ViperChill, I simply want to help you read more content. That’s it. That may be in the form of subscribing to the RSS feed and getting future updates or clicking on a post in the right sidebar.
My goal is not to get you to buy something, click on an affiliate link or even share my posts (although that is a nice benefit). If your site is in the growth stages, then I imagine that my goal of helping people find more of my work is going to align closely with you. Making Upgrade Reality much cleaner gave readers less distractions and made his great content the main focus.
Improve Your Writing 100x With This Tip
I have a confession to make: I absolutely hate the way I write. I’m not saying this so you’ll leave a comment and tell me otherwise; I just genuinely feel like I struggle with this aspect of my life. However, whether that is true or not, I have been able to build successful blogs without being the greatest writer or excelling at English in school.
In other words, I don’t feel like my writing is holding me back. Diggy has some great lessons to share and he really does want to help people through his blog, but he admits that his writing ability is something that he can work on. The only way I became better at writing is by reading more books and writing more, so I believe he’s on the path to improve as well.
One tip I gave him, which has helped me greatly, was to simply read your blog posts out loud. It may feel stupid, and you might not think that anyone actually does this, but I really do. Not only does it help you notice when you repeat words a lot, but you also find that some sentences simply don’t make any sense, even though they looked fine when you were reading the article in your head.
For every article that I write, I first read it over 2-3 times (which can take quite a while, as I write a lot) and then run it through Microsoft Word which helps me spot spelling and grammar mistakes. Usually, my mistakes involve repeating words multiple times, using commas when a semi-colon would be better and missing the space after a full stop. It takes two minutes to do this check and it can teach you things at the same time.
To reiterate: you do not have to be the greatest writer in the world (or even close to it) to succeed at blogging. I don’t think I write particularly well, I just think people enjoy the value that I share. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Just don’t let your writing be a hindrance from the awesome content that you’re (hopefully) putting out.
Don’t Make People Think
If you think people have short attention spans in day-to-day life then realise that’s nothing compared to how quickly we want to move on to the next thing on the internet. I’m well aware that as soon as some people visit this site and see how long the articles are, they click away, probably never to return.
This doesn’t bother me though; mostly because the people who come here and do find a topic they want to read about generally find one of the best resources on that subject available. I put a lot of work into my articles and that is why they are long, but it serves as both a drawback and a benefit.
On a lot of blogs, it’s very clear what a website is about. For example, any article here tells you that I write about internet marketing. On Diggy’s site, things weren’t as clear. Instead of having him re-brand the whole site or add a summary in the sidebar like a lot of people, we made a simple tweak.
Under his logo I suggested he add the words ‘Self Improvement’ which tells you instantly what his site covers. This change literally took 30 seconds and has had a noticeable increase on the time that people spend on his site.
View Your Site Through Fresh Eyes
There were a few “problems” with Upgrade Reality which were very obvious to me, but weren’t so clear to Diggy because he sees the site everyday. Over time you become blind to this sort of thing. This is similar to how many of us don’t notice ads on websites, especially the ones in Google search results; we initially see but then ignore them so often that they may as well not be there.
An early suggestion I gave was to ensure his post titles showed in full. The theme he used automatically cut off words once the character count reached a certain point, so most of the time people wouldn’t even know what they were going to read without clicking on the link. Obviously, this isn’t good.
As Diggy is not a graphic designer (few people are, not excluding myself) he also had quite a few images on the site which were stock or clipart photos which often looked either too corporate and cookie-cutter or just very different from the rest of the site. I thought that the clipart ones especially made his site look less trustworthy and more for a younger audience, even though that was not the case.
Upon removing some of these, his site instantly looked 10 times better. Finally, there was something about his feed subscription box which just didn’t look right. We implemented a style that was similar to PluginID, and also changed his chicklet from yellow to red, to match the rest of his site.
Just like with ViperChill, I recommended that he put a bright coloured chicklet in his top navigation as this will catch people’s attention and social proof that comes with it is one of the best ways to grow your audience. If two sites looked exactly the same, would you subscribe to the one with 1,000 subscribers or the one with just 100?
Look over your own site and try to critique it, even if you’re happy with it. I’m sure there are quite a few things about this site you could tell me you would change. If you’re struggling, ask a friend to go over it and pose a question similar to “If you had to change 3 things about my design, what would they be?”
Is your text easy to read in different browsers? Should the font size for your headings be larger? If someone wants to subscribe, is it easy for them to do so? If a visitor wants to find more of your content, how many clicks does it take? A few small changes can make a huge difference.
Decide On Which Way You Want to Help Your Audience
There are successful blogs in thousands of separate niches and you can bet they have thousands of different aims. Gadget blogs, for example, might just want to give people a quick summary of a product to help them decide if it’s worth the purchase. ICanHasCheezburger owner Ben Huh wants to bring humor into peoples daily lives.
At ViperChill, I want to help people build successful websites and (if they want) make a living online, allowing them to quit their day job. My main aim, though, is to help people build remarkable websites which provide some form of value. The industry they do that in and the type of website they build is pretty much irrelevant to my interests.
Because I have this aim, I can build a laser-targeted community who wants to read the advice I’m giving and I can keep providing relevant content to their needs. As Upgrade Reality is a personal development blog, there are literally thousands of different topics that Diggy could write about.
Although he doesn’t have to write about anything specific, I recommended that he at least have a focus on what he wants to help people with in each of his articles. With PluginID, my aim was to help people live the lives they wanted to live. Again, the specifics of how they want to live didn’t matter, as long as my content was fulfilling that interest.
Diggy told me that he wants to help people make the most of life and get past the society imposed self-limiting beliefs we each face. Now his content is far more targeted to his community and people are getting a lot more value out of his writing.
Has this post helped you find changes you can make to your own blog?
Hey Glen!
I’m honored that you wrote a case study about Upgradereality! It really looks 100x better with all your tips and suggestions, thanks a million bro
No problem.
Just put my $ op de tafel
(Had to throw that in somewhere haha)
There are some great tips here, and I’ll reread this post later. One thing I noticed is that after my last redesign, my goal traffic has grown exponentially, even on old posts. The traffic comes from SU and I think is because of the text links I have at the end of each post.
That’s awesome Oscar.
I noticed a large increase in pageviews since removing my categories in the sidebar and adding a link to popular posts.
Great to have you over here, as always!
Glen, totally agree with you.
Some people focus too much on designing & putting all the ‘fancy widget’ that the site get cluttered. I love simple design myself. Which has been used for all the sites I’ve designed. My principle is: the design shouldn’t take people away from the content and/or get too cluttered that information/content cannot be consumed easily.
This won’t get people admire our design. But we don’t aim for that. We want our content to get across, don’t we?
Book, you changed your name?
That’s a great point. It really hit me when I sent a link of a blog I liked to a friend and he replied “What do they want me to do? There’s just too much going on.”
I see that in a lot of sites so try to keep my own simple.
Exactly
Great success story…but I think it needs a new theme. Especially now that its hitting the 1000 subscriber mark
I guess that depends on what you like in a design.
I think his site looks great (and I didn’t make nor choose the theme).
Glen
Great advice as ever dude. I like Diggy’s site a lot anyway, and use both of your sites as inspiration for my own.
I’ve bookmarked this and am gonna go through it properly later on, implementing the changes and thanking the Good Lord for another powerful post. Boom!
Great insight here! I have literally JUST started my blog and have a ton of work to do. You’ve make me rethink my “About” page strategy. I was going to do one about the website itself, and a separate one about me, but I think I need to combine the two. Or at least follow your advice and get to the point quickly.
A great place to go for photos is Flickr. You can use a ton of images there as long as you provide credit information and they are really unique. If photos are dragging your pages down, this might be helpful.
Lastly, knowing how important design is, I recently bought the Thesis theme which allows you to customize pages really easily — so you can create a unique look without much knowledge of CSS or HTML. Though I haven’t really started that process yet, I’m hoping it makes life easy. Most of the existing themes out there–to me–feel overused.
Thanks for sharing this! It’s funny because I just found and subscribed to Upgrade Reality this week! So I guess I’m proof that your strategies worked!
Excellent post, as always and I can’t really say I am surprised to find the information I was looking for this morning on your blog. I am in the very start of my own project and these tips will be used.
Thank you!
Glen, let me preface this comment by saying that I’m a fan of your work, a buyer of Cloud Living and a regular reader of this blog (as well as PluginID when it was yours)…
There’s some good advice here, but I have to question the ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots of UpgradeReality – are they genuine or doctored to illustrate a point? I ask because I’ve also been a reader of UpgradeReality for some time and I don’t remember it looking that bland, especially with the Charles Shultz post that only just went live.
I’m ready to accept I may be wrong, but I (and probably your other readers) would appreciate some honesty here otherwise it would draw into question some of your other claims. I know it’s picky, but UpgradeReality doesn’t have over 1000 subscribers as anyone who looks at the FeedBurner stats and has followed Diggy’s quest on Twitter will know.
I look forward to your response…
Hey Mark,
Yes the images are genuine – I’m not sure why you think I would make it up. Sadly there wasn’t a version of Upgrade Reality available in the wayback machine so for a few minutes I asked Diggy to re-activate his old theme (that is why the sidebar is the same).
I was probably one of his first readers as we are good in real life friends (that’s the back of his head, at my place on Sunday: http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs472.snc3/25893_344396902543_613882543_3624639_1123245_n.jpg) so have been helping him from the start.
Finally, feedburner fluctuates like crazy on a daily basis. The day after a blog post shows the most accurate stats. You can read feedburner support guides online to find out why.
Thanks for the reply Glen. I’m a relative WordPress newbie so hadn’t realised that you could reactive an old theme to accurately show the ‘before’ and then switch it back. I couldn’t think of a reason why you’d make it up, but it didn’t look like the UpgradeReality site that I’d been reading for a short while – so I thought I’d ask. And, as you’re a genuine person, there was a genuine explanation. Much appreciated.
Enjoy your tennis!
No problem.
Thanks for your honesty
P.S. If there’s anything else you wish to question, feel free to ask – but I’m going out for an hour or so and will get back to you then
I remember that theme on upgrade reality, it was july-august last year.
Hey Mark..
May I ask why you’re no longer a reader of PluginID anymore? I’d love to have you as a reader man.
You didn’t read his comment properly.
Nothing personal Bud, I just went on a bit of an RSS diet!
Thanks for all of the great comments!
I’m heading out to play Tennis for an hour but I’ll get back to all of the questions / replies when I get back
Dude – good Sheesha in the pic.
I like yo’ style dawgs
I agree with this. I don’t know what Diggy’s blog looks like, but I’ll have to pop over there to have a look.
You shouldn’t be to hard on yourself. You write well. I’m a former English teacher and I still make mistakes in writing/editing etc. I always find your blog posts clear and easy to follow. If you or Diggy need any advice, I would be happy to help in that regard. (I don’t know a lot about the other aspects of monetizing blogs).
Now I get why you’re always spotting my mistakes (which I appreciate)!
Thanks for the kind words Anne. Do you have any writing books that you would recommend?
Awesome case study. Love hearing these. I could probably use some work on my website as well. I’ll be switching over to a Thesis theme soon, and I’ll be doing my best to implement some of the ideas you talked about here such as creating a great About page, and making it easy for the readers to see exactly what the site is about quickly.
another amazing post
waiting for more
No pressure, eh?
Huh I have absolutely the same sheesha but I’m jealous of your terrace view
Haha, that stuff is bad for you man.
Cherry tastes the best though
glen, your blog is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs. I even managed to struggle through this post (not your fault) at 930 am in NYC with no sleep. Admittedly im trying to stay awake so I dont miss my flight this afternoon, but still, I doubt I will be reading anything else today. bring on youtube
I’ve been a “lurker” at Diggy’s site since God knows when, but I do remember the old theme. The changes that have been made seem to be for the better, but like Anthony, not much a fan of the theme. I”m using a free theme myself and I need to move on from that.
992 subscribers? Close enough to 1000. Congrats Diggy!
As I mentioned above, Feedburner fluctuates. His actual numbers are higher as you will see tomorrow.
Thanks for the comment, Moon!
Diggster!
Congrats on the changes man. I remember when I
first saw the update I thought ‘Dang, now that looks
slick!’
Nice one Glenster!
Glen. Awesome post as usual. It’s been really great to see Diggy’s blog change over the past few months. Something tells me he’s close to the “tipping point.”
He deserves it.
Agreed.
This is just the beginning for him
Very informative article, Glen, good job!
I noticed a similar thing recently. I spent one whole day playing around with my website design until I finally got it a way I liked it (I had to learn quite a few things in GIMP in the process). When I finished and looked at my blog, I thought “Yeah, now THAT looks good!”
Also, as you noticed, I virtually copied… ummmm… some random successful blog’s “subscribe” box and under-post thingy
Definitely better reader conversions now! At this rate, I’ll bust through the 1000-subscriber mark within a week or two!
Thanks Vlad,
I don’t mind people using my styles here and there, but actually using my images that I made myself is taking things a little too far. It is illegal, but I won’t do anything about it.
Congrats on the increase
The only image I stole from you was the one saying “Subscribe (RSS – Email)”, but you’re right, I shouldn’t have done that.
I’ll probably change it a bit more soon anyway. I spell “e-mail” with a dash
I’ve never thought of reading my posts out loud. Great idea. Love what you did for Diggy!
Hey Glen,
One of your phrases: “I’m well aware that as soon as some people visit this site and see how long the articles are, they click away, probably never to return.”
I want to say, that I agree with you, when you say “some”. However I believe that there are thousands of others who read it from top to bottom. Please keep writing for these people.
Personally I must say THANK YOU for sharing your experience. It helps me a lot.
Hey Paul,
Great domain name.
I definitely don’t plan on changing my strategy here, mostly because it isn’t a strategy. I feel like I can only provide the true value I want to when I put together big, detailed posts like this.
Thank you for visiting and leaving a comment.
Aight Glen, Nice post again (just wrote a quick post about your site today)
Keeping things simple is the thing that I feel people lack these days. There are so many funky new wordpress plugins that arrive everyday meaning that people are neglecting their content and clogging their sidebars and posts with confusing junk.
Get back to basics people. Look at zenhabits for example.
Great article mate – I’m looking to launch my own blog within the coming weeks and I’m aiming to keep it nice and simple (no ads especially) to aim the reader at the content. Thanks again!
Hey James,
Awesome! Make sure you come back and let me know how things are going with it
You’re welcome.
What a good friend you are and thanks for sharing it with us too. Better have another look at my about page – I tweak it often!
In the past I’ve been doing my part to help Diggy find success as well. It’s great to have some other bloggers to watch your back and help you make it faster. I think you can be more successful as part of a team than when operating alone. I’ve emailed Diggy with some typos Ijust spotted and questioned why there are currently 2 RSS counters on the site. Of course he should be proud of the count but showing it twice seems a bit OTT….
I often give people a few pointers if I read a blog I like but it looks dodgy. I think if we help each other out like this we can start to make the blogosphere look brilliant, not blah.
My blog has never had the benefit of a professional graphic designer but now I’ve nearly reached my target of 1000 susbscribers I’m about to splash out on it. I want to differentiate my blog for other simple minimalist style blogs by having a cool, stylish minimal design rather than a boring one. Looking forward to switching things up and hoping it will help me convert more new readers into subscribers.
Oh and Glen, I’ve told you before I think your writing is excellent and part of the reason for your success so can you stop fishing for more compliments on that:) You’re doing a fab job. Many thanks.
Hey Annabel,
I’ve always appreciated your feedback. I spoke to Diggy about the multiple counters and he said he is probably going to take one down (I suggested the red one). The yellow may stand out a little, but that’s its job. You don’t show your feed count if you don’t want people to see it.
Haha, definitely not fishing for compliments, but thanks!
I find it interesting that at the end of your posts your two chosen social media links are for Delicious and Twitter. You must find that the most effective for your blog.
Hey Bamboo,
Very random
. I found most people using those services even when I didn’t link to them, so I just decided to make the process easier.
Seems to me to be just a little too wide for comfortable reading. Most advice on website writing is to keep it a little narrower than book reading. yours is much wider than that, and some people might have difficulty hitting the next line on the return. A hair bigger on the type would also make it a little easier to read. I’m ninety years old, so maybe I’m prejudiced. ):=))
Are you really 90 years old?
Seems to me to be just a little too wide for comfortable reading. Most advice on website writing is to keep it a little narrower than book reading. yours is much wider than that, and some people might have difficulty hitting the next line on the return. A hair bigger on the type would also make it a little easier to read. I’m ninety years old, so maybe I’m prejudiced. ):=))
P.S. How do you make a living online?
Hiya Glen,
Just wanted to let you know that you are one of my top-two favorite blogs to read right now (yours and Karol Gajda’s). Having subscribed to so many via RSS I finally gave up and quit checking my reader (overload). But your posts pop into my email (formatted beautifully) and I get all jazzed up, can’t wait to read them. Oh, the internet, it’s new again!
Your content has been helpful, specific & measurable (i.e. great steps I can actually follow), and your conversational style is great. Thanks for the tips once again.
What advice would you give to someone who’d love to blog, but is interested in way too many things to have one laser-focused theme? Something like, say, jackofalltrades-masterofnone.com? I’ve, uh, got a friend.
If you write your blog for everybody then you’re writing it for nobody. Which do you find yourself reading about the most?
Lately I find myself reading the minimalist and the productivity blogs, along with the SEO and how-to-blog blogs.
But I also have an interest in youth soccer coaching, tech, music, etc. Sounds like the key is picking a topic you love, finding a unique approach, and going with it. Thanks for provoking my thought process on this.
Did you create your own blog or did a program do it? Could you please respond? 66
I use Wordpress – you can create a free blog at Wordpress.com or download the software at Wordpress.org
A few of years ago I tried a bit of SEO. It took me a year to make $0.98. Last month I started a new site and following some of your advice I’ve already made $1.20. Not much, but I’m very encouraged, thanks. Simple, clear, free advice is hard to find and I’m very grateful for yours. Without you I would never have been able to make the small tweeks to code that have quickly helped to increase my rankings. Who said you can’t teach your granddad to suck eggs? How can I affiliate with you and sell your ebook?
The trouble I have with my blog(CameramanII) is coming up with new thoughts. I have plenty of thoughts that don’t seem appropriate for the blog, and so I stare at the page. I’ve never been much of a talker, so taking on the job of writing something new every day or so is daunting, to say the least. I wrote pretty much everything I had to say about the subject, and now I’m stuck. Maybe a suggestion or two? Thanks anyhow. (new ID=Fotogwriter)
Only stumbled across your blog yesterday (via PluginID which I found a couple days ago) and was blown away by the quality.
Killer content, I love case studies as they’re the best way to learn. The UpgradeReality site looks a lot better and will check that out too, now that you’ve linked to it.
Thank you Jason!
Yo Glen, marketing guru and all. Some have said the tipping point for a blog is around 1000 readers, would you agree with this?
Hey Jonny,
Around there, yes.
awwwwwwsomes.
and there i thought diggy snapped out of the yuck version and into the fresh magic one all by himself
supremo respek to you and diggy. his site is looking million times better.
reading what you write out loud is awwwsome writing tip. always read it to myself “out loud in my head”, if that makes any sense. sometimes i spend 1hour+ on a single paragraph, just choosing the best words and phrasing. it’s so clear. just re-reading this paragraph, which i wrote in like 20 seconds, it’s clear how mashed up it is if i rush it compared to taking it slow and putting in the effort. and it shows in the final result. big time.
i like your writing. i think it fits your content. to the point and dripping value. i don’t think it’d make any sense to remix the actual words you use or anything like that glenzo. maybe just making it all more succinct and to the point. try, just as an exercise, taking one of your superlong posts and making each paragraph into a sentence. i first did that when i turned an essay i wrote into a speech and just wanted to have key sentences from which to expand. most peeps write the other way around – they write one sentence for their key point and then fill it out. but they land up writing too much and wasting everybody’s time – and attention. kinda like i’m doing now
super respekt. on all of it. this site is looking moneymoneymoney.
a
Hi,
I have the same problem, its my writing skills. They are bad. I use to ask my wife to help me with editing part, but now shes got her own blog and spends her time marketing it and working to make hers better. So I only get her help when I am guest posting. But since I have started blogging my writing skill have improved.
As for the rest of your tips. I will keep in mind and have someone else look it over and see if they can catch anything that is out of place so I can fix it.
your advice has given me things to definitely look at and thing about.i intend to get a new theme soon,i will have to read this again when i start setting it up.
i always read my post,it helps me write in a conversational tone..it really works