Want More Readers? Write Something Negative.

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blogging, Facebook, negativity, social media, Stephen Roth, sucks

I have been blogging for more than two years now. I have written about a wide range of topics, from pop culture to politics to parenthood. Most of my posts garner a handful of views, a couple of “likes,” and are then forgotten. I’m good with that. The Internet provides us with a seemingly infinite number of new reading options every day, and I am grateful to the people who take a couple of minutes to read my work.

There is one post I have written, however, that continues to draw more and more readers, even though it was published seven months ago. The post is titled “10 Amazing Reasons Why Facebook Sucks.” Last year, the post had 1,512 views (by comparison, my second most popular post had 187 views). This year, just a little more than two months into 2015, my screed about the annoying facets of Facebook has already been viewed a whopping 2,518 times. On average, more than 40 people find “10 Amazing Reasons Why Facebook Sucks” and click on it every day.

Why is this particular essay so much more popular than all the others? Good question. The main reason is a little something called search engine optimization. If you go to Google’s search engine and type the words, “Facebook sucks,” or “why Facebook sucks,” my post is the second article that appears on the first search page you see (a much more crass article on Cracked.com titled, “Why Facebook Sucks” appears at the top of the page).

Apparently, a lot of people around the world conduct Google searches with the words “Facebook sucks” every day. Some of these people click on my post, glance at it and, in most cases, immediately leave my blog. Today, according to WordPress, my post has been visited by people in India, Germany, Romania, Slovenia and Singapore. The Internet is a wonderful thing, bringing all of us together to share in our universal frustration – and obsession – with social media.

So, if you’re a new blogger who is struggling to write that one post that will generate thousands of views (and exactly $0.00 in revenue), my advice would be to write something that has a title with the word “suck” in it. “Why the Yankees Suck,” “What Sucks About 50 Shades of Grey,” “Winter Sucks.” The topic does not really matter, as long as it’s about something for which a large swath of the population shares a deep, abiding distaste.

Sad to say, but these are the cynical, snarky Internet times we live in. A lot of the posts I write are positive. Okay, some of the posts I write are positive. Not long ago, I wrote a loving little essay about our dog on her 10th birthday. People love dogs, right? That post earned 52 views last year. Exactly one person clicked on it in 2015. Again, I’m fine with that, but maybe I should have included more photos of the dog, particularly when she was a puppy?

I’m going to try to be a more positive, upbeat blogger in 2015, but please don’t fault me if a certain four-letter word that begins with an “s” and ends with a “k” works its way into my prose.

Gotta try to keep my numbers up.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

St. Patrick’s Day with Alice

Re-posting because: 1.) It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, 2.) I really like this post, and, 3.) Someone needs to keep the memory of “Alice” alive.

A Place for My Stuff

Painting the street green is apparently another St. Paddy’s tradition in Rolla, Mo.
St. Patrick’s Day at the University of Missouri at Rolla, we were told, was a really big deal. The town celebrated with a massive parade. There were keg parties all over campus. For one wild weekend in March, we were told, everyone in the state descended upon tiny Rolla for a raucous green-beer celebration.

“And you won’t believe the women,” said our friend Bennett, who had studied a semester at UM-Rolla before transferring to Mizzou. “There’ll be beautiful women everywhere.”

It didn’t dawn on our college freshmen minds that there were plenty of parties and beautiful (read: unattainable) women where we currently studied in Columbia. St. Patrick’s Day in Rolla, we believed after weeks of hearing about it from Bennett, was on a whole different level. The 1990 celebration would be the biggest one yet. So…

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What They’re Saying on Amazon

Tags

a plot for pridemore, amazon.com, customer reviews, fiction, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

Each Friday, I visit Amazon.com to see how my book is doing. Amazon and Nielsen have a nifty application that can tell authors, roughly, how many books they sold over the past week. Some weeks the results are disappointing. Other weeks they are encouraging. Today, I learned that I sold four paperback copies of A Plot for Pridemore between February 23 and March 1. That’s a pretty encouraging week by my standards.

I also learned today that A Plot for Pridemore racked up its 23rd customer review on Amazon.com. So far, the reviewers have been amazingly kind. Twenty of them have rewarded the book with five stars, while three gave it four stars. Some of the reviewers are, of course, friends and relatives, but many are people I don’t know who managed to stumble across the book and read it cover-to-cover. I am humbled and amazed at how generous they have been to a first-time novelist. Here’s what one reader from Venice, Florida, wrote this week about A Plot for Pridemore:

I enjoyed the book very much. It started out on the slow side but got to the point where I couldn’t put it down. Stephen was very inventive to come up with this plot.

Customer reviews on Amazon.com are very important, I am told. Potential buyers look to these reviews to help them decide if they want to buy your book. Having a lot of reviews–even if they are not all positive reviews–shows that your book is generating “buzz.” That draws the attention of the Amazon people, who may decide to give your work preferential placement in their online bookstore, helping it stand out among the millions and millions of published and self-published books that are sold on Amazon.

There is a lot of content on the Internet about how to get more customer reviews, including stories about how some authors who have tried to bilk the system. It’s my understanding that you need at least 50 customer reviews for your book to get Amazon’s attention, but that might just one of those online rumors. At any rate, it’s a hot topic among newbie authors like me.

Which leads me to my plea: if you have an interest in purchasing and reading my book. I would love it if you would take a few minutes to review it on Amazon. The process is simple and easy. Even if you find that A Plot for Pridemore is not exactly your cup of tea, I would still greatly appreciate any feedback you could provide in the form of a customer review.

If you enjoy reading fiction at all, however, I’m willing to bet that you will like A Plot for Pridemore. After all, the customer reviews have given it an average of five stars on Amazon.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter