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Do You Hate Your Readers?
Some of your readers might think so. If you are making any of these mistakes you could be sending a message to your readers that you don’t care about them. If you do hate your readers then make sure you are doing all 10 things on this list, you don’t want them to get the wrong idea.
10 Ways To Show Your Readers You Hate Them
- Promises you don’t keep → I know life happens and sometimes you just have to take a break from blogging, but if you break your regular posting schedule and run off to join the circus chances are when you come back you might have no one to come back too. Readers can forgive, however if you make to many promises that you do not deliver on you might find your blog alone and depressed just like you.
- Talking down to them → Think your readers are stupid? Nothing says you think your readers are stupid more than talking down to them. Even stupid people don’t like to be talked down to. If you could care less about your site traffic try talking to your readers like they are idiots, then those idiots will show you who the real idiot is.
- Ignoring their comments → Hey look you have a comment. Screw that you don’t have time to respond to comments, your a big shot blogger. Keep that attitude and you won’t have to worry about those annoying comments any longer. Can you hear the crickets chirping?
- Giving them partial feeds → You just got a new reader to your blog. The new reader has subscribed to your feed and is waiting with baited breath to get the first installment of your feed. They wake up and rush to their feed reader and staring back at them is your middle finger.
If you are only posting partial feeds so that feed subscribers have to click on a link and come to your blog to read the whole post, then why bother having a feed in the first place? Cancel your Feedburner account and post a message on the top of your blog that says,
“I hate feed subscribers! Feed subscribers should visit the blog if they want to read the entire post instead of expecting special treatment.”
I’m sure they will understand and probably thank you for sharing your opinions. Just don’t hold your breath.
- Designing for only one browser → You like Firefox, you’re not gonna waste your precious time making sure your blog design works correctly in Internet Explorer. IE is from that fascist corporation Microsoft. If people want to support evil multinational corporations like Microsoft then they shouldn’t come crying to you that your blog doesn’t look right in IE. Can’t they read the button at the top of your site that says, “This site best viewed with Firefox”? No they probably can’t read, who wants them anyway. FASCISTS!
- Refusing to link → Your readers are mainly newbies, there is no way you are going to lower yourself to their level and link to a blog with a Page Rank lower than yours. And that guy that wrote that article that you just wrote about is wrong, there is no way you are gonna send any traffic his way. You can call him names and tell everyone that he is wrong and none of your readers should expect you to link to his post so they can judge for themselves. You tell your readers what they should think. How dare they think for themselves!
- Treating them like only customers → You gotta make your money. You are not blogging because you are passionate about your topic. No you blog only to make $$$s. You don’t have readers they are all customers. If they don’t buy from your affiliates and click on your ads then WHO NEEDS THEM? Your not building a community and sharing products you recommend, you are collecting credit card numbers and email addresses. Now if one of those customers will just buy something…….
- Making yourself unavailable → You check your email inbox and what do you know some pain in the butt reader sent you an email. You should pretend you didn’t get the message. Why are these people bothering you asking questions anyway? Don’t they know how to use Google? You should just tell them you are really busy and won’t be able to answer all of their questions. You don’t intend to answers any of their questions anyway, but they won’t know because they are stupid.
- One sided conversations → You read somewhere that readers like useful content that gives them a benefit. What can be more beneficial than telling them what you had for lunch. You are the god of blogging, if they are not utterly fascinated with everything you do then something is wrong with them. Besides writing useful posts is too much work. You could post a review of some other blog, but your readers don’t want to read that, they just come to read about you. Is your Site Meter broken?
- Never leaving your house → You could surf around the internet and read what other people are writing, but why? Your blog is the best blog and Alexa better damn well figure it out soon. Why should you leave your blog? Your picture is up there at the top and you are a sexy bitch. If you leave your house (blog) then you might be exposed to those other people’s ideas. Hell you could stay here all day and reread all of your posts because you are just so witty. Besides your mom will be home soon with your HOT POCKETS®. She better get the pizza ones this time. You could open the basement window and get some fresh air. Naw, you haven’t taken a shower for a week and you smell fantastic!
Question : Are you trying to tell your readers you hate them?
all pictures on this on this post from www.gapingvoid.com
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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My name is Wild Bill. I'm an internet entrepreneur and full time blogger making a living from blogs like 
Jason
Nice post Wild Bill. I’m sure it’ll be discovered by someone big one of these days (and hopefully not plagiarized). Actually, to let you in on something, 31 days to building a better blog 2007. Rowse is accepting entries.
Anyway, I thought this was all signs of the newbie into blogging just for the cash. I still have a problem of seemingly talking down to readers, when I’m actually not, but that’s just the way my entire family is. Kind of a hard habit to break.
Can’t you not stand it especially when other bloggers sit on their own blog especially and not become part of the blogsphere. I also can’t stand it when I comment on a blog that never gets comments, and I never get an answer. If you just want to write, go be a freelance writer. If you want to talk to people, be a blogger, right?
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:48 pmWild Bill
For some reason I feel a wink wink coming on, Thanks Jason, I’ll have to submit my post to Darren at problogger.net
I used to not talk to people online much, but I am now in recovery. I have meet a lot of interesting people online, that is what blogging is about.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:12 pmWild Bill
Well I submitted this post to the 31 days to building a better blog 2007 challenge keep your fingers crossed.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:21 pmJason
“I have meet a lot of interesting people online, that is what blogging is about.”
Indeed good sir. To do that for a living would also be awesome.
Fingers are crossed buddy. I think your article rocks and the headline is great too, so I bet you anything it’ll get listed. If not, I’ll let you fly to South Carolina and kick me square in the…
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:55 pmWild Bill
Jason I almost hope it doesn’t because your alternative sounds intriguing!
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:33 pmJason
Well, I meant you could kick me in the shin actually… and at 25%.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:22 pmWild Bill
Oh ok I guess, it will only be about 25% as fun.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:19 pmPriscilla Palmer
You have some good points. I have often been annoyed by bloggers acting like they are better than me. Especially in the first few months of blogging, when nobody really knew me yet. I have less trouble with that now but, I still know exactly who treated me well; and who didn’t.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:39 pmWild Bill
Priscilla, one thing that amazes me still to this day is the way I was treated by some of the biggest bloggers on the internet when I broke the Jordan Edmund story. There were some bloggers that hated me before that story (I was mainly a political blogger at that point so that is to be expected.) What I did not expect was the way some A-list bloggers that were on my side of the political aisle denounced me (for telling the truth) and basically threw me under the bus. I still remember those bloggers to this day. It really amazes me how many smaller bloggers will latch onto A-list bloggers that hate their readers just because they are A-list bloggers.
I used to be like many new bloggers the way I treated A-list bloggers like celebrities. Not anymore, A-list bloggers might have more readers than you, might be making a lot more money than you are, but they are still just people. Anyone can run a successful blog.
August 4th, 2007 at 8:57 amJason
“I have less trouble with that now but, I still know exactly who treated me well; and who didn’t.”
It’s funny how commenters will suck up to the A-listers or blogs with higher PR, but a new blog, no no no, they won’t give you the light of day. At least we know who’re the blogwhores. I know people like Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak must be fed up to here with the way readers suck up to them just to get a plug or something. Whatever happened to people just talking to one another?
August 4th, 2007 at 5:28 pmJason
It looks like you won’t be breaking my shin in half after all, Wild Bill. Congrats!
August 4th, 2007 at 9:53 pmWild Bill
nope Jason your shins are safe. Looks like Darren Rowse is one of the good A-list blogger. Thanks for the link Darren. Glad you liked the post.
August 5th, 2007 at 1:53 ameliesheva
Nice summary; it’s true in real life, too, isn’t it?
August 5th, 2007 at 9:24 amMarija
Hi Wild Bill,
August 5th, 2007 at 11:33 amYou’ve written a great article, especially fantastic is the point about partial feeds. I think that I don’t treat my readers like I hate them; actually, which readers? Hahaha. Just kidding. I don’t have too many readers, but I appreciate them all.
Wild Bill
Glad you liked the article Marija, we’ll have to see what we can do about getting you some more readers.
August 5th, 2007 at 3:58 pmFiar
Nice! You got that ProBlogger link. I’m glad for you bro!
August 5th, 2007 at 5:44 pmJeanne Dininni
Great advice!
Thanks again!
August 5th, 2007 at 7:25 pmJeanne Dininni
Wild Bill
eliesheva, Fiar, and Jeanne Dininni, thanks for your comments!
August 5th, 2007 at 10:31 pmMaya
Hi Wild Bill,
I wanted to thank you for this post, which I found courtesy of the ever useful ProBlogger.net. I appreciated your content and the fun style in which you conveyed it. Great job on a quality article and congratulations on getting it picked up.
I hope you don’t mind that I have a suggestion for your formatting. I didn’t notice it when I first linked to your site because I copied and pasted this post to print later, but I think you should make the “continue reading” cut lower down so that your visitors can get more of the core of your article.
Thanks again!
Maya
TheNewJew, http://www.TheNewJew.org
August 7th, 2007 at 3:34 pmThe New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy, http://www.TheNewJew.wordpress.com
Wild Bill
Thanks for the suggestion Maya, I plan on posting longer articles on Passionate Blogger so I decided to go with a short summary on the main homepage of the site and you can read the entire article on the post page (by clicking the continue reading and/or the post title. Also feed subscribers get the entire post via the feed. On each post page at the bottom is a print it button that always you to print the entire article.
It made sense to me, looks like I need to consider your suggestion and poll my readers and see what changes they suggest.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:50 pmJohn Hewitt, Friendly Neighborhood Writer
There’s nothing I hate worse than partial feeds. What a waste of my time. I know a lot of people want to draw readers to their site rather than a feed reader, but unless you are REALLY good at writing headlines, chances are you’re not going to interest me with a partial feed.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:54 pmWild Bill
I was guilty of the partial feed virus when I started. I have seen the light and my feed subscriber numbers are growing because of the lesson I learned. Thanks for your comment John.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:39 amMohsin | Blogging Bits
Hey Bill, I simply can’t stop laughing. It’s midnight and my neighbors must be cursing me for making such awful noise
Great points and I agree with all of them.
August 14th, 2007 at 3:20 pmWild Bill
Thanks Mohsin. Judging by the number of views, links, and comments on this post I think I’ll start working on some more humorous posts like this one. Glad I could make you laugh.
August 19th, 2007 at 4:20 pmStephens
A very interesting article and I don’t think there’s anything that I could disagree with.
I especially get irked when I visit a blog, leave a comment and find that it gets absolutely no response from the blog owner. (That’s not a hint by the way) I can understand it when it’s a very popular blog with lots of comments being left but I find that it also occurs when I might be the only person to have left a comment.
I am so pleased to be left comments on my blog and I suppose that’s because it so rarely happens. But when it does I’m very keen to respond and I cannot understand why others would want to run a blog and not enjoy any interaction between themselves and their readers.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:52 amTheresa
Great article! I am a beginning blogger, I have been reading and commenting on other people’s blogs before I ever started a blog, so I think that I know how that part works. But how do you encourage people to comment? Also how do you know if your blog is relavant? Who decides these things?
Theresa
November 8th, 2007 at 8:26 pmTheresa
paulette
I agree, some of bloggers dont notice the said mistakes. A must read for bloggers!
May 14th, 2008 at 9:06 amGlamouricious
I love this article. I was searching google and stumbled across this post; lately been a bit disappointed by some of the “big bloggers” who don’t even bother replying to comments or exchanging links. I feel it’s important to acknowledge readers and their opinions, and there is no harm in checking out other blogs. Who knows if you may like what you see.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:41 pmWhile I understand some bloggers get over 50 comments a day (I’m still happy if I get at least 1 post reaction to begin with) they could at least show appreciation to their readers who make the blog big and actually go on it to read new stuff every day. It’s great the bloggers have a life, but when I see that they don’t bother replying or giving feedback, I have a tendency to look elsewhere and just drop their blogs after a while.
Glamouricious
oh and p.s.: yes! we love the humorous posts which actually make 110% sense in the end when you look past the jokes.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:44 pmalso, sometimes if i don’t react to the comment on my own blog, i visit the commenter’s blog and check out what they have to say leaving a comment.