Surfing on the internet during the 1990s was boring; Pages took a long time to load, content was very poorly written, and nothing exciting was being written. Flash forward. Surfing on the internet during the 2010s is boring; Pages take too long to load, content is poorly written, and nothing exciting is being written.
Yeah – what was true then is true now. Websites suck. Finding good websites also sucks. Search engines are no longer valuable. Finding a unique site is now dependent upon luck and lots of time.
This dilemma is partially due to a collective lack of focus on creativity. The dilemma is also due to poor advice from successful sites, which claim that strong emotive language and exaggeration (e.g., adjectives) are essential to driving traffic. Some advice suggests the headline is the most important part of the article. Even worse is that sites are copying content from each other, linking to each other regarding rumors, and really just babbling on about trivial things. In the tech world, some websites are simply republishing press releases.
Is this what you want while searching the internet? No. But no wonder everyone rushes to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
There are ways to be successful. In fact, I’ve created a list over the years. Each year, I re-evaluate the list and break every rule. Breaking the rule is vital – because no rule should encumber your creativity.
Here is my latest list created after finishing the majority of the transfer of Tux Reports to Digital Ocean. Feel free to break them, use them, modify them, or laugh at them.
1. Do not be like everyone else. The trouble with websites is that anyone can start one for free. Simply go to WordPress.com and create one. Unfortunately, the new site now looks like all of the other WordPress sites. What do you do? The most general answer is to change your theme and install WordPress plugins and widgets. Unfortunately, that solution is also what millions of others will do to try to be unique.
So, what do you really do? Like most people, you will blog or write for a few months, try to be creative, then abandon the whole thing in frustration. So – don’t be like everyone else. Keep writing. Keep publishing. Keep making updates to your site.
Major design features include:
- Website performance (e.g., APC, Memcached, Varnish Cache, Nginx, Caching)
- Test website performance (e.g., WebPageTest)
- Social sharing buttons (e.g., Jetpack)
- Limited use of images and plugins (e.g., Akismet)
- Use a website like elance to pay someone to design a unique look for your website.
Goal: Develop a unique site.
2. Attribute everything to someone else. According to the Original thought theory, no thought is original, therefore, provide credit to the original person. There was a time on the internet when authors would write something original and everyone else would just copy it word for word without a link or attribution. One major company literally lifted a whole troubleshooting manual I wrote in the late 90s. The company printed it word for word and without attribution. My sister’s photos of motherboards and computer cases would end up all over the place, without attribution. This leads me to a simple principle of ethics: If it is not yours then attribute the idea to the original author. Otherwise, your original work might be stolen and you would have no right to complain.
Primary Goal: Include ten (10) or more sources per article. Stick with the traditional links but add APA formatted references at the end of the article. I tried this a few years ago. This is going to be rough!
Secondary Goal. Improve internal links within articles by linking to previously published articles.
3. Publish when you want and not because you must. I watched someone develop a website, get others to help write, then he sold the business for a profit. It worked. The site maintains traffic to this day and everyone is happy. The original owner’s end goal was to sell the site for a profit. Back when the site started, the key was to update, update, and update. Five writers were publishing several articles a day. Some people were returning throughout the day simply to see the new articles. The reality was that the site was a niche site – and that was why people went to it. Now everyone writes about this niche – selling the site was probably wise. But if you plan to hold onto your site then don’t get caught up into the publish or perish mentality. It’s exhausting. Simply write and publish whenever you desire.
Primary Goal: Publish when it feels right. There is no rush to publish first.
Secondary Goal: Write using the full screen feature of WordPress. It’s possible to drag the URL from the bar into the article. This improves the reference list at the end of the article.
4. Write, erase, re-write, erase, delete. Opinion pieces should be written carefully but I usually just type and publish. After publishing then I see the errors in grammar, as well as the errors in logic. I used to say “Oh well” but now I’m interested in saving drafts and letting things sit for a little bit.
Loren used drafts in WordPress. At the time of his death, there were over 500 drafts of potential articles residing in the WP database. Loren used these drafts as ways to keep notes and thoughts about a subject. He always thought a long time before clicking on the publish button.
Primary Goal: Use the WordPress draft feature. Check the grammar using Grammarly. To use Grammarly, simply open your WordPress article up in fullscreen mode. Press Command-A on Mac to highlight the complete article. Next, copy the text into the checker.
Grammarly found 40 critical writing issues for the first draft of this article:
Secondary Goal: Check to make sure the article contains enough verified facts.
5. Don’t try to drive traffic. A center piece to this year’s updated list is to not try to drive traffic to the site. This may seem counter-intuitive to some individuals but sites providing advice regarding driving traffic all write about ways that seem unethical – or borderline unethical. For example, paying for traffic just seems wrong. Instead, let the traffic be organic. Having a Facebook fan page – is just strange. Do you really think you are that special to have a fan page? Really?
Goal: Stay away from Facebook fan pages.
6. Be the expert or learn from the experts. My intentions over the past few decades of writing on the internet has been to just publish, get it out there, and move on with life. This can create quite a problem when wrong. But controversy is not always bad: There were times that being wrong was the best way to get traffic. Since that is no longer a goal then the replacement goal is to be accurate. This means learning the details of what is being written.
You can see an example of the replacement accuracy goal in the article on Tim Tebow. The career fact box was added to provide a little more information than a copy paste of a press release.
Goal: Try to be accurate through fact checking and try to add new ideas to developing stories. Find out if there are multiple angles to the story then present them.
7. Redefine success. If someone asked me three years ago how I defined success then my explanation would include the monetization of websites as well as traffic. This network used to reach over 20,000 visitors a day, as well as peaks of 50,000 visitors whenever an exciting story was published. These figures now pale in comparison to successful websites.
Primary Goal: Success is completing the day’s goals & objectives on time.
Secondary Goal: Long term goals include establishing the branding of Tux Reports. Monitor engagement via comments as well as page views of an article.
References
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Grammarly, Inc. (2013). Grammarly. Retrieved September 1, 2013 from http://www.grammarly.com.
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Kumar, AJ. (2012, December 26). 20 ways to drive traffic in 2013 (ethically!). Retrieved September 1, 2013 from http://upstart.bizjournals.com/resources/advice/2012/12/26/20-ways-to-get-more-web-traffic.html?surround=etf&ana=e_article.
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