Have you ever heard the phrase “Spring Cleaning?” A lot of people reserve a weekend or a day in Spring to really thoroughly clean up their house! Make everything spic and span at least once each year. A thorough cleaning like this is quite important in keeping the place from just getting over-cluttered to the max. What about your blog? When was the last time you cleaned it up?
Yesterday I was talking with a friend about his blog. He has not been able to make much money online, and I promised to help him all I could. I went and had a look at his site, and frankly, it was a mess. There was all kinds of stuff on the sidebar, stuff that was old and dated, and basically had no meaning anymore. We all do it. We see some kind of new widget that we like and add it to our site. In 3 or 6 months the thing has lost all meaning, we haven’t earned any money from it, and basically, our site is cluttered up with dozens of such gizmos. Put a stop to it! Clean up your site!
To be honest, when I go to a site that is so cluttered up that it is basically unreadable, I leave, and I don’t come back for a long time. I suspect that a lot of blog readers are like me. If I have to dig to find any meat (content), unless the content is so important and unavailable elsewhere, I just leave the site. Don’t make it a hard job for people to read your site! Yes, you can have a few gizmos, but keep it to a minimum. If you find another gadget that you want to add to your site, find two other things that you can remove to keep the site clean.
I do believe that adding little gadgets and such is important because it keeps your site fresh. Change your theme from time to time, to keep it looking fresh. When a regular reader comes to your site and it has changed significantly, you can bet that they will browse around a little more than normal to see what else is new, or what they have missed in the past.
My advice is that you should schedule a day around 4 times per year to review your blog and make sure that it is fresh and clean. Is everything that you have there relevant in some way? Is the thing that you have there valuable for your readers? Do the gadgets help you make money, or detract from your income earning quest? Ask yourself these things, clean up your site, and you’ll find yourself increasing your earnings!
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