5 Things I Wish I Had Done/Known About When Starting The Three Rs

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Written by: Scott

Hey guys. Another list today, because everyone loves how easy lists are to read! As we quickly approach our thousandth (and possibly last ever) post, I thought I'd share some knowledge I wish I woulda known and employed when first contributing to this blog.

1. Image 'Alt' Tags

This is something I still fail to do. Basically, every image uploaded to the blog should have an accompanying 'alt' tag, which describes the picture. Why? It increases the chances that it'll get picked up by the many image searches on the Internet, and therefore boost view counts of the site.

2. The Value Of Search Engine Optimisation

Although this kinda ties into the first point, its always important to realise the importance of getting shown up on a search engine. This ranges from appropriate post titles, to linking to other parts of the site from the past. It also makes the place a damn sight easier to navigate around too.

3. Should Have Networked More

This blog almost has a thousand posts, but hardly any comments and not nearly enough views compared to other sites our age. There are multiple reasons for this, some of which are featured in this list. Moreover, our lack of marketing has really shown through towards the end. The main problem is that we only publicised what we cared about. For Dee, it was Lost. For me, it was World of Warcraft. For Thor, it was Asylum films. These three things made us popular, especially when we were willing to swallow our pride and plaster links back to the relevant posts everywhere. Unfortunately, Lost was only weekly, almost everything in WoW is covered by the bigger sites and the Asylum were occasionally skittish about sending us films. This is why we never stuck to one particular niche, but that meant we spent a lot of the time posting and no time publicising.

4. Selling Ads Is Essential

Advertising was always a strange topic with us. Anyone who had the gall to advertise with The Three Rs took a huge risk. Some days we didn't get any hits at all. Some days we got 55,000 views (thanks ABC!). If your product wasn't focused towards our audience, then you would lose out massively. That didn't mean we didn't try new ways to sell advertising, though. Although it ended with a nasty confrontation with a certain other site who were adverse to our methods, yet still advertises on 4chan and JJ.am [both not safe for work, folks!]. The point is that finding advertisers would have been easier if the blog had been niche-focused, but often I'd e-mail random companies with little more than a wordy way of saying 'er... hi? Wanna advertise on our site? Sorry for cold-calling. Peace!'. I have absolutely no idea how to sell ads in real life, but I'd really like to learn. I believe if the blog would have provided a constant stream of income, we all would have been more willing to post on a daily basis.

5. Update Frequently

Even with the whole 'Updated Daily' thing in our banner, the blog still failed to stop sporadically updating. Sometimes we'd have three posts in one day. Sometimes we'd have none. If a site fails to post new content on a regular basis, then it stops getting viewers. I think this became our major problem. There was a time where we had at least seven writers supposedly posting, but barely three wrote new material more than once a month. Motivating people is always a problem, especially if you can't pay them frequently.

Hopefully any aspiring bloggers will take these points and learn from them, just as we will.

Labels: Lists, Randomness, SEO

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Article Posted: Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 18:16.
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