Daily Cup of Tech

I’m going to file this under “F” for Failure.

The purpose of me asking for donations to cover my one day a week job was to see if there was a commitment to Daily Cup of Tech that equaled my own. I thought that if I were to be willing to dedicate one solid day a week to Daily Cup of Tech that the readers of Daily Cup of Tech would be willing to support or fund that.

Apparently, I was wrong.

In fact, I was so wrong that my obsession with positioning Daily Cup of Tech has led me away from my original reason for setting up the blog.

So, here are the changes that you are going to start seeing:

1. I will be removing the Become My Boss section in the sidebar and replacing it with a Support DCoT section which will essentially just be the Tip Jar.  I will not be asking for donations but I will be leaving it up to people to decide if what they have gained from the blog is worth supporting financially.
2. The weekly “donate” posts will simply be thank you posts to those who have supported DCoT over the past week.
3. Once the logo contest is over, I will add a DCoT Store section in the sidebar that will have products with the logo available for sale.
4. I will continue to write about blogging (as this is one of the things that I like to do) but the posts will not be about how to make money or drive traffic to your blog.
5. I will attempt to write a larger number of technical articles that include more of my opinions and perspectives on technology.
6. There may be larger gaps between posts as more technical posts take more time and effort to generate but the hope is that there will be more quality in these posts.  My aim is for a more quality instead of quantity post.
7. I will continue to work on the DCoT Tours so that new users can find related posts better.
8. I will continue to post Tumblog posts as these will hopefully bring information to people’s attention that I may never get around to writing about.

I am working on a couple of posts that I will hopefully get out by the end of the week but I need to step back a bit and take a breather.  I am disappointed over every aspect of how this whole thing went and it is going to take me a little bit to get remotivated again.

Thanks to  AlDyIDrmAbtSoccr, Chris R., and JC for your open and frank opinions.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/08/13/dcot-new-directions/trackback/

 

13 Responses to “DCoT New Directions”

1. Kyle Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

   can’t blame You, I don’t work for nothing! Did My part,wish everyone had.

2. Tim Fehlman Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 12:25 pm

   @Kyle,

   A HUGE thanks to you and those like you who did do your part. It is only because of those like you that I did not decide to quit altogether.

   Tim

3. Robert C Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

   I have used your USB ideas to help me here at work. The donation was the least I could do.
   I hope you continue to blog on new and interesting things like your USB projects.
   Your loyal fan.

4. Kiltak Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

   Tim: you could be making a lot more money via your ads without even bothering your readers. Your ads placement are wrong, their colors are wrong and you should be using other ad units.

5. Beer Meister Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

   Are you disappointed in the level of response from your readers, or are you disappointed that your blog didn’t generate enough income for you? Can you clarify that?

   I enjoy reading your column. I like how personal you make it. But, I can’t support you financially in any way. In fact, I thought asking for donations and the thank you posts were both tacky. I apologize if this offends you, but there are a million other blogs out there that don’t beg their readers for cash. Asking them to support your sponsors doesn’t seem so bad.

   Good luck, Tim.

6. marisa Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 3:29 pm

   Whether or not it works out as a paying venture, you’ve created something of value here - it’s something you can (and should, I think) be proud of! Please keep up the good work, in whatever form works for you.

7. John May Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

   I gave back when you had the Blackberry contest because I thought it was a great idea and I liked reading your site. I think this is a good site and with time, some effort and maybe

   This is just my opinion, but if you really intended to make money off of this site, what you needed was either some big name sponsors, or a sort of subscription mechanism that would offer up subscribers some premium content. The way things are now, it is more of an enthusiast website and I wouldn’t expect to make much money.

   Most importantly you should do it because you like to help people and because you feel you have something to contribute, monetary reasons should be very low on the pecking order at this point.

8. JC Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 4:37 pm

   First, it is really great that you could take all the criticisms from your readers the time to go back to the previous posts and do a recent retrospection of what happened here.

   Then, maybe I’m the kind of person to express my feelings in a direct way and was maybe a bit direct at times, but I don’t think you should be so hard on yourself and consider having failed anything here.

   I guess that a blog author has a narrow perspective since he writes for readers, but they are so multiple. They have different skillsets, technical levels, expectations and interests that it probably becomes problematic for a blog to reach a certain level of popularity.
   You have to take care of not leaving regular readers behind with too technical subjects, but also not write things looking boring or rehashed to the most experienced ones.
   People will like series, and some will ask you to stop them, like it happened the Dead-DC series : I found it very interesting but to some, it was just boring and they wanted shorter stories : your position as a blog author probably isn’t easy and unfortunately, it will probably be get worse and worse as your readership will expand.

   I’ve read today in one of the comments (I don’t remember who, sorry) that this blog was actually only one year old… to me it felt like it had been out for 2 or 3 years old already… I think that you should be proud that after a single year, it is already so well established, but such popularity also comes with its deal of “problems”.

   As I said, you have to take care of the different readers here, but occasionnally people will get upset like the NoSpec thing. Sometimes, you will have the majority of your readers behind you, sometimes not as it seem it was the case with the “Become my Boss” thing, but the readers not being behind you doesn’t necesseraly mean you “failed” either. You would have failed if you failed to listen them and kept doing things making them inconfortable, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here since you seem careful enough to change course when it is still time.

   As I wrote earlier, an author has a narrow perspective over his own works and you probably only wanted to make things better and bigger and I don’t think anyone can blame you for that and you probably got everexcited about this project.

   Of course, a blog is nothing without the readers and you have to listen to them of course, but a blog is also something very personal and I think that the key point for a blog is to be something looking like you…
   Listening to the readers is fine, but they can also drift the blog in directions that are not what you want and in the end, you may feel inconfortable blogging because it will not be about what you truly care, like or enjoy or have time to do. I think everything is a balance of both even though I agree it is easier said than done.

   As a popular blogger, you will probably still have many hard decisions to make, and because I think you care of your readers a lot, you will have a hard time because you won’t be able to always make all of them equally happy.

   In the meantime : I’m really excited by what I’ve read here and look forward the articles.
   Keep up the good work and I’m sure that all your readers will be wanting to support you in the way each of them see appropriate to them.

9. Avlor Says:
   August 13th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

   I’m glad you didn’t give up. Don’t burn yourself out. Loved the USB drive series and I keep going back to it. Even tinkered with AutoIt because of you. Gave because I got so much from the USB drive series. Things often don’t go quite the way you think they will. But that doesn’t mean that something similar won’t be possible later down the road.

   Amy

10. Kevin Devin Says:
    August 15th, 2007 at 12:25 am

    Tim,

    All I can say is step back, think about why you started the blog and ensure that it where you’re going and that it continues to “scratch the itch.”

    I’ve noticed that your site seems very fast-paced, things are constantly changing — perhaps it’s just my perception. In any case, be careful not to burn yourself out.

    Don’t be so down… you’ve got a great blog here, something to be very proud of — even if it’s not ready to pay all your bills, that’s just the way of the Internet. In the tech arena, there are simply too many players, good and bad, offering content. I think you offer up some excellent content, but with RSS readers, it’s nothing to suck up 10-20 blogs in place of one.

    -KHD

11. bob Says:
    August 15th, 2007 at 9:25 am

    Agree with Kevin…for a while there the burn rate was quite high, to the point of making the blog less than useful for me.

    Glad to see you’re reeling it in a bit.

12. Casey Says:
    August 18th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

    hi i enjoyed the read

13. Randy N Says:
    November 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am

    Hey, I just found the site. Via the Mike Tech Show. Don’t be disscouraged, I ran a BBS back in the day, I maybe saw 20 bucks a year. Most people don’t think that it takes time effort, and some money. Do this just simply due to the fact that you enjoy it. If you burn out, don’t do it any more.

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