Okay, it’s already April, but I’m sure we can still make your blog readers hate you in 2015 if we just work hard enough for it!
“Wait, what?” – asks you.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, this isn’t an everyday blog post… I mean, sure, there’s some how-to advice here, but the advice isn’t what you would call standard. In other words, this post isn’t about giving you direct go-and-do advice. In fact, it’s more like never-do advice.
But why?
Well, since the human brain is hardwired to focus more on the negative than on the positive, I figured that writing a tutorial on how to mess things up will have a bit more impact than just focusing on the 7 most common something something mistakes.
Note. There’s sarcasm here, so take it with a big grain of salt and don’t try to do this at home.
1. Pop-ups, pop-ups everywhere
Pop-ups will improve your conversion rates and grow the number of people you can get on your newsletter. That’s a known fact. But we can put the idea of pop-ups on steroids. Instead of just having a pop-up appear a couple of seconds after someone starts reading your site, display it right away.
More so, also add a pop-exit (when someone is just about to leave your site), scroll-triggered box (as the person scrolls down), content locker (part of the post invisible until the person subscribes), and wait-there’s-more pop-up (when the visitor clicks “x” on the first one, you display another one automatically with a slightly different offer).
2. “Don’t read my posts! Subscribe to my newsletter first, because reasons!”
Speaking of pop-ups, they are mostly used for convincing people to either buy something or subscribe to a newsletter of some kind. You should really capitalize on this. Make sure that you try convincing the visitor to subscribe even before they get a chance to consume any of your content. Make this clear.
3. Don’t have a responsive design
In case you didn’t know, Google will be cracking down hard on sites that aren’t mobile-friendly on Apr 21 this year. They even warned everybody in advance. But heck, why would you care. Google is surely just kidding and nothing bad is going to happen even if your site is next to unreadable on mobile.
Which brings me to…
4. Don’t update your design, ever
Okay, I get it. You love your design. You had it made 3-5 years ago and it’s still killer. There’s surely nothing that needs updating, nothing that should be optimized in any way, nothing that should be made more social-media friendly. What you especially shouldn’t do is pay attention to the modern web design trends (and WordPress design trends). Smart people like you don’t need to follow fads.
5. Have features on your site that are broken
There’s nothing better than going to a contact page on some site and finding that the contact form either doesn’t work, or that the only thing there is the shortcode that was supposed to display the form but doesn’t. After all, how can you know that some feature on your site doesn’t work? It would require you to actually go out and test it from the visitor’s perspective … something you clearly don’t have time for.
6. Publish low-quality guest posts
There’s a big probability other bloggers reach out to you with guest post offers every now and then. And since they’re saying that they “will provide you with 100% original and quality content that your readers will love” why wouldn’t you believe them? Go ahead and publish every such “quality article,” your readers will love this.
7. Publish product reviews … rank products based on affiliate commissions
People still believe product reviews heavily. This is something you need to capitalize on. Here’s how: 1) pick a handful of products related to an issue that your audience is having, 2) go through the marketing materials of the products and pick some bits and pieces that will sound good as a so-called review, and finally 3) rank the products based on the affiliate payout they offer. And of course, link to them using your affiliate links.
8. ?
Okay, I’m guessing we’ve done enough damage, so now we can be serious for this last couple of minutes. Overall, it’s quite easy to make your blog readers hate you. Too easy if you ask me. Sometimes all it takes is just a couple of badly placed ads, undisclosed affiliate promotions, or some WordPress issues that render your site unreadable for a longer period of time.
So the main message here is that you should always pay close attention to the things you’re doing and the promotions you’re running. Be careful and respect your readers.
By the way, what would be a nice #8 on this list?
- 7 Ways to Make Your Blog Readers Hate You in 2015 - 20 April, 2015
One comment
Useful blog post – I loved the information . Does someone know where my assistant might be able to get ahold of a sample a form copy to complete ?
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