[Cross-posted from my Perl blog to use.perl in its entirety so that more people might read it.]
Warning: Rant ahead.
Reacting to the recent meme of "We don't have enough Perl sites", I've started a blog. I've written blog posts every day, sometimes several times per day, but get hardly any visitors. I don't like the idea of link-spamming indiscriminately, so I've only announced new blog posts on use.perl and on Twitter.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the topics I write about are not very interesting. It has been suggested that I should write about things that would cause others to want to link to my blog. Well, I don't have any intentions of sucking up to anybody just to get visitors. I had hoped to write about things I encountered along the way and that I found interesting. I didn't merely want to write about my own modules but also about other sorts of things, especially interesting CPAN modules I've found, or news from the Perl world in Japan and Korea. So I thought of the blog as a community service rather than a wank.
Andy Lester wrote an article in his Perl Buzz blog: Perl must decentralize, diversify and colonize. I agree. Schwern said pretty much the same thing in his "Perl is unDead" talk at YAPC::Asia 2008.
However, saying that there should be more Perl sites is good, but then you should help in driving traffic to those sites as well.
For example - and this is not meant to single out one blogger - Perl Buzz links to the official perl pages, and the official perl pages link to Perl Buzz. I have asked for my blog to be included in planet.perl.org, but didn't even get a response. So the Perl in-crowd link gets all chummy and link to each other and write lots about their own blogs and their own modules, but the small sites are left to fend for themselves.
Put your money where your mouth is.
To be clear, I don't complain about not having thousands of visitors; rather I am disappointed in the nonchalant way in which well-known people who attract lots of visitors from outside the active Perl community proclaim that there must be more Perl sites, but when they do appear, leave them out in the cold.
Nor do I want to single out a specific prolific blogger. I am appealing to all the top Perl bloggers.
Nor do I expect, after having complained about the situation, to have lots of links to my blog suddenly spring up - I am disillusioned to the point where I don't want to continue my blog anymore. Rather, I wanted to highlight a bigger problem.
There are many interesting things happening in the Perl world. Please start writing about them, and start to interact with other Perl blogs.
I've written blog posts every day, sometimes several times per day, but get hardly any visitors.
Just a few thoughts...
1) I run noscript, if you rely on anything other than looking at your raw server logs for unique IP addresses... you won't see me visiting your site. And yes, I know that is a poor metric. I'm just pointing out some possible sources of error in your measurement methodology.
2) I didn't see an easy way to subscribe to your site via an rss feed. That greatly reduces the number of articles I read on your site.
3) I don't know how typical I am, but I read a lot. I post very little. That adds to the problems associated with determining "how big" the crowd is.
4) Everyone should be able to have their say. Nobody should be required to listen. Post because you want to. Internal motivation beats external motivation every time.
P.S. I have enjoyed your writing.
Re:Thoughts...
hanekomu on 2008-09-20T11:35:18
Hi,
thanks for replying!
ad 1) I've accounted for this; I'm combining Google Analytics with grepping through the log manually. But like I wrote, it's not really about the number of visits - it's about networking within the community. The number of visits were only the catalyst for thinking about this situation.
ad 2) Hm, true - I didn't provide an explicit link, but Firefox and Safari show the "RSS" icon in the URL bar, so I thought it was sufficient. My bad, probably...
I know that you say you've now closed your blog, but I think you are giving up too soon. You had a couple of good posts (such the Moose dissection), and more stuff like that would be nice.
The one line announcements you post to use.perl aren't compelling, so maybe you could write more than that you have a new post to interest people in following the link. To get your blog noticed, you have to talk about it (not just mention it) everywhere. Comment on other people's blogs that you found the solution to their problem and you wrote about it, then give them the link. Find interesting problems in other people's blog, blog about it yourself, then link to it in their comments, etc etc.
Write about things that nobody else is writing about.
As for planet.perl.org, try asking again. You can never really tell what happens on the other side of email. People are much too quick to assume malice, though.
And do you know about Perlsphere? Same thing but different.
Re:Better promotion
hanekomu on 2008-09-20T19:14:34
True; I'm impatient and easily frustrated. And I did not know about Perlsphere. And your idea about promoting via comments on other blogs is interesting; I hadn't thought about that. But then, like I said, I didn't want to link-spam just to get noticed.
And I see your point about the non-compelling one-liners, however I believe the objective - as expressed in perlbuzz and by Schwern - was to have more Perl sites. My posts weren't that long to begin with, so to excerpt them to get people to look at the blog isn't that simple. And of course I could just post to use.perl, but then there wouldn't be a separate Perl site.
Realistically, having n smalltime bloggers promoting their sites is a lot of effort. Well-known Perl blogs could ease the situation by maybe just telling their readers about new Perl blogs.
Even better would be if it was possible to embed the planet.perl.org (or some other aggregators's) feed on well-known sites such as use.perl and perlbuzz. That way it is not necessary to cross-post one-liners to use.perl.
Re:Better promotion
slanning on 2008-09-21T15:24:17
I see your point about the non-compelling one-liners
FWIW, I had noticed them and deliberately ignored them. I consider it spam.
Also FWIW, I disagree with the idea of spawning other sites. I like this site because of its high ratio of good quality posts.
Re:Better promotion
gabor on 2008-09-21T20:22:08
I've started to write a longer post about it in my blog but right now I am quite busy with other stuff so I say just a few words, though I might just repeat what brian d foy said.
- Don't be afraid from some level of cross posting, that is post here links here and elsewhere to your blog.
- Sometimes post here a full entry with links to your blog.
- Write stuff that is interesting to you.
- Link to other places.
- Ask others (even in e-mail) to link to your site/blog whatever.
- Lots of patience.
- People are busy. Often they don't have time to read your blog.
- Don't expect too much.
- There are so many site out there now. Most of them with bad content but its hard to get noticed and get (blogging) reputation even if your posts are good.
- Put a link to your blog in your e-mail signature.
- There are alway going to be people who will criticize you about posting links to your blog and spamming. We just have to live with that.
In the end you want your blog to get noticed. At first you'll have to post here too and link to your blog.
oh, lucky I did not have more time to write
:-)
I do read your blog, but 1st, I have JavaScript disabled if it's really not needed for the functionality of the site. I won't be in Google Analytics, sorry. 2nd, I read the blogs and news only when I have time that is not too often but then I read them in a burst. So you'll get one hit from me for reading all of your blog entries, sorry again.
I'm not so crazy about decentralization. I really like the use.perl.org that is aggregating blogs of my "use.perl.org friends".
