The curious case of missing comments / viewers

For someone who's been writing for almost ten years now, I have a surprisingly low count of regular readers (the exact number is here). And subsequently, lower count of comments on the blog.

I mean its not really surprising, considering that I am not really popular (even in my friends' circle). And if I was interesting or funny or intelligent or a loud mouth or opinionated or smart or an eloquent speaker or a photographer or a social media expert or well endowed or well versed with history or connected or rich or something similar, people might have read my blog. But I am not any of these. In fact I am like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill and "...even my mum has a tough time remembering my name...".

Thing is, all this while, I did not matter if someone read, commented on the blog. After all this blog is more like a conversation with myself, on things that I find interesting (or things that catch my fancy). But now that I am trying to get my first novel out, I need to solve this curious case of missing comments. Simply because I need people to read what I write and give me feedback on how/what I write.

So here is a quick list of reasons why people might not be reading this blog regularly...
  1. I am Joe Nobody and since this blog talks about my life, my boring life, no one is interested in it. 
  2. I am an average writer. Or may be I am a bad writer. Or may be I dont even qualify to be called a writer. And thus reading this blog is not the best use of their time. 
  3. There is no "theme" to this blog. I write about a wide range of things (poker, writing, travel, getting old etc) and most things I write are my conversations with myself and hence people dont want to read an ill-informed guy talk about a million things, to himself!
  4. What I write do not make sense. Worse, whatever I write does not provoke any thoughts in those who read. Its like eating bland food. You stuff yourself with a lot but you do not enjoy the process of eating. You know that you have had a lot, but you dint enjoy it. That.
  5. May be, I do not know my target audience and thus my product has no real market per se. A typical marketing problem. And just to put things in context, I am a post-graduate in marketing.
  6. I dont market my blog. 
  7. People do not have time to read blogs. They are happy with 140 characters. And blogs by celebrities. And other such people.
There may be other reasons why people do not read my blog but at this point in time, I can only think of these 7. 

I mean, to be honest there is nothing on this blog that someone would want to read on a regular basis. If I wasnt myself, I would not read it! Most people (out of 100 odd that come everyday on this blog) land here by either searching for some lyrics or hunting for startup reviews or using complex queries that somehow point to my blog. Or something frivolous like that. Chasing multidisciplinary expertise has its own disadvantages I guess.

Of course thanks to this blog, I have had the opportunity to meet quite a few people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. But like all mortals, I want tangible gratification and all that. And for (an aspiring) writer there is no better gratification that readers and comments from those readers.

May be over the next few weeks, I would try and get people to start reading what I write. Not because I am hungry for gratification. I mean that is a very important reason but also because every reader that reads and shares his/her feedback helps me improve and makes me aware of my mistakes and makes me a better writer. Remember that thing I wrote about Anton Ego?

And starting with this one, any advice anyone? Why do you think I dont get traffic on my blog? Why do you think I dont get comments?

P.S.: If you want to point about grammar and long sentances, I am working on that. I still think in Hindi and translate in English before I write :(

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The Nidhi Kapoor Story

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