I’m love blogging, why do my friends not care?
I am excited as hell to have my own web page
For the last two months, my life consists 1. Going to work, 2. working on my website. I’m stoked about it, I feel productive, I have the feeling that it has real potential to reach a ton of people and some day soon make some good money, maybe enough to start enjoying more of life. It’s a pipe dream, I know, but infinitely better than getting addicted to World of Warcraft again, right?
Why don’t my friends give a shit?
I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I’m honestly surprised at how little my close group of friends seems to care. I mean, I’m not saying they are assholes or anything, but it seems like almost none of them actually visit my site even though I’ve told everyone I know about it quite a few times. This strikes me as really odd. If one of my best friends told me today that they were really excited about something, and that it’s pretty much all that they’ve been doing lately, I would be all over it. People have access to computes 24/7 these days, so the only explanation for them not at least checking it out, say, once a week, is that they really don’t give a shit.
Let’s look at the possible reasons for this.
1. This site is crap.
My thoughts: Possible, but I really don’t think so. I’ve had damn near everyone who has seen it say something along the lines of “Pretty nice, way better than most blogs out there.” I’ve put a ton of time into it, and almost set my computer on fire after being so frustrated by it as seen in this post, but I’ve overcame every challenge so far and am happy with my results.
2. There isn’t enough good content
Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the reason. For a while there I was focusing on layout, plugins, site design, getting Stumble traffic…. yup, pretty much everything except writing good content. Most of my earliest posts are absolute rubbish, just check the first few to see what I mean. No proofreading of any kind, devoid of any interesting tidbits or humor… they just really suck.
If my close friends don’t care about this site which I put so much time into, it’s not their fault, it’s mine. It’s obviously not good enough to make people want to come back, and that’s my bad. It would be useful to know why, but oh well, no point in speculating. All there is to do now is make it the best I can, and be happy with the results. Like I said earlier, I’m not mad in any way, just surprised.
What I’m really trying to say is…
if you like a site, leave comments. Nothing makes a website owner more happy than to see comments, because then I know that people give a shit. Even if it is something as small as “cool post,” it feels great to know people are actually enjoying the site. When I get over 1,000 unique hits in one day, if I see that people looked at my site for 5 seconds and left, versus 100 people saw it but most of them looked around, read a few posts, and left a few comments, I feel much more satisfaction as a blogger from the second group. If you enjoy the site, comment away.
PS After doing all of this complaining, I feel obliged to check my stat program, and sure enough, it seems that my good friends M &/or M from Oceanside, California have have been coming here regularly, so a big shout out to them 
Edit:
I wrote this two weeks ago, and some friends must have read my mind, because they have been visiting and commenting more since then. So even though the problem has (kind of) been solved since then, this was heartfelt, so I’m going to post it anyways.
Nice post. Content is king without a doubt. Keep it up and you’ll build the following.
Chris
BTW I don’t do sympathy comments so this isn’t one.
[Reply to this comment]
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:03 am
I do this all the time, I’m afraid: navigate to someone’s site / blog / etc. and leave my IP footprint but no other indication that I’ve been there / enjoyed the layout / content, etc. It’s a really bad habit. Anyway, although I’m not technically one of your friends who doesn’t care about your blog, I do think you have a pretty sweet layout going here, with some pretty promising potential. (Plus anyone would HAVE to love the McDonald’s song! Heh.)
[Reply to this comment]
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:18 am
“It’s a pipe dream, I know, but infinitely better than getting addicted to World of Warcraft again, right?”
Wait, so there was a time you were addicted to World of Warcraft?
Now I’m in the quandary where every comment I make from now on will be seen as a form of appeasement. It’s kind of like, when a girlfriend says to you,
“Why don’t you call me more often”
and then you do make the effort to call her more often, then she thinks you’re only doing it because she told you to, not because you really want to.
Well, I hope you saw my comment from yesterday before you posted this!
Anyways, I’ll say that I’ve been here a few times, and it’s brought me some entertainment on an otherwise boring night at work.
Well, like other dude said, content is king. You have good stuff, just keep it going. Maybe do a bar/club review round-up, or a week in the life of Jeremy, or interview some hookers and/or strippers or something
[Reply to this comment]
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:38 am
I hear you. I tell all my friends about checking out blogs, Twitter, etc., yet I get more support from online strangers than my real-life friends, who just ask, “Why you want to do that for?” I guess we all have to believe this is going somewhere and they’ll be sorry one day when they have to start at ground zero.
[Reply to this comment]
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 am
“Now I’m in the quandary where every comment I make from now on will be seen as a form of appeasement. It’s kind of like, when a girlfriend says to you, ‘Why don’t you call me more often’ ”
*sob* why don’t you call me Sylvan?! Lol jk, yeah, I saw your comment from the day before I posted this, and yeah, I was pretty addicted to world of warcraft for about a month.
Glad to hear you been checking the site out, part of the reason I wanted to put it up was to keep my good friends updated on my life and to keep in touch.
If you want to put up a guest post about the Rocket Science industry, let me know
[Reply to this comment]
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:38 am
are you sure you were just addicted to WoW for a month? c’mon, anyone who was addicted to that would take more than a month!
I’m always happy when I see people coming to my blog. Even happier when they leave a comment. Even just a “good work” or some random message will make me happy.
So…Good job!
[Reply to this comment]
May 24th, 2008 at 8:25 am