The Reader Appreciation Project

Writing something is one of the ways you can express something online. You write something, and many people read that writing. In addition to having appreciative approaches to blogging and reader interaction, you can infuse appreciation directly into your writing.

Following are 10 practical ways to add appreciation to your writing. All the sample sentences below were chosen by me randomly, and do not reflect view I agree with, and they also do not reflect views I disagree with.

10 Practical Ways To Have Appreciative Writing

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Every blog is a store. There’s no question in my mind about that. You don’t have to be selling anything on your blog. I still consider your blog a store. The question is, what kind of atmosphere is your blog store promoting?

Why is Your Blog a Store?

Think of your blog as a store on a street. People may do some window shopping and actually come inside. Others may not even notice, or be repulsed by your store’s outside appearance.

Once inside your store, however, it is your job to lure that customer in and convince them to make a purchase. I don’t care if your blog is a personal blog that doesn’t aim to make any money whatsoever, you are still trying to get your customer (reader) to purchase something. Read more…

A special host has special guests. A special blog has special readers. A special blogger provides readers with special tools to make them feel comfortable, and to help them enjoy the great content of the blog.
What tools do you offer to your special readers?

Here’s a list of ideas from Readers Appreciation Project:

1. Give your readers the possibility to edit their comments: WP Ajax Edit Comments WordPress plugin. We all make mistakes when typing. But only those of us who read blogs which use this plugin have the chance to correct them.

2. Give them the possibility to change the font size: wp-chfontsize WordPress plugin. Many people don’t know or forget that they can do this from their browser. Why not making it easier? Read more…

It’s almost inevitable as you go to make your final purchase at a store. Near the counter is candy, assorted over-the-counter drugs, drinks, and other “impulse” items.

The reason impulse items are there is because people buy them. If a store has about twenty thousand customers a year and half of those purchased a one dollar impulse item, that store made an extra ten thousand dollars that it otherwise wouldn’t have.

How Do Impulse Items Benefit The Customer?

Realistically, not all impulse items benefit the customer. Some impulse items are just gimmicks. Others (such as batteries or disposable cameras) might actually be useful. Some impulse items are designed to make the customer go, “Ooops, I forgot something. This is what I was looking for.”

Some impulse items can actually be a convenience. Say, for example, the customer intended to grab something to drink before leaving the store. However, the drink section is far away and the customer doesn’t want to leave the line. Conveniently, the drinks are right near the register and the customer can grab a quick item before cashing out.

What Are Blog Impulse Items?

When customers come to a store, they come for a particular product or service. When readers come to a blog, they also come for a particular product or service. Your product may be your content. Your service may be your expertise, or advice. However, what happens when a reader is about to leave your blog? Do you have impulse items to allow the reader to make “one more purchase” before leaving?

Listed below are examples of impulse items:

• Related posts.
• Tags.
• Subscription link.
• Ads.
• Contact information.

Question to the Reader/Blogger

Just as in retail there are good and bad impulse items. What do you think are good and bad impulse items for blogs? If you are also a blogger, what type of impulse item do you think works best on readers?

Thank you for reading.

An essential key to having an appreciative blog or a site is to have a feeling of appreciation between your readers. You can appreciate your readers and you can hopefully have readers appreciate you, but if your readers do not appreciate each other, there may be something missing in your blogging efforts. Promoting appreciation between your readers allows your blog to be more beneficial to both yourself and others.
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A while back I started a series on this site called Blogger Anxiety. However, readers can get anxiety too. Here are some of the anxieties I have come up with that readers can get. Feel free to add your own in in the comments and I’ll add them to the end of this post with a link to your site (if applicable).

Breaking Into the Conversation

I read a lot of blogs. I comment on maybe three of them regularly. Perhaps four. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve actually written out a full comment and then decided to just leave the page. I admit that I was afraid.

I’m afraid that I’ll be intruding on someone’s turf. I’m afraid my comment won’t be well received. I’m also afraid of interrupting. Every blog has its own community. Sometimes I just don’t want to butt in. And sometimes I don’t want to be ignored.

Coming from a blogger’s perspective, I respect any and all comments on a blog (besides comments that personally attack me). If you want to join in on the conversation, please do. We won’t bite (hard). Read more…

The Reader Appreciation Project was launched a little more than three months ago. RA Project continues to grow and I am extremely thankful for the RA Project authors and readers.

RA Project Re-Design

The last time I posted one of these update/stats posts I promised a few screenshots of the redesign. I do have a mock-up done, but I’d like to have the coding a little further along before posting any screenshots publicly. Hopefully there will be some detailed screenshots by the middle to end of July.

Posting Schedule

The posting schedule is still Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. To stay up to speed on the project, please subscribe. If you’d like to contribute a guest post or perhaps join us as an author, please contact us and review our guest-writing policy.

Anti-Spam Measures

RA Project has been getting roughly 40-50 spam messages a day being caught by Akismet. We currently have a no-moderating policy here, so unfortunately a spammy comment gets through every now and then. Spam is eliminated as we find it, so hopefully we’ve been fast enough to get rid of spammy comments.

Posts/Comment/Feed Stats

There are currently 94 posts, and 1,152 comments. As of today, we have 49 feed subscribers. Why not make it more?

Plugin Stats

• WP Ajax Edit Comments currently has 4,464 downloads.
• WP Do Nothing currently has 95 downloads.
• WP Categories and Posts currently has 515 downloads.

Technorati Stats

RA Project is currently ranked 15,516 with 653 incoming links. Our blog authority is 261.

If you feel so obliged, please add RA Project to your Technorati favorites.

Conclusion

RA Project continues to grow. My hope is to have the redesign well on its way to being finished by the next time one of these posts goes live. Please subscribe to our feed and let us know what we can do to serve you (the reader) better.

One of the ways to appreciate people more is to know more about them. The more you know about a user, the more you can realize how your behavior on your blog, both written and other, will be perceived by someone. The more you know about your current readers, the more appreciate you are.

Take extra steps to find out more about commentors

Knowing more about a current reader means that you can find out more than just the username of a commentor. One way to do that is to actually read comments by people and relate them to the associating username. Another way to appreciate a commentor is to actually contact and ask them more questions, or to visit their site, if they have one.

Avoid giving the illusion of knowing your readers

One of the biggest mistakes on your blog that you can make is to tell someone for a long time commentor on your blog that you appreciate them, and then not knowing something about them. Such a mistake can result in your commentor feeling used, for that is probably what you intend to do: use people by luring them in, and then not appreciating them.

So, the next time you see an opportunity to know a reader, you can try to know more about them outside of your blog.

Did you ever think that every reader who clicks on your blog’s ads is a lost one? They move away, leaving behind their 10 cents (more or less) click for you. The more of them that run away, the more money you make with your blog. The more money you make, the less loyal readers you have, because you’ve chased them away. I had this thought after reading this article on EMomsAtHome, where Wendy Piersall is talking about her experience at Elite Retreat and her conversations with Shoemoney:

What I loved was his down to earth approach – and he spoke well to our questions in regards to when you build sites to send away traffic vs. building sticky sites to keep traffic. It was a good eye-opener to me (more like a big “DUH”) to realize that the site I’m building here hasn’t monetized as well as I had hoped BECAUSE I’m building it to be sticky. If my AdSense click-through increased, I’d be losing potential long-term readers.

This is a challenge to all of you who run a blog: how to make it sticky and also make money out of it. How do you see this as possible? Do you think that very good SEO optimization can offer you a pool of readers big enough to cover both objectives: loyal readers and blog earnings?

You’ve announced a contest. A re-design. An interview. More posts. More exclusives. Less advertisements. More interaction. More, more, and more. Yet, do you follow through on what you have promised the readers?

What’s at stake if you don’t follow through on such promises? Your credibility.

The Problem of Over-Extending

A few days ago, Bes asked on his personal site whether it’s possible to get into blog debt. I’m of the belief that blog debt is self-imposed, but there can be some obligations that must absolutely be met. Read more…