Places/visibility and content tips for written EE blogs? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: kalel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2017, 11:42:06 am
content: I've recently asked about tips for a YouTube channel. A large quantity of helpful information was received, even Dave chimed in.Now I'd like to ask about the more old fashioned, Blog approach. I'm sure that many combine Blog with Vlog as well, but with this discussion I'd like to focus more on those that choose to setup a Blog rather than a Vlog, for any reason.From what I understand, there are some advantages to blogs, e.g. it might be easier to format and edit/update the content later on. If a change is needed, you don't need to reshoot some video content, it might be as simple as editing a few lines of text or changing a photo.There are also disadvantages, major one being that possibly less people (if any at all) will see your content. It might be easier and/or more fun to watch a video of the same thing. This also leads to the "places" question. How do people find your blog, through Google Search alone? Is there an suitable place for blogs like YouTube might be for vlogs? Something that helps people find related content from "other channels" or so on, and not 100% from search engine alone. One of the major problems being, search engines (likely) take your website popularity into account, so when starting out your content might not appear in results.That said, I'm not sure that unless you have a popular channel, you will ever appear in "related content" on YouTube either. Even if you do, often videos watched before by yourself will appear in these categories, getting you stuck in a bubble. I don't know if YouTube search works the same way, e.g. if your channel is not extremely popular, will your videos appear to those who search the right keywords.I would guess the point of this is to ask about placement and visibility of blogs. In the age of YouTube, are they at all worth trying for those interested, and does anyone still read them?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 13, 2017, 12:32:01 pm
content: Quote from: kalel on August 13, 2017, 11:42:06 amNot only that, but market for people who "sign up" (RSS, email list etc) to regularly read your content is orders of magnitude smaller.QuoteBasically, Google + time to build up SEO and search engine reputation.QuoteThere was back in the pre-Youtube days, topic based "Webrings" and the like. Pretty much redundant these days. Basically it's just a reciprocal link on another bloggers webite.QuoteThat depends, the Youtube algorithm is always changing. Small channels can very much get linked in.QuoteThey do, but not nearly in the same numbers as Youtube "edutainment".Video killed the text blogging star.

author: kalel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2017, 02:39:52 pm
content: Thanks for the info. As for disadvantages, I just remembered one more,cost.You don't need any upfront investments to host videos on YouTube. You don't necessarily need it even on other websites, like Vimeo (although it has paid plans).You might need quite large (comparing to free) hosts to get decent hosting and a domain for your blog. If you know it's going to work out and you plan to return the investment through ads or promotions or otherwise, that's fine. But if you don't know if it's going to work out or just want to run a small one, this cost could become too large.There are services that provide free blogging platforms (wordpress, blogger, thumblr, etc) but some show ads and limit the ways you can earn (e.g. you may not post your own ads on Wordpress free plan).The best way would be a trusted service that provides both free and paid plans, where the free plan is usable for a small blog without any up to a small amount of visitors. That way you wouldn't need to invest upfront, but could upgrade without hassle if things work out and people start visiting.