101 free premium Wordpress themes, 50 Podcasts for bloggers, 75 ways to increase your google page rank, 99 lists that you’ve seen before and will no doubt see again. The lists of lists goes on and on. List posts are easy to write and seem to attract Digg traffic like bees to a honey pot.
Trouble is, everyone has seen them before and Digg traffic is next to useless if you want anything other than hit and run surfers.
Yesterday I discussed the benefits of being unknowingly scraped by a blog spammer. The blog that copied my content was a faceless automated treadmill of other peoples words. No character, no style and nothing to make people want to get involved. It was purely a traffic grinder and it did it’s job with ruthless efficiency.
And it was an eye opener. Not only did it make me some bonus money, it also got me thinking about sites that really heavily on list posts, some of which are phenomenally successful, in terms of traffic at least.
With a lot of these lists being simple re-arrangements of existing content there is a fine line between a post with nothing but links to the latest batch of 101 free premium Wordpress themes and an automated blog that scrapes posts that carry a Wordpress theme tag or category designation.
Perhaps my chosen title for this post is a little harsh but the rise of the list post is a worrying trend as more and more blogs turn into mini directories of other peoples content.
Anything, when thrown around spuriously enough, will bring in traffic. And some of that traffic may be of value to you. But at the end of the day it is personal writing, and the inherent character that only personal, first hand, writing can have that will bring in an engaged audience.
Very interesting points made. As a new blogger, I was always told (through ebooks and email courses) that list posts or “pillar articles” are mandatory to getting the big time traffic from social networks and search engines, as well as back links from other bloggers…
I have seen newer blogs literally consist of 100% list posts and it does leave a certain taste in my mouth, no doubt.
Funny enough though, “25 reasons to launching your blog and making $100+ a month in 30 days” is the post that introduced upstartblogger.com to my bookmarks toolbar…
I think relying on list posts is a little like blog suicide.. there should be a nice mixture and limit the list posts to topics that genuinely interest your audience.
It’s a huge trend, for talentless “design authors” to make a buck. well it’s capitalism, more power to them. surfing these sites remind me of surfing pr0n sites(from what my friend told me of course), you keep on clicking links only to go to another site with more links. i get frustrated and i don’t see meat.
I think people will eventually get tired of these top 10 list things. the ones that really take the cake for me are the ones that divide each item into a seperate page to get you to click through 10 pages of advertising laden content just to see what the #1 item is.
In all honesty, I don’t bother clicking on those type of articles anymore, nor do I bother with Digg.
Good article btw Ashley. I Dugg, Stumbled it and posted the article to http://www.recd.us
Elijah – It’s not so much the list format that I don’t like, it’s the regurgitation that I can’t stand.
Bababui – I agree!
Dave – Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed the article.
Are list posts the acceptable face of blog spam? “Perhaps my chosen title for this post is a little harsh”… Honestly, I don’t think it is. More than that I think you could be even more blunt about the answer. YES.
But what is worse is that if we keep the spam analogy, then I would be one of the suckers that is following my email pharmaceutical links and keeping the spam world turning. Too often I find I have clicked my way through half a dozen pages of regurgitated list fluff thinking there might be some nugget of ‘meat’ in there – and I hate myself for it.
Time to set up “ListPostAnonymous.com’ acknowledge my problem. I can see the first post now:
Ten tell-tale signs you are addicted to list posts. ;o)
I agree with the points made here. I’ve found myself in the situations mentioned above but I’ve also found good stuff and resources out there on list posts.
I actually came to this site through one of those posts (from smashing magazine I think).
Sometimes it pops right out wether a site is posting the results of true investigation/experience of its writers or if it’s a desperate cry for incoming traffic. But if someone is posting your writing as theirs, what to do?