I am always looking for new ways to get Blogcritics publicity. If anyone has anything newsworthy going on, please let me know. It may help you and Blogcritics get some well-deserved media attention. Thanks.

Could the drop in hits not come from people using blog readers more for surfing the site ?

How about an appeal for writers to be a little MORE DISCREET and DISCERNING when submitting work?

One can scan today's board and find at least a few 'personal' ads that say nothing of interest to the general public. They do nothing but clog the board and bump a more interesting story into the potential basement of oblivion.

And some have a habit of posting a sentence or paragraph that refers the reader to the writer's own web site for the whole of the article, which should be punishable by death.

And needless to say, the 'posting' of a personal vendetta and/or cry for help, sympathy, allies, banning, disemboweling of one's opponent, etc etc, should not be tolerated. I think that's a safe candidate for instant deletion by management.

Taste varies from person to person, but for me, the truly unique and original entries are the more entertaining personal essays on life and culture, (CW,dirtgrain,JR, Carruthers,CKent, to name a few; forgive me if i left you out) but those also take the most work and talent.

Maybe that's what the site needs to attract crowds:

More talent.


(Well, that and another Janet Jackson incident!)

More talent

look dood, i'm tryin' as hard as i can! ;-)

seriously though, one of the things that brings me back to any site are serious (and somewhat lengthy..not capsule length) music reviews.

i was thinking recently that there didn't seem to be as many of them here on blogcritics.

but that may not be true. the problem is that they're mixed in with a greater number of music news items (such as many of marty's posts).

i don't have a problem with the music news things, but the sheer volume of them gives the appearance of 'lack of cd reviews".

dunno how to solve this given our somewhat limited horizontal space.

How about an appeal for writers to be a little MORE DISCREET and DISCERNING when submitting work?

One can scan today's board and find at least a few 'personal' ads that say nothing of interest to the general public. They do nothing but clog the board and bump a more interesting story into the potential basement of oblivion.


Hear Hear Shark

Is this the image rehabilitation thread or something? Psycho Shark and RJ Elliott were the catspaws for latest BB's revelation of himself as the king of holders of delusions of grandeur. Psycho Shark can be found on every thread I post trying to harass me. But, based on RJ Elliott's brown-nosing above, we are suddenly supposed to buy people like this as caring about the site and wanting to improve it? I do not.

I agree with Mark Saleski - the music reviews are some of my favorites - (and Mark you do a nice job when you do those, as does Craig.)

I have asked Eric to do them, and he does, but they take A LOT of time.

yep, reviews do take a lot of time. that's why i can only manage a few a week.

each time i write one i'm up til 1 or 2 in the morning.

when i get up a few hours later i have the big 'ole mental anvil on my head.

But they are so MUCH fun to read!!

aw, shucks....

Thanks for the kind words and sentiment RJ.

A few thoughts: I wouldn't worry too much about traffic. There are all kinds of fluctuations forall kinds of reasons and it often has nothing to do with the quality of the site, or anything going on at any given moment. Where we are right now is at the bottom of a trough that started with the insane traffic explosion of last month with the Super Bowl, coverage thereafter, and media appearances related to Janet and the Grammys. We'd love to keep the traffic at that level, but the way it works in the real worls is after every media or Google explosion, we hang on to X% of the people who check us out, and over time the "real reader" base grows. In the big picture our traffic situation is excellent and shows a very steady growth curve.

I agree that reviews are the cornerstone of the site. I am actively trying to do more of all categories, but they take time, and I can never predict when I have to deal with other things. But the more reviews the better. Short is fine too, as long as they say something.

But all contributions are helpful and variety is almost as important as the presence of new reviews. If you look at the big picture (again) our posts have gone up in both quantity and quality very steadily over time.

We just need to keep doing what we are doing with an eye toward always improving our own individual writing.

And of course any promotional help is always appreciated.

Thanks again to everyone!

One more thing: we have never seen the kind of growth in members tha we have seen in the last month - this is also an excellent cause for optimism.

i still think it'd be nice to have reviews placed in their own separate 'tank'.

whether this would have any affect on traffic is debatable.

Mark, I have been thinking about coming up with a way to separate out reviews - any specific thoughts would be helpful.

That might be debatable, but it might help the credibility factor. I tried to get an interview set up with a band coming through Cleveland and the publicist said that "because BlogCritics is more of a news site" that they were going to take a pass. I think of this as a review site, but I could see where the uninitiated visitor would automatically have it pegged as a news site.

Alrighty, I've just added a music review on a Led Zeppelin tribute album.

I totally agree that these reviews do take longer to write and hence the reason I too can only do them once in awhile.

As for hits diminishing to the site? Traffic is down in a lot of places. This happens when folks are busy. It's tax time and there is lots to do at tax time.

I would say, however, that I think there has been a few too many introspective Blogcritics threads lately. I'd wager that the average reader doesn't give a damn about any of the Blogcritics (or former Blogcritics) nor especially the mechanics of this website.

Those of us who are contributing content to the site might, because we are in the trenches, but the average reader doesn't. I think we give ourselves too much credit if we think otherwise.

Perhaps someday there should be a private Blogcritics-only area for these kind of threads? Just a thought.

Happy writing to you!

Craig, you certainly should have referred whoever said that to me. We have an entire fucking interview section with every manner of serious and famous individuals. And reviews? Only about 5,000 or so. That is just bullshit.

news site: i can see how they might get that impression given the rapid turnover of the posts to Music and Etc. (and the music/music news mix in Music)

what about taking the upper area, the four major category verticals, and making them horizontal?

then you'de be able to split out the music vs. music reviews without the turnover rate of one messing with the other.

Music Reviews
-------------
article1 article2 article3 article4

Music News
----------
article1 article2 article3 article4

Book Reviews:
-------------
article1 article2 article3 article4

Video:
------
article1 article2 article3 article4

Et Cetera:
----------
article1 article2 article3 article4

...and then below this it looks like what we have now (with of course the addition of MusicReviews)

Interesting. I just did a little bit of stat checking as of this writing. I just counted up my Blogcritics posts to date on this site and the number of comments received:

56.5% - 13 out of 23 of my posts have been reviews
29.3% - 85 out of 290 comments were made on these posted reviews
*30.7% - 4 out of 13 reviews have received zero comments to date (5 actually, if you count one where I added info myself in the comment section)

* this stat I found especially interesting considering one of the reviews was about a film from another Blogcritic here (Brian Flemming). I was surprised that nobody -- even Brian himself -- didn't reply. It was a favorable review, too! :)

People just don't seem to respond as much to reviews. At least in my case, anyway.

Admittedly this is a very small cross section of data and when I get to 100 or more posts I think the numbers won't be as skewed.

But if this data is used, statisically speaking, bloggers might develop the impression that writing reviews might not yield as much traffic as going for the easy hot button topics (news, current events, politics, religion, etc).

This might also explain while there seems to be a heavier concentration of these more knee-jerk reaction type topics.

I'm sure the numbers of others will vary, but that is how it's gone for me so far to date. Just thought I'd share.

Would be interesting to see how others came out on this one that had more posts than me. I'm still a newbie poster, it seems ;)

TD, interesting, thanks. I think your numbers are probably pretty accurate in general. Reviews DO tend to get fewer comments than other kinds of posts, but that shouldn't be seen as lack of interest. I think what hwppens is that if the review is well-done and convincing, what is there to say other than "I agree" "good job" "well-written" and the like? So people tend not to do it. They are probably more likely to comment if they disagree, but news stories and a definite opion stated along with them by the writer will tend to get more reactions.

I think the fallacy is that more comments = more regard, more interest, etc. This isn't necessarily so. I would say that MOST of my reviews get few if any comments.

Don' t know if it exists or is possible, but I'd love to see a 'listing' of book/author and CD title/Arists in one spot. Just as a clickable list of links. A visitor could go to the list and immediately find the book/cd in question.

(For BCers, there are books/ CDs one might like to review, but don't know if they've been done.)

Using "Search" turns up every post where the key word(s) was mentioned, and is not that helpful.

Just a thought.

Eric, next time I will refer them to you. I debated whether I should have even used the site name to try and score an interview with one of my favorite bands. Ultimately I decided that it was really for the site because I was going to post it, but I still felt a little weird about it because I am such a big fan. Anyway, thanks for the support.

Mark (#19), I switched to a stacked view a while back in order to resolve some atrocious MSIE 5 bugs with CSS, and people went ballistic. I know that any change upsets a certain percentage of people, but people were simply convinced that I was trying to somehow hide the "Et Cetera" section, or that they should be sorted by the amount of comments each section gets, etc, etc.

I don't see any future plans to ever have more than four columns, side-by-side.

Another way to designate reviews vs other posts, maybe. I'll think about how to do that.

Here's a thought:

This is an election year. Most of the big news stories (see: Janet Jackson) will be about the various twists and turns of this election cycle.

How about a special (temporary) category for "politics"? This will likely increase both the volume of posting and comments to BC.org.

Also, with regards to Reviews as opposed to News, how about a new posting policy that reviews are to be labeled as such in the headline, with the same applicable to news posts?

For example, a headline for a review of a Foo Fighters album could be: "REVIEW: Foo Fighters [or whatever]" and a news story on Justin Timberlake could be: "NEWS: Justin Timberlake [or whatever]."

Thoughts?

The Music and Video sections could be changed to one section called "Music & Video" and then a "Politics" section could be created. I do like RJ's subheading idea.

I don't think that any one section should be completely axed, though, in favor of another. Visitors to this site are somewhat segmented in interest and each visitor typically doesn't read posts from all sections. For example, the people who read my real estate posts don't necessarily read music, video or politics posts, although some do read all posts.

I do think a Politics section could help get some media attention, but you could also get media attention with a Music & Video section, if it's pitched right and to the right media.

I also think getting links to Blogcritics on more blogs and websites would help it get more visitors.

As for Blogcritics earning more income, I think a section that's for paid members only is the way to go, but I don't think Blogcritics is quite ready for that yet. Our writers need to be featured more often in the media for that to happen, and the use of pseudonyms without using their real names doesn't help to build media credibility.

I think if you made a "Politics & Porn" paid only section, Blogcritics would make a ton of money, and with all the porn stars running for political office these days, I figure we may as well create such a section, especially since we're now running a porn ad with a rather provacative picture.

I think Et Cetera needs to be kept, as it does draw quite a few visitors to Blogcritics.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Keep in mind, the internet is seasonal and there are fluctuations based on weather.

I know in my neck of the woods, the weather is getting better so more and more time biking by the lake, playing golf, and running outside can be seen.

phil (#24)...it was hard to show this will just plain text..but the way i was thinking of this was that we'd be able to fit those five major categories (each horizontal) if we just squish down the about of preview text...maybe down to two lines each.

this way, the high turnover of "music news" will be independent of music reviews, which have a longer 'shelf life'

Good ideas, we will find a way to distinguish reviews, and separating politics out would be great, but we always run into the space problem on the front page. I am contemplating.

Re traffic, not only is it seasonal, but it's related to the general use of the Internet, which fluctuates depending upon general interest in the news. We always want more traffic and I am always open to specific suggestions and any marketing efforts, but the overall trend has been excellent so we can't get too caught up in the day-to-day, or even week-to-week.

i dunno how much work this would entail, but you could reorganise the sections into:
Reviews
News
Et Cetera

then have sub-sections in the way you have them at the moment, i.e. not actually visible on the site but there for the likes of searching, e.g.
Reviews
->Books
->Music
->Films
->DVDs

News
->Entertainment
->Sport
->Politics
->Science

(i've probably missed something but you could sort out the details if you decided to do this)

interesting J, will ponder, thanks!