I’ve had this discussion with a few other bloggers - it’s a damn shame that the market drives us to produce “cotton candy content.” On my personal blog I finally made the choice to forgo all of that lucrative linkbait traffic and stick to writing stuff that I find compelling. The response has been a decrease in traffic, which I expected, but I’ve found that I’m getting comments more consistently from readers.

I’ll forgo the social media votes, I’ll forgo the traffic, but if I can get one or two people to read what I have to say at a deep level and then have them give me some feedback, then that means a lot more to me. Might not mean a big boost in RSS subscribers overnight, but having something unique to say and having an audience who appreciates that uniqueness for what it is means a lot.

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a while now. It seems like everyone is offering the same dozen ways to pave the road to glory. It’s disheartening. I just want to write. I don’t want to draft list after list, and as nice as it would be to get to the front page of Digg, I don’t want to be anyone other than me to get there.

Hopefully, since everything in life seems to be cyclical, this won’t be too much different. The internet is supposed to be about every voice getting out, and the best ones rising to the surface; not the same hundred things said in a thousand different ways.

I’d like to step forward and say it. I. AM. A. COMMENT. WHORE.

I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the lines I found myself making comments that don’t move the conversation of the post forward. (You can look at the comment I made about quicksilver earlier this month on this site.) It seems like people want to be part of electronic cacophony of the internet so bad that they don’t take the time to think about why and what they they put in the cloud.

I started reading Big Contrarian via Gruber too. I agree 100% with your thoughts Merlin!

It’s your fault—guys like you and chairman Gruber are living the dream. Like Jack says, to be paid to write about things you enjoy—it doesn’t seem to get much better.

Not sure I’d pee on the table though.

funnily enough I agree with much of what Jack writes when it comes to blogging out of passion rather than blogging out of a desire to grow rich.

The thing is that as one of the ‘infomercial’ blogs that he mentions I am blogging about my passion - blogging and communication and have encouraged others to do the same on countless occasions.

Starting with what YOU are about when you start a blog is the best advice I think any new blogger could be given.

“Write well, write often, and write with passion.”

“If you’re worth reading, someone will read you. If you’re worth watching, someone will watch you. If you’re worth hearing, someone will listen.”

These are the parts of what Jack’s written that stand out to me as ringing most true to me as a blogger - to a point.

I admire and embrace the sentiment and have found it to be true - to a point.

I look at 43Folders for example and while at it’s core is amazing content that you’re obviously passionate about - I also see a blogger who is willing to put himself out there and interact with people in different forums and via different mediums (Video with Leo L, Speaking at companies, conferences, Twitter, Vimeo, Flickr etc). I also see a blog that has obviously invested into branding and marketing itself (and it’s founder) brilliantly.

None of these things make it bad - but all of them helped to build this blog. At it’s heart is the mantra of “Write well, write often, and write with passion.” - but I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s more involved in building an audience than simply great writing - at least that’s my experience.

Just my two cents worth.

I really appreciated the gist of this post too. Being clear on your purpose and passion is key, and a good reminder for me. Maybe that is one reason so many people do go for recycled, unoriginal content and digg oriented lists is that being seen is their passion; rather than having a passion that will being seen will result from. And let's face it. No matter how hard we work, not everyone is going to end up being the next Merlin Mann.

I'm coming at this whole blogging thing another direction. I already have an established business. The blogging began as a way to communicate with clients outside the consulting room, and provide similar content to others who are interested out there. Drawing and maintaining a readership has become a way to make my website more visible so that when local parents are looking for me on google, they're more apt to find me. Now I don't have to pay Google for ads to bring the traffic to me. That's a small and rewarding success in itself.

I do like what Darren added to the mix here. I think there are additional complexities to bringing in the readers beyond "if I write from the heart, they will come," though that certainly has some truth heft to it, which it's sounding like we're all resonating with here to one degree or another. Frankly its nice just to hear what people who do this stuff are wrestling with as they go about finding their way.

Terrific post. Am glad Darren posted in the comments, as what’s described in Tacky is pretty much exactly why I stopped reading Problogger.

It’s the current cultural state of the internet. We see it in forums, ad hoc blogs, and [insert web two-point-waste-of-time service]. Would this have gone on or even be considered acceptable in 1995? Possibly, but it didn’t because of accessibility limitations and shallow monetary gains. People tend to lose their hat at the thought of getting rich quickly.

Until the users of the internet begin to hold themselves to a much higher regard in the way they act in public, I doubt we’ll see any change.

As an employee in the cheese-food manufacturing industry that is "pro blogging", posts like these always pique my interest. A couple of thoughts.

First, my impression of Shedd's original sentiment is that blogging about pro blogging is tacky, not pro blogging itself (which is what Merlin seems to be saying). It's true that many new-school blogs' marketing techniques can make a pre 2002 blogger's skin crawl (myself included). But blogging about blogging and pro blogging is not inherently tacky or badly done. It depends on the site. I'd like to see more bloggers lead by example and point out good examples (like Merlin has here with Shedd's blog) than do blanket indictments of all blogs that have gotten popular.

Having given this subject extensive thought (because it's involved in pretty much every editorial decision I make at Lifehacker), I wish more folks having this conversation would acknowledge that there are many facets to all of this. For example, it's unfair to say that list posts are written solely by lazy writers for dumb readers. (I love Merlin's 5ives site, for example--witty brainfood.) That appealing to the "lowest common denominator" is being a sell-out. That sticking to a particular topic on a web site is not being true to your multi-faceted artistic self or whatever.

The other way to look at it is this: there's a usefulness and nobility in making media accessible to people outside of the inner circle. In fact, some of the biggest successes in pop culture involve straddling the delicate line of mainstream appeal and niche in-the-knowness, helping new people discover a new genre, a new topic of interest. A list of informational points--a perfectly fine rhetorical device--is a great way to open the door and welcome someone in for this purpose. When you run a site like Lifehacker that publishes up to 20 posts a day, a weekly list that rounds up all the items on a theme is doing a service for one's readers, not link-baiting. (Now, the whole question of why a site's doing 20 posts a day at all is another issue. I think of us as a radio station--whenever you tune in, there's always something new playing.)

I'd like to see Shedd and Merlin and others cite and counter all the crappy blog marketing advice and traffic inflation tricks with specific examples of how to do it better. Folks who have been on the internet for a long time like them have honed a better sense of where the line between being a douchey marketer and being a real, thoughtful human online is, and a LOT of folks could really benefit from that experience.

Good points.

The hardest part for any blog though, no matter how good the content is, is building the initial base of readers.

Once you achieve critical mass, good content alone will be more than enough to promote the blog. Until then though, pimping or some other method of attracting your target audience is essential.

Mashedspud Green lasers rulz