A slow day?
For those that haven’t noticed it yet, upstartblogger.com has taken yet another turn.
Remember the old tagline of the site? If you don’t, I’ll remind you:
Successful blogging made simple.
As it turns out, successful blogging just isn’t simple. There’s all these acronyms you need to know about, like HTTP — what the hell is that? — and DNS — that means Do Not Subscribe, right? — and all of these things are vital to becoming a successful blogger.
I should give up right now.
That’s what the new approach to upstartblogger.com is: it’s capitalizing on the fear, uncertainty and doubt of people who are tentatively stepping out into the blogosphere and convincing them that they can’t do this themselves, but that’s okay because “the Upstart Blogger people” will help them through this tough time.
Putting the actual value of the “service” aside for a moment, do I need to remind you the previous track record of Upstart Blogger when it comes to customer service?
So, wtf?
Well, obviously he’s trying to squeeze as much value out of his affiliate link for AN Hosting as possible. All the other tricks have failed. No one cares about blog sponsorship except the people getting a PR7 incoming link (a value that’s dubious at best) and traffic has to be down — there’s no content! But rather than try to provide any real value to the blogging world, he is, instead, manipulating people self-consciousness and using it to his advantage to get them to sign up with AN Hosting through his affiliate link.
I just see this as a low blow. The site used to be about how easy it was to be a professional blogger, but now he’s flipped a(nother) 180 and is capitalizing on how hard it is. And this new shift in gears just underlies the main problem with Upstart Blogger.
It’s not making any money.
Sure, it might be getting some sales from the AN Hosting banner ads, and AN Hosting was chosen for it’s high payouts for referrals, not because it’s actually any better than any other host. But look: several years ago the domain was purchased for $10k+ (I don’t remember the exact figure off the top of my head). At the time, it already had PR7, and was getting steady traffic due to the PageRank and having valuable content for aspiring bloggers. And it got more traffic through aggressive post titles that attacked big names like Tim Ferris and Darren Rowse. It was monetizing that traffic through it’s affiliate links to AN Hosting and made a big point out of how he wasn’t using extensive advertising like those other guys over there. Then he got a spike in revenue with Twitter Genesis Rocket. But the rocket crashed, and so did other attempts at using some product to monetize the site. Back to the AN affiliate link again. Except now, he’d alienated his regular readership (which doesn’t actually matter, since those people probably aren’t going to hit the affiliate link anyway) and had nothing to show for it. Attempts at getting other people to blog for him failed when suspicious activity started happening in the comments to increase the drama…and the hits. The downside of that is that all his bloggers are volunteers, he’s not actually willing to pay anyone (despite this post). How could he, if he needs new authors to write the content that will bring the traffic that will increase the clicks on his affiliate links?
Thus, the squeeze page. A single page website designed to get your attention and drive you to click the button or sign up for the newsletter or buy the product at the bottom of the page. In this case, the product is the AN Hosting referral, despite what the copy says. He doesn’t care about your blogging experience, he just wants you to click the freaking link. Just click the link! It’s what he’s been waiting for since January. If you won’t click the link, well, he’ll just make it that much harder to find any relevant or valuable content on the site whatsoever by replacing the front page (formerly a normal blog layout) with a static page with sales copy. Ha! Got you now, suckers! Now you have to click on the link! I hope for his sake, and for the sake of premium WordPress theme developers (to which I claim membership myself), that the “premium themes” included in his 100 theme package do not include the WooThemes he’s been so fond of (enough to base several of his own themes on), or any other actually premium WordPress themes (you know, the ones you pay money for). If he was doing that, he’d make a whole lot more enemies than just one dude with a blog.
The bitter truth is this: Upstart Blogger is a money pit. It’s a failed investment. If it was ever able to reach profitability to the point where it paid itself back, it certainly isn’t there now if we have to resort to tired marketing tactics to squeeze any bit of revenue we can out of the site.
Apparently, in spite of previous suspicions, the fall of Upstart Blogger is not done. And the story continues.
