How Bloggers Can Help Each Other
A few years ago I created a website, Huria Search, to showcase and highlight the websites of Black content providers, including magazines, newspapers, major websites, and bookstores.
In April of this year, I added a database of Black bloggers (http://huria.org/blogs/). Today there are 195 blogs in the database. I personally added about 75% of the blogs. Basically, I went to every blog roll and best blog ranking I could find, and added the blogs that were still online and active.
I’ve read content from all of the blogs. Several blogs are well designed, have great content, enjoy a large audience, and are doing well financially. However, all the blogs can benefit from more readers and revenue.
We can—indeed must, do more to support each other.
I have both a personal and collective interest in seeing this happen; I have maintained this blog for over a decade, and understand the challenges bloggers, especially those just starting out, face attracting readers. I know many good writers who no longer maintain blogs, because they were unable to attract readers or effectively monetize their blogs. Without their contributions, the Web does not reflect the richness of our culture and is a less interesting place.
Some bloggers are migrating to Facebook, but the creativity and unique design of a Blog are simply impossible on a Facebook page. Of course there are also the issues of revenue, privacy, control and even ownership to contend with.
I see no indication the difficulty in attracting readers and generating revenue on a blog will change, in our favor, unless we take action to reverse it. My list of blogs can help readers discover the blogs in the database, but again I think we can do more to help each other.
I don’t pretend to have solutions, but I think if we figure out ways to collectively leverage our blogs, we can all benefit. Before search engines we used webrings, while that may not be a great solution in 2015, it may be better than what we are doing now.
I’m appealing to you for ideas to help all of us in our effort to attract more readers to our blogs. If you have any ideas please consider emailing me at troy@aalbc.com, replying in the comments section below, or better still by sharing your thoughts on a conversation I just started on my discussion forum.
You may add additional blogs to our database by using this form.
Troy Johnson,
Founder Huria.org
