For someone who’s been writing for almost ten years now, I have a surprisingly low count of regular readers (the exact number is here). And subsequently, lower count of comments on the blog.
I mean its not really surprising, considering that I am not really popular (even in my friends’ circle). And if I was interesting or funny or intelligent or a loud mouth or opinionated or smart or an eloquent speaker or a photographer or a social media expert or well endowed or well versed with history or connected or rich or something similar, people might have read my blog. But I am not any of these. In fact I am like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill and “…even my mum has a tough time remembering my name…“.
Thing is, all this while, I did not matter if someone read, commented on the blog. After all this blog is more like a conversation with myself, on things that I find interesting (or things that catch my fancy). But now that I am trying to get my first novel out, I need to solve this curious case of missing comments. Simply because I need people to read what I write and give me feedback on how/what I write.
So here is a quick list of reasons why people might not be reading this blog regularly…
- I am Joe Nobody and since this blog talks about my life, my boring life, no one is interested in it.
- I am an average writer. Or may be I am a bad writer. Or may be I dont even qualify to be called a writer. And thus reading this blog is not the best use of their time.
- There is no “theme” to this blog. I write about a wide range of things (poker, writing, travel, getting old etc) and most things I write are my conversations with myself and hence people dont want to read an ill-informed guy talk about a million things, to himself!
- What I write do not make sense. Worse, whatever I write does not provoke any thoughts in those who read. Its like eating bland food. You stuff yourself with a lot but you do not enjoy the process of eating. You know that you have had a lot, but you dint enjoy it. That.
- May be, I do not know my target audience and thus my product has no real market per se. A typical marketing problem. And just to put things in context, I am a post-graduate in marketing.
- I dont market my blog.
- People do not have time to read blogs. They are happy with 140 characters. And blogs by celebrities. And other such people.
Of course thanks to this blog, I have had the opportunity to meet quite a few people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. But like all mortals, I want tangible gratification and all that. And for (an aspiring) writer there is no better gratification that readers and comments from those readers.
May be over the next few weeks, I would try and get people to start reading what I write. Not because I am hungry for gratification. I mean that is a very important reason but also because every reader that reads and shares his/her feedback helps me improve and makes me aware of my mistakes and makes me a better writer. Remember that thing I wrote about Anton Ego?
And starting with this one, any advice anyone? Why do you think I dont get traffic on my blog? Why do you think I dont get comments?
P.S.: If you want to point about grammar and long sentances, I am working on that. I still think in Hindi and translate in English before I write 🙁