Dirty Blogging Tricks
Even when you just start a blog you can use this or that dirty trick that will allow you to get rich quick make your blog more successful.
I compiled a clean list of dirty tricks that may propel your blog to the next level.
Of course I use these dirty blogging tricks successfully myself ever since I started a blog in 2004!
Do not display a date on top of your postings and write for eternity: People don’t read yesterday’s news. It’s even a proverb!
Also people coming from Google will not read your articles when the first thing they notice is that they are already some months or years old.
Many blogs are more topical than newsworthy anyway, so do not engage in the race to be the most current one.
Link to new blogs: Many new bloggers often are not really recognized by the community.
Nobody knows them, even if they publish content that is much better than the established blogs.
Not yet known bloggers are thankful for every link and are more likely to notice that you link them in the first place than so called influencers or a-list bloggers.
While well known bloggers are too busy to befriend you, new bloggers will eventually grow in scope and reach and probably remain your friends.
Do not befriend everybody: Write for your tribe! Many people and also bloggers tend to try to make everyone happy.
You will surely notice that many people and things really suck on the Internet. Don’t try to write for everyone and their mom!
Thus do not hesitate to speak out and be true to yourself, especially when facing nonsense.
Many others who have to be friendly and endure will be grateful that you are speaking out on their behalf.
Do not display ads on your blog: Unless you really have significant traffic like thousands or even million of visitors daily, do not use ads on your site.
You won’t earn much with display ads. You may be able to pay your hosting or make even less but you will scare off many visitors.
Those who stay won’t take you seriously if your blog is full of ads. Especially Google Ads make your blog look like SPAM unless you are really outstanding.
Affiliate links my be different but only in case you really are useful or peddle the things you promote in the editorial part of the content which may ostracize intelligent people.
Be ridiculous: Nobody will believe you from the start that you’re an authority! Why should anybody even listen to you?
The first 3, 6, 12 or even 24 months you need to act ridiculously – at least a little to even get noticed. Of course don’t be ridiculous all the time! Make it count.
By now everybody who at least once visited this blog’s about page or my social media accounts knows that I’m the guy with the ridiculous turban hat for example.
So why would I wear a turban when I’m not a Muslim? It it because I’m a dirty old man?
Well it helps you to stand out for sure! Also I like looking like Aladdin. It’s the perfect metaphor!
You Dirty Scoundrel!
Now you see, you dirty little scoundrel: you can make your hands dirty without tainting your white hat.
This is the way the modern attention economy works.
- outdated
- average
- me too
- pushy
- conventional
content is often boring and gets ignored. When you want to stand out as in outstanding you need to use some dirty tricks from the start!
Don’t be afraid to get your hand dirty! Blogging might be an intellectual task but creativity is not about playing safe.
That’s an interesting idea about not putting dates on posts. What if the article is sort of timeless though? As in, it doesn’t lose relevance with time?
Well Skellie, exactly! Just take your articles. Most of them are not news but timeless rules of online publishing, usability and content creation. So who cares for a date? In fact a date only makes it less likely that a first time visitor will read them.
Most normal websites that serve no news do not display dates. So you assume that the contents are still valid when you find them.
This “no dates” idea is interesting. I don’t break news on my blog, so I guess it doesn’t matter when articles are written. Good thoughts.
So do you think it would be a good idea to keep dates on the main page (to show new visitors it is current) but remove them from post pages so search engine visitors don’t know the content is old?
The only thing is… I don’t get many search engine visitors, because I’m terrible at SEO (and I also think it’s hard to use keywords for my topic). But I guess that’s an unrelated problem ;).
Skellie: You do not get many visitors via Google because your blog is relatively new and you do not have many focused links yet. So it’ll change in the future.
Your idea is interesting. It depends on the type of content I guess, some things like “New WordPress 2.2 Is Out” age very quickly so a date would help people to know that 2.2 is not the newest version if they read it, say, in 6 months from now.
I guess the best way to add dates is to do it manually at the bottom of the post. Do it if you think it helps your visitors and don’t add where it probably scares people off for no reason (as your blogging tips are timeless).