Blog Content Manipulation - A Critique

Category likeness to » Blogging. Added to Authentic Society 42 years ago.

I'm surprised nobody has written a blog about content manipulation that takes place in a large number of blogs.

People who, on their blogs, make statement that content (the content) must be insightful or timeless in order to become a successful blogger are a dangerous breed. An idea can be a powerful tool. Once you soak it up into your sponge-like brain, it may be difficult to start making observations from any other point of view. All of a sudden, someone else's words make you believe that you must now write insightful or timeless content. The next question you will ask yourself is: How do I do that? And that's where the disaster begins for many people. They want to start writing insightful and timeless content having no experience, or being prepared, for such an endeavor. But they don't have any other ideas in their mind, and so, they hopelessly struggle to create great content with the firm belief that that will make them millionaires. If you feel like you are one of those people who constantly seek for the golden formula to make yourself rich, you suffer from immaturity. But I don't mean to say this in a condescending way. It could be a starting point of asking yourself the question, "What am I doing wrong?"

Those people, who say that you have to write timeless content, they are probably successful bloggers, yes. But when they say what you need to do, they only like to make themselves feel better, as if... it was them who have written timeless content in the past, and that makes them feel smarter about themselves. Do they really care about your success? Run away from the preachers, far away into the hills - to reconsider. For your belief in those statements is the ingredient of those people's success. These dishonest individuals, these pundits in disguise, these cowards. And they will breed. But you don't want to be a victim of their work, like a hopeless child seeking for information that once learned, cannot be applied in the real world, where even shitty web pages appear in top search engine results (time and time over again; timelessly?). For you are being a part of the scheme. How many more people can they fool? Let me ask you this. Did you become any more successful from the teachings of Steve Pavlina, or the content posted on ProBlogger.net? Because it seems to me that the rate at which their web-sites rise to the top of search engine results far supercede the rate at which the visitors, like you and me, learn from these sources of information and actually become successful at monetizing our blogs. Wait. Now you think this article is about how I was touched by the frustration and anger after following Steve's or ProBlogger's advice and not succeeding in the end. That didn't happen. I can tell you right away that Blog Carnivals or Bear Bombing had a zero effect on my life, my work, or the success of my own blog. And I am here to help you to become truely successful at whatever you do, be it blogging or any other endeavor. I want you to know the truth about the manipulation that goes under the veiled scene behind which Pavlina and Co. operate. This is chess, not checkers. This is about psychology, not blogging.

Are you, like thousands of others not succeeding at making money with your blog? Is it because you are not savvy enough to understand what these "authorities" say? Or is it, that the content posted on their blogs is not designed for you to be successful because it threatens their own reputation and website rank? If you were making over 1,000 dollars a day, would you want your visitors to reduce the odds of making that amount of money by explaining exactly how they did it and exactly what it took them to get there? Steve Pavlina's blog has been around for several years. Yet, his blog still appears as "#1" on the search results list for several keywords and phrases. Have none of his "students" achieved the same amount of success for years since Steve started his blog? Has Steve really been such a poor teacher that none of the over 2 million monthly visitors to his blog outdone his own success? I don't see any of his student's blogs as number 2, 3 (and so forth) in Google search results for the phrase Personal Development. Is Steve not telling you enough of what he knows in his authorative blogs on how to blog and generate revenue from your hard work? You decide.

I browse the Internet every day. And what do I see? I see people posting positive comments on pages that were created in one day. Collections of "the most popular", "the most phenomenal", "the best of the best", "the cream of the crop", "the absolute top 10". Without a drop of shame do the owners of these blogs post this horrid, unimportant and unusable content and populate the Internet with even more meaningless clutter. All because they want to make money with Google AdSense and affiliate programs. You have to decide whether you want to be like them, or you want to develop informational that has value. Information that attracts people.

What it takes to become successful at anything

Understand what it is you are doing exactly, and you will be successful at it. How many people can say they understand what it take to write a blog and make money with it? It seems to me that when it comes to listing the exact steps, nobody has an answer. Yet, it would be ridiculous to think that every niche and every blog operates by unique rules.

There is no secret in knowledge and experience

The first step that you have to do is to become knowledable about something. Increasing the amount of your knowledge comes at a price. The price is experience, time, effort, patience and hard work. But not any type of hard work. Working at a convenience store for 5 years is hard work, but it doesn't make you wealthy. You see, a cash-register job is a necessity. Do not do anything out of necessity with the hope of succeeding and being financially independent. Creating a blog and making money with it is not a necessity and is not a source of immediate income or a replacement for your daytime job. Do not quit your job to blog for money. If you are making that choice, you do not understand what it takes to become financially free by blogging and will soon learn about it through once you experience the negative consequences of your choice. You do not understand the amount of effort and time you need to dedicate to it to see a slight increase in your Google AdSense revenue. Steve Pavlina didn't become successful at blogging over night. He ran an Indenendent Computer Game Development website at which he was also successful. His current business is built on the knowledge he had gained over the past years as a successful Internet marketer and it appears that he is a little hesitant about explaining what it is that he knows that you don't know, or is simply incapable of putting it into a blog in a way that the average visitor understands. A person without experience cannot start writing a blog.

What it takes to obtain knowledge

I learn information from books. Learning from a book is the fastest way to learn. The human brain has a limited capacity to learn certain amounts of information. A person doesn't learn the entire content of a book by speed-reading through it in a day. A person learns by paying attention to the meaning of what the author of the book is writing about. We can refer to this as deliberate or focused practice. You must be able to want to learn what you are reading, or you will not remember it. Not many people are persistently curious and give up easily at consuming information but this is a crucial element of gaining enough information in order to be an authority of some sort on it. Learning is a cumulative process, and it is also an invisible and organic process - you cannot measure how much more you know after reading a book. Learning is a continuous process. If you want to succeed in your industry, you must pick up knowledge about it from every source available to you and you must do so on a daily basis. If you don't do this, someone else will, and they will be ahead of you. Steve Pavlina talks about the importance of learning from magazines or newspaper articles while commuting to work, or dedicating 5 to 10 minutes a day to do it.