Blogging is a “Massive Mistake”… HUH?
Written by Rosalind Gardner on April 28, 2008 · Comments (28)
Filed Under Newsletter, Make Money Online, Blogging ·
My jaw dropped as I saw the subject line of an email sent out by Ken Evoy last week which read:
Why Blogging Is A Massive Mistake!
HUH?
At one point Ken states “Blogging has reached lemming status. Without even thinking, many small businesses equate blogging with having a Web site“.
Sure, call me and the 112.8 million other bloggers out there ‘lemmings’, but at least we know that a blog IS a web site. Moreover, a blog is a web site that is built to find and deliver search engine traffic… immediately.
Ping - ping - PING!
For those who haven’t started blogging yet - a Wordpress blog is a site-building platform and content management system with an online publishing interface. And because Wordpress is distributed under an open source license called the GNU General Public License, it’s distributed free of charge.
Better yet, easy-to-install (or auto-install) widgets and plugins are regularly developed for Wordpress by legions of progammer/user/contributors who see ways to enhance the software’s already stellar functionality.
By the way, those widgets are also free of charge.
Ken also wrote that blogging is:
…obviously wrong for small businesses with something to sell” and is “also the wrong choice for infopreneurs (ex., those who earn affiliate and AdSense income, without selling anything directly to customers).
I sell a TON of information products, online services and retail goods both as an affiliate and a merchant and I’ve made more money since either totally converting or adding a blog component to my sites.
Ken also implies that there is a difference between theme-based content sites and blogs — “Theme-Based Content Sites develop and update the content into more complete, useful, cohesive articles, “Web pages.” A content page is the fundamental unit of a Theme-Based Content Site.”
Well… you know me.
I’m always on a rant about the importance of building theme-based content sites. So, now my themed sites just happen to ride on Wordpress blog platforms but they’re still theme sites.
With Wordpress you can build as many content pages as you like.
When you have static content or an article that you want to add, you just write is as a Page instead of a Post. Pages can be structured in a topical hierarchy as parent pages with ‘child’ pages and so on down the line.
Ken also talks about the stress of blogging and how traffic just dries up if you stop. Most people soon burn out from the never-ending “pressure to blog” and then really piles it on thick on his site with:
…if you don’t actually die blogging
Ya right.
The last time I blogged at NPT was on the 20th of April and without sending out any newsletters since or doing any PPC advertising, traffic to the site has been just shy of 2000 unique visitors daily.
Traffic to our little travel blog that doesn’t have a newsletter, Roamsters.com has averaged 200 unique visitors per day and I’ve posted only 6 times to it this month… 2 of which were queued up in advance.
Total time spent — about 30 minutes.
Ya, I’m SO stressed.
NOT! 
Anyway, if blogging was such a massive mistake or waste of time, I sure as heck wouldn’t have spent the last month developing the latest release of BlogClassroom with Anik Singal. Our pre-course blog has received over 1,000 comments in less than 14 days.
Blogging is HOT right now and it’s so easy to get started, there is no excuse for you to not have one.
Check out this short 8 minute video that Anik made for you that talks a bit more about what we have coming up tomorrow — Tuesday April 29th at 2 PM ET.
There are BIG bonuses involved.
‘Til next time, Blog and Prosper!
Cheers,
Ros
P.S. I LOVE blogging. I like it so much that nowadays when folks ask me what I do, I don’t say ‘author’, ’speaker’ or ‘consultant’. I say ‘I’m a blogger’.
You could say that too… just come visit us at Blog Classroom.
Popularity: 60% [?]
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Comments
28 Responses to “Blogging is a “Massive Mistake”… HUH?”
Patty Gale on April 28th, 2008 11:16 am
I completely agree, Rosalind. I received the same email from Ken and thought, “He’s got to be kidding”, or thought maybe it was just supposed to be an attention-grabbing subject line.
When I read through the email, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
Maybe Ken hasn’t quite figured out blogging, yet? lol
[Reply]
Alan on April 28th, 2008 12:03 pm
Hi Ros
Long time no speak although I read here all the time. Hope you are well on the road to recovery.
I had that email from Ken as well and was a little taken aback by his comments since I am in the process of converting a lot of my static html over the Wordpress (using Semiologic Pro).
I think the problem is that the vast majority of people do not understand how the humble blog has evolved over recent years. A blog is still seen by many as a personal diary type site when these days you can set up wordpress to do whatever you want it to do. After all, you are still making webpages whether they be posts or pages (that doesn’t really make a lot of difference either).
Because my sites are niche sites, they are simply content sites made with wordpress. Much the same as I was doing with Xsitepro but on a different platform with greater SEO benefits.
All my ‘posts’ are called articles and I tend to put affiliate offerings onto pages. I take the dates and all the other bloggy type things off of each article (or post) and it ultimately looks like a normal website that I can add new articles to when and if. Put up a new articles, ping the SE’s and more often than not, that new article is in the Google index within a matter of minutes sometimes. The post will normally stay in the index for a day or so and then disappear for a few days. It will then reappear within about a week.
Doing that with static html sites built with Xsitepro, it is always touch and go when those new articles would appear.
My only problem with Wordpress sites is the time they take to load when compared with static html sites but that is only due to the PHP building process which can slow down on a busy server but most of the time, even that is not such a big issue.
So, me - I build niche sites using Wordpress not blogs!!
Alan
[Reply]
Patty Gale reply on Monday, April 28, 2008 15:04 pm:
Alan,
I noticed you mention about the time it takes WP sites to load. A lot of that also depends on the plugins you may be using or any scripts that may take too long to load.
[Reply]
Alan reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 3:30 am:
Hello Patty
I know you from the XSP forum (provided you are one of the same!) although I don’t frequent it too often these days.
I use Semiologic Pro fro my Wordpress site building and although it has all the plugins included, there are a lot of them which I guess take time to load. Having said that, there was a problem came to light a little while ago whereby Wordpress continually checks for any updates but rather than do it once, it was doing it two or three times which meant a slow down especially if the Wordpress servers were in heavy use. Denis at Semiologic has modified the latest version to only do these checks at shut down rather than everytime the site is opened which has meant a huge improvement in loading/site opening speed.
Also, the loading speed issue is the reason that I put all my articles as posts and the affiliate offerings on to pages in wordpress. I have one script that pulls Ebay listings for the relevant niche. I used to list those at the bottom of the article pages but found that the loading speed took quite a dive for the worse whereas putting those listings onto seperate pages makes a world of difference.
Alan
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Monday, April 28, 2008 15:25 pm:
I’m doing great, thanks very kind for your well wishes.
You said it exactly right.. Wordpress is “platform with greater SEO benefits”.
I love that you mention how quickly Google indexes the pages. I always check too, and like you, find that it’s usually just a matter of minutes.
Anyway, glad to see that you’re speaking up now… with any luck, you’ll get a Gravatar and we’ll be able to see you too!
Cheers,
Ros
[Reply]
Cath Lawson on April 28th, 2008 12:41 pm
Hi Rosalind - I can’t believe Ken is saying this. He should be encouraging his readers to integrate blogs with Site Build It or something.
I know blogging can be time consuming, but as you’ve shown with Roamsters, you don’t even need to spend that much time. 200 uniques a day is pretty good for 6 blogposts a month.
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Monday, April 28, 2008 15:30 pm:
As always, thanks for stoppin’ by!
Ken does eventually get around to suggesting that folks can supplement their site with a blog, but that part of the message gets lost in a loooooooong page of heavy-duty blog, blogger and blog commenter bashing.
Cheers,
Ros
[Reply]
Robert on April 28th, 2008 14:17 pm
The Holy Cow!
Sounds like sour grapes! Perhaps the web community at SBI! has been asking for blogging software and Ken and friends are discouraging this practice.
Perhaps they have too much invested in tools for building static pages?
What about the Google sandbox for static web sites? Blogs get you indexed sometimes in a matter of days/hours instead of months.
On top of that, as Ros points out, you can appoint a static page as your home page, adding posts to fill out your site.
Blogs that get indexed RIGHT NOW!
Wow! Unbelieveable Dr. Ken…
Can’t wait to see how the rest of the internet community weighs in on this…
Dr.Ken’s got to know he’s opened a can of worms on this one…
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:00 am:
SBI does include a blogging component now. Hope the SBIers use it!
Ros
[Reply]
Emily Montgomery on April 28th, 2008 14:19 pm
Ros, I never thought I’d see the day when someone finally ripped Ken Evoy to shreds… just beautiful.
Ken must be feeling threatened because Site Build It is a royal POS. I tried building a site with it back in 2003, but when I realized I’d grow old and die before I could get an SBI page to update (and on a high speed connection), I dumped it for plain old vanilla html. Got myself a copy of Dreamweaver and never looked back.
And then Wordpress came along… heaven! Tableless layouts, endless customization, installs in a few minutes - and it’s free.
People everywhere must be finally figuring out that SBI is nothing more than well-marketed kludge.
Thanks for that post, you made my day!
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:03 am:
Glad to have made your day, however it really wasn’t my intention to ‘rip Ken to shreds’… just his theory about blogging.
Sorry to hear that you had such a hard time with SBI. I’ve likewise seen that it can be very slow and cumbersome at times, while at others it seems just fine.
Glad that you found what works best for you. That’s really what this is all about.
Cheers,
Ros
[Reply]
John on April 28th, 2008 14:36 pm
Frankly, I think that email from Ken was mainly designed as linkbait. He can’t possibly believe everything he wrote in it, unless he’s not as tuned into things as I thought.
He seems to be defining blogging as the diary/journal that Alan mentioned in his comment.
If you’re doing that kind of blogging, then yes, you do need to do it regularly (although not so often that it will *kill* you). Not necessarily from a search engine point of view but from the point of view of having visitors that return regularly to read your posts. If that’s the type of blogging you’re doing, it’s probably a topic you enjoy and don’t mind writing about anyway. Why would you start a journal style blog about something you don’t like?
If you’re using Wordpress as a platform for your website, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. As long as you’re creating value, it really doesn’t matter if you use Wordpress, SBI or hand-coded pages. The only difference is how much work it takes to get results after the content is written, in my opinion.
Wordpress, SBI, Dreamweaver or whatever are just tools. What’s important is how you use them. Building successful sites is probably about a 90/10 process - 90% brains & 10% technical underpinnings.
SBI & Ken Evoy were how a lot of people got started, and it’s a good training ground for how to create valuable sites that people will want to read. But he’s got a product to sell, so unless he’s got a new blogging platform up his sleeve the only thing he can really do is try to convince people his product is the best choice.
It might be for some people, but his email was full of hyperbole and inaccuracies in my opinion.
[Reply]
Henry Griner on April 28th, 2008 14:50 pm
Wow Ros, thanks for sticking up for all of us who don’t seem to know much better. LOL
I wonder if next Ken will go after us dumb marketers that think an opt-in page or salepage are needed to build our biz rather than “real” websites.
I just returned from Armand’s Big Seminar 11 in Atlanta where a bunch of his speakers, and other successful marketers that I talked with, were all talking about the 3 things that we should all have…
1. Blogs
2. Opt-in pages
3. Sales pages
Blogging is a great way to create an online home and to attrack traffic. I do this with several of my Blogs and the one linked to my name above gets listed in Google usually in under 20 minutes of a posting. I love Blogs, almost as much as the search engines.
Building many Blogs and needing to keep up the posting can take up a lot of time. One of the “secrets” to taking care of that is by outsourcing your article writing to others.
My friend Jeff Mills has been using outsourcing to build his business and is now sharing many of his secrets along with those of others like Armand Morin, Joel Comm, Ray Edwards, Matt Bacak and others.
For information about Jeff’s outsourcing course you can visit my Blog and checkout the videos and other info that I’ve posted about it
Henry Griner
Your I.M. Technology Consultant
[Reply]
Matt Garrett on April 28th, 2008 15:16 pm
hmm, almost sounds as if Ken has some sort of agenda, like perhaps an alternative “site building” system that he wants people to think is better than the ubiqutous WP blog…
lol!
I have quite a few blogs in different niches that are totally “hands free” and get at least 200+ uniques a day, so I think I’ll be sticking with blogs, no matter what “big name” guru’s say.
Matt Garrett
[Reply]
D.C. Wartenberger on April 28th, 2008 15:30 pm
Hi Ros the only thought I have about this is: maybe it’s hard for him to accept that there IS actually a way to build a highly profitable Website now for everyone using WP and not the old way where you’d need to know how to set up a website and need maybe a service like his.
Blogging is FUN and it is so much easier to keep your website and your content up to date and it IS profitable.
I have some blogs where I post maybe once or twice a month and Google sends visitors daily. I can now concentrate on keyword research instead of spending time to html and all this …
Because I know it works so well, I hope I’ll be home tomorrow before you’re going to close the doors so I can finetune what I do already and take my blogging to a higher level.
I loved the video from today, have to check now how I can transfer this to my german blogs.
Keep up your great teaching
Dougi
[Reply]
Dazed and Confused on April 28th, 2008 18:06 pm
Wow, Ros - thanks for responding to Ken’s e-mail. I was shocked when I first read it and as someone new to the blog arena, but so amazed by the blog possibilities, I was thrilled to see your response!
Although, if he scares people away from blogging, I guess that means I have less competition! But the really neat thing about blogs is that the more there are, the more they seem to help build each other up - it’s the whole “you can get anything you want by helping other people get what they want” philosophy. Thanks for all you do!
[Reply]
Erwin on April 28th, 2008 21:01 pm
Hi Ros,
Just out of fairness for the discussion I feel you should post a link to the entire article. Anyone can take parts out of context and make an argument, after all.
Kind regards,
Erwin.
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 16:34 pm:
Ken’s name is linked to Ken’s site/article.
[Reply]
Erwin reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 18:22 pm:
Thanks for putting it up there now Rosalind.
Kind regards,
Erwin.
[Reply]
Highwaystar on April 28th, 2008 22:31 pm
Hey Rosalind, how are you doing… you’re still as beautiful and sharp as ever!
Respectfully, Ken is a fantastic individual.
And he certainly knows the web like no other, but doesn’t look or speak Egyptian…
So why is he hell bent in building clossal sized content themed web sites…
Like static = dead, wrapped in content just like a mummy!
Okay, so he has built an empire showing dumb folks how to built crappy web sites, so who gives a hoot about his comments.
Bloggers are happy campers, right?
Why, because we love you leverage other peoples resources, time and search engines…
I’ve been online for years and never had a web site reach the dizzy height of #1 on Google.
No matter how much work, time and effort, whereby these days its effortless to get top placing in only a matter of hours and stay there spooning up the pay days with loads of targeted traffic.
Thanks for sharing…Rosalind
[Reply]
AnneB on April 29th, 2008 8:00 am
Hi Ros!
I choked as I read Ken’s theory on blogging. I’m a newbie in this field, and starting so passionately as a blogger, I was a little discouraged as I read what he said…
As with any theory, however, it has to be tested! And as it seems, you’ve proved it wrong. (Visiting roamster.com brought back my confidence!)
Thanks for the sharing!
[Reply]
jonny on April 29th, 2008 11:46 am
how many of you commenting here, have actually taken the time to read the article? I wonder why the author didnt post a link to it , maybe because you would then be able to see BOTH sides to the story, huh?
Its very easy for someone to selectively pull comments from it, and to quote out of context isnt it? So why not make up your own mind ?
This was the opening headline, that seems to be overlooked. “Should You Full Blog? For Most Small Business People…
“Full-Blogging” Is the Wrong Choice To Build a Business”
Where exactly does that say you shouldnt blog? I have to agree with the lemmings comment however….thats all most of you are. Because I doubt if some of you have the intelligence to actually read AND comprehend the meaning in that article. So you use some biased blog posts to make your mind up for you instead.
I like this comment by highway star. “Okay, so he has built an empire showing dumb folks how to built crappy web sites, so who gives a hoot about his comments.” I certainly dont consider myself dumb (neither does anyone who knows me) and my websites arent crappy either. I make a very comfortable living from them.
I dont blog, not because someone says I should or shouldnt, but because I choose not to. So to all you bloggers out there….how much do you REALLY make from your blog? Hands up if you make a good full time income from it.
For every person that raises their hand, there is another 99 who dont. And those 99 are the ones who might benefit from having a content based website, NOT a blog. IMO.
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 16:19 pm:
Ken’s name is linked to Ken’s site.
One would think that turnabout is fair play, however you will see that the links to BlogClassroom were stripped out of comments on his forum.
The subject line of his email was ‘Why Blogging Is A Massive Mistake! –> 5 Pillar #317′.
Anyway, I agree that you probably shouldn’t blog… and the reasons are pretty obvious.
[Reply]
John reply on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 7:59 am:
Jonny, I for one have read the article on the Sitesell website, and I’ve posted my response to it on my site (linked from my name on this comment if you want to read it).
You asked “Where exactly does that say you shouldnt blog?” It said that in the subject line of the email he sent out - Why Blogging Is A Massive Mistake.
I think the premise of his argument against blogging is fundamentally flawed in that he’s really commenting on the type of content on the site, not whether or not it is running on a blogging platform, but to me that subject line clearly says you shouldn’t blog.
After all, it’s a “massive mistake.” If it’s a massive mistake, I shouldn’t be doing it, correct?
You said “So to all you bloggers out there….how much do you REALLY make from your blog? Hands up if you make a good full time income from it.”
I suspect if you asked the same question of SBI owners you might get a slightly higher number that are than you would from people with blogs but that’s mainly because the cost of entry is higher. There would still be a large percentage who don’t.
If the cost of SBI were as low as it can be for setting up a blog, the failure rate would probably be the same. Many of those failures are people who aren’t willing to put in any real effort or work. They don’t fail because of the platform they’re using, they fail because of their own lack of effort.
Your comment has some good points but unfortunately you lost my support with this:
“I have to agree with the lemmings comment however….thats all most of you are. Because I doubt if some of you have the intelligence to actually read AND comprehend the meaning in that article.”
If you’re going to argue your point successfully, you should really stay away from name calling and flaming, even if others have done it already.
[Reply]
Chantel Danis on April 29th, 2008 11:48 am
Hi Rosalind,
I realize that perhaps I crossed the boundaries when I published the last comment and I do apologize for this, it certainly was not my intention. The fact is both You and Ken are incredibly successful and many are trying to duplicate your success. I have no doubt that blogging is successful, you are proof of that but you have been at it a long time, can we duplicate your system, I don’t know, I find wordpress to be confusing, but then again, I am still considered a newbie, not quite a year under my belt. I just don’t understand to be honest, I thought you guys were friends. I think you both offer tremendous value to newcomers, however, some of the comments here are bit one sided, as though Ken was completely useless and clueless. I do know that these are not your thoughts personally. Like I said you both have many years on us and knowledge, and perhaps someday I will too.
[Reply]
Rosalind Gardner reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 16:32 pm:
Will someone please explain how people can derive ‘Ken was completely useless and clueless’ from my post.
I think it’s fairly obvious that I don’t agree with what he said about blogging, bloggers or commentators (as he puts it) and said so in no uncertain terms.
That’s it, that’s all.
If you find SBI a good system that works well for you… stick with it by all means. They’re all good methods… but only when you put them to work.
Cheers,
Ros
[Reply]
Chantel Danis reply on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 17:01 pm:
I did not mean you said that in your post Rosalind, of course you did not say that. I was talking about some of the comments left by other readers and I was not quoting, just sounded like it. My fault for not being more specific. I can’t honestly say which works best because I just started a blog and have much to learn but you are right effort=payoff (not quoting, of course)
I repeat, Rosalind did not say that Ken is useless or clueless, Sorry for the misunderstanding.
[Reply]
Is Blogging A Massive Mistake? on April 29th, 2008 21:26 pm
[…] Blogging Is A Massive Mistake, Huh (NetProfitsToday.com) […]
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