I get asked a lot of questions about blogging but every now and again I like to run a poll to help me prioritize your needs. So this week’s ProBlogger poll is all about refining and ordering your needs.
I’ve taken the 9 most common topics that I’m asked about and have listed them in a poll. What I’d love to invite you to do is to tell me which of them you want to learn about the most. Most of us want to learn about more than one but if it was just one which would it be?
Expand upon your choice here in comments (tell us what particularly you want to learn about the topic, why you selected it etc) and feel free to list the rest in order of your priority.
Your votes will have a direct influence upon future posts here at ProBlogger so I’m looking forward to your answers!
All fantastic topics. I’d hear more about each one, but voted for Blog Design because I think #009900 is the only cool color to use. That and #000099. Heh heh.
Blog tools and platforms – information written for the non-techie mind for WordPress. I am learning – slowly – about these tools but a lot of times the verbiage in the steps is over my head.
Maybe a listing in priority order of what a blogger should install would be good. And more explanations about things like facebook, twitter, feedburners, etc.
I just learned how to put images into my blog post. There is more to know on this topic, but at least I’ve started the learning.
Thanks for asking.
Where is the “All of the above” option?
I voted for “Expanding a Blog into a Network” because that’s my main focus for now. But still, I’d like to learn about “Search Engine Optimization” aswell, and all the others
Choices, choices, choices.
MrCooker – I’ll definitely do more than just the #1 response (in fact I’ll cover them all) but it’ll help me get a bit more of a feel for where readers are at with their blogging to know the biggest felt needs.
thanks for the votes everyone – results are not surprising for me so far! Looks like finding readers is the big one so far.
I voted for blog tool & platforms – I’d love a rundown on which plugins for wordpress are the best, the most useful, etc, and if there are any clever hacks for some of the more common problems.
I’m a bit torn though – I’d love to hear more about blog design, particularly the pros & cons on different things in the sidebar, addons onto the end of posts, etc. I’ve put up the “recently commented” widget on my sidebar after several readers requested it, but I don’t care for how it clutters the blog.
Finally, increasing readership/subscribers is always an interesting thing to hear about. I write on a very specific niche (intercultural/interracial marriage), so it can be difficult to find the people who’d be interested in my blog.
my vote- definitly increasing readership. My blog is very young so that’s my focus right now. Thanks
Hmm….I see this more of an ordered list. At one point or another, everyone will need to know more about each one. It just depends on where you are.
For example, first you need to learn “How to Start a Blog”, then you need to know about “Blog Tools and Platforms”, then “Blog Design”, then “Writing Quality Content”, then “Increasing Readers”, then “SEO”, the “Growing Ad Revenue”, then “Growing Affiliate Revenue”, finally “Expanding into a Network”.
The only thing your forgot is “Selling/Retiring Your Blog”!
I voted for the wrong one! I meant to vote for the “increase readership” option, but I voted for the increase affiliate revenue by accident.
I figure getting readers puts me in the position to do all of the other things, but without a lot of readers, nothing else really matters, except for content and I am comfortable with that at this point.
I chose (as did many others) that I want to learn to increase my readership/ number of subscribers. I think if I can do that, then just about everything else will follow.
It seems to me that the “writing quality content” option could also be lumped with the “increasing readership” option as well, since if you have good content, you’ll probably attract new readers/subscribers without much problem.
Great poll Darren!
I voted for Blog Design, because that’s where I am in my very embryonic blogging career. My own blog is still very rudimentary, which is fine, because its purpose is to serve as a platform for me to learn how this blogging stuff works (which prompts me to ask another question: do many beginners set up a practice blog as I have as a place to learn and make mistakes?)
I’m really loving Problogger, too (and yes, I bought the book). Thank you for all the contributions you make, and I look forward following along.
I think a “which one of these do you LEAST want to learn about” would have been easier for me to answer. I noticed you didn’t offer an “all of the above option”. ;)
I’ve problogging* for close to a year now and most those things on that list you just learn over time. As a designer I spent a lot of my time with the design till I learned about the 80/20 rule (Yaro) and partnered up with a designer…
SEO I had a relatively easy time with because of my web background as well…
Experimenting with monetization is fun especially with a young blog, you can try different affiliates etc etc.
I believe all bloggers can learn all of the above them selfs with a little research work and reading problogger.net ;)
The biggest and most important of the top list is learning how to generate traffic and find more ways to find readers.
My choice was surely that how to increase subscribers and visitors to the website. Because once you add a community everything other will follow automatically.
oops I forgot to note that when I say problogging* I mean my attempt and running my own business by blogging
I usually want to know more about how to write quality articles on my blog. I read other blogs (prefer related blogs) and i learn something new every day.
Of course, i try to easily import most things that i have learned around internet.
Growing Advertising Revenue.
I want to know how to be paid to write reviews in my blog, i.e., how to be contacted by people who wants to promote their products in my blog.
I like what Jeff (Buzzmyblog) said above. But I’m at the point that I’d like to increase readership. Hand in hand with that—a funkier look to the blog…and more tools—would certainly help. Its a mix.
Theres many topics I would want you guys to talk about, one is SEO and others are gaining traffic and readers to stick around.
Then again its still hard to get first page google SERPS.
I am really keen to learn about how to increase traffic to your site. I have great content on my financial blog, however I have low traffic. I really want to learn how to drive traffic to my blog as quickly and effectively as I can
I would like to learn how to get more subscribers to my site. We are just a month old and have A LOT to learn.
Love your site!
Mostly just how to increase affiliate revenue and readership. This are the two baskets most of my eggs are in, so any direction there would be just -delightful-…
xoxo.
I would love to see a How to Start a Blog and Blog Design since that is where I am at right now. A run down of the different blogging platforms and their advantages and disadvantages would be really helpful. Another thing that I would like to see would be a tutorial or series of posts about a beginners guide to setting up a blog. By that I mean installing the platforms and setting up the SQL databases.
Increasing readership – the $$ should follow (I hope). I want to increase my visitor numbers to about 3 times what it is now and rising.
I voted for blog design since I’ve been looking at that lately and I’m tired of my old, copied template.
Tough choices…as indicated above all are necessary to gain readership and make profits. I think through gaining readership you are most likely to expand revenue through either ads or affiliate marketing, so I would say learning how to write content your readers/visitors want most is critical to your blogs success.
My blog is primarily used for business related topics and updates, however, I would also like to start a more personal blog or getting more personal in my blog to perhaps connect with my readers more. I have tried doing this but am still not sure how to get the interaction I’d like. So…learning how to separate how much personal information I should share on my business blog vs a personal blog would also be helpful so that I can gain the readers I need for each blog would be helpful as well. Any help is appreciated Pro-blogger :)
I voted for how to increase readership. But writing quality content is equally important to me.
I voted for increasing readership as that is where I am at with my blog now. I’d also like to learn more about writing quality content, or how to improve my writing, and increasing ad revenue.
Thanks Darren!
“Increasing my own sales” would also be an interesting point. More and more, blogs are used to promote products, like I do with pet products. Directly combined with a webshop this offers great opportunities. Unfortinately, there is no really good webshop solution for WordPress up to now.
First, I want to learn #3 Increasing Readership/Subscribers and then learn #1Growing Advertising Revenue. That makes sense
I voted for twice: Blog Design, Blog Tools and Platforms
Since I know there are lots of people, lack of programing skills, want to start to blog to speak to the world. ~Q~
You told us much about bloging. And now, please tell us where shall we start.
I love to read ur blog everyday!
^_^
I think writing quality content is the most important, and that’s where it all starts. If you can’t write quality content you can probably forget about most of the other things. So that’s why I chose that one!
I would like to read and learn more on how to writting better quality contents because i believe that is the best way to get more readers. So any tips on that issue are also welcome.
Thanks
You can have nice designed blog. Advertisement placed properly. Good SEO tactics. But at the end of the day if you don’t have a lot of readers or subscribers, you’re not going to make that much profit. I think increasing the number of readers and subscribers is the most important.
Would like to add one more point to the above nine.
Learning SEO techniques,developing quality back links is also my point of learning.
Definitely looking for some unique advice on increasing readership/subscribers to a site. There is a lot of generic information out there on this, but I’d like to hear some of the strategies you used in your early days of blogging.
Thanks!
Growing Affiliate Revenue, to me, seems to be a source of income that has more “staying” power than from ads. Becoming an affiliate with the right companies can communicate to an audience that you are taken seriously by these certain companies so they in turn should take you seriously as well. Thanks for the great content and wisdom, Darren. You help so many of us in so many ways!!
Increasing readership gets my vote and everything else is a distant second. However, writing quality content is important and I’m very interested in learning to incorporate audio and video into the content.
My priorities are as follows:
Increasing Readership/ Subscribers, Growing Advertising Revenue, Growing Affiliate Revenue, Writing Quality Content, Blog Design, Search Engine Optimization, Expanding a Blog into a Network.
I am very interested in building a blog network. I think my domain name would be a great fit for that and that was my original idea. I just don’t know how to go about building it. I would love to to hear more on that subject.
My main interest is gaining subscribers. Without subscribers then the advertising question is really moot.
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Without any doubt, increasing readers & subscribers. In my opinion, this is the most difficult part. When you have the readers, the rest come much easier.
It’s very difficult to get the content to the people who might be interested in it. If there is an audience out there for me, I want to find it
I vote for Increasing readership, though all are useful. However, having enough readers makes income possible. :)
Really tough choice to make! I went for ‘writing quality content’ in the end because I’m still at the very beginning and feel that in some ways, getting those basics right is still the most important thing for me (and this blog has been a great help and inspiration so far!). How to blog posts are also really interesting and useful and are probably the posts that I’ve read most so far.. I suppose I might be coming from a different angle from most as I’m coming from the ‘writing for fun’ angle rather than looking to make a career or even any money out of it and more to provide interesting content for people in the same professional field!
The purpose of a blog is to increase readership. Iam interested to know more about this.
I write about personal finance and financial planning, primarily targetted at an Indian audience. There are not many websites in my niche, and I want to increase my readership. I feel that the quality of what I write is quite good, but any tips on how to increase the number of quality site visitors is always helpful!
(I personally prefer more people visiting my site rather than reading the content through RSS)
Also, if I can earn some bucks on the side, why not? :-)