Now Reading ...You may have notice some downgrade on this blog. Actually, I was testing some method that Yaro Starak teach on his blogmastermind blueprint.
He said that the “Communication Channel” is very important for a blog. I read his Blogmastermind blueprint and kind of curious what is the effect if I let it go instead of building it.. 
Read his blueprint on page 25-26 and you will know what I’m talking about.
That’s where I decided to take a 1 week testing directly on this blog. The result is truly amazing. Although I’ve got an upgrade of PageRank (currently 4 now), It still unable to make any change to the stats.
Total of 3 downgrades happening on this blog during the testing:
- Alexa from 70.000+ down grade to 83.000+
- Comment counts decrease significantly
- Traffic decrease by 30%! :O
Seriously, it’s a great experience for me. What I’ve done is just staying normal on my own posting frequency and become passive on any blogs that I happened to visit often.
It’s amazing to see how everything is dropping continuously during the test. I realized something that pretty important for improving my blog visibility, though..
You may think I’m silly enough to allow my stats drop intentionally. It’s strange, right? Well, I love to test something to prove and taste the failure itself. I believe failure is the mother of knowledge. No failure no serious gain.
Of course, I have gained a serious self-enlightenment on what Yaro so called “Communication Channel”. It’s not simply by reading and understands his statement (Blueprint - p25-26), I actually “feel” the painful experience of losing the communication channel in my blog.
In this test, I’ve proved 6 things:
- Regular Updating is useless if you just ‘Update’ alone
- Content is not the true King. I create pillar contents regularly, but the stats keep falling
- PageRank means nothing but a green bar on your browser
- Alexa actually useful - Alexa represent the big picture of your blog
- Number of comment that you will get on your blog is depend on your activities within your niche.
- Social Media Mass Submitter like Onlywire is useless in bringing traffic. It’s all about incoming links only.
The more you active and take part in conversations, the more people will value your visit and they pay you with an attention on your blog. It’s about Give first and take later.
You need to consistently work out the schedule (set some if you don’t have). It’s useless if you active for 1 month and stop for the next one month. You will back to your start point again.
Except you have reach the Bigger communication channel, and have a bunch of loyal readers that could help you promoting your blog without your private request to them, your blog won’t have a bright future.
It’s very important to reach that point (reaching a bigger CC) before you can try to relax yourself or try to entering to your comfort zone by not commenting or building relationship regularly.
I risk my own stats to do this research, but I’m happy about it because it’s a great experience for me to see exactly how the things working around. Now, I understand ‘deeply’ that Blogging is about communication with the surrounding. It’s not about make a post everyday and get it stumbled or dugg by other and then go missing into the wood of blogs, It’s all about building relationship.
It’s time for me to get up and running again. I’m going to do a round 2 testing directly on this blog. But now, I will try to build the communication channel instead of regular daily update. Let’s see what will happen on next week.
Cheer!
Note: I’m not playing around with my blog future. Instead, I want to taste exactly how is the ‘feeling’ of each theory (I’m a kinesthetic type of human - feeling better than observing and listening) . I’ve done enough reading and observing on other achievement and theory. It’s time to ‘feel’ instead of ‘understand’.
Any comment, opinions, objections? Please do it below.
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(October 30, 2007, 4:07 am)
so true, so true… active participation is THE most important aspect of blogging! People do forget about giving first and taking later
that alone is an excellent observation Ken…. if everyone keeps thinking about taking and taking, no one will benefit! wonderful post, as usual 
Reply to pearl(October 30, 2007, 2:01 pm)
Thanks for your support, Pearl. As asual!
I have set a schedule to make comments on 40 blogs a day starting today. let’s see what is the out-come for the next 7 days.
Will write the result next tuesday.
Reply to Ken Xu(October 30, 2007, 7:23 pm)
Excellent.This is what I go through sometimes. I had not commented on many blogs long time due to my own reasons. I see drop in comments unless post is one of a kind. I hope to settel down soon so as to continue my social activities here
Reply to Ashish Mohta(November 1, 2007, 12:02 am)
Yep. I notice that too. That’s why I’m curious enough to held this testing to see how is the reaction. I prove that social activities is a top notch task that we should set its priority to the highest.
Reply to Ken Xu(October 31, 2007, 2:44 pm)
It’s an interesting experiment. Thanks for sharing the results with us.
Reply to Laura(November 1, 2007, 12:04 am)
Hi, Laura. It’s a painful experiment, actually.
Reply to Ken XuBut at least it could help us realize that communication is an important key in blogging. Thanks for commenting, Laura. Nice to see you again.