…I’m Just Re-Learning How to Live in It
Last year, all at once, after ten years of non-stop growth, and despite ongoing new subscriptions, my total subscriber numbers began plummeting. More importantly, visits to my blog site plunged over 35%.
WordPress happiness engineers assured me everything was just as it should be. Which, I pointed out, was like a pilot saying, “That’s OK, the engine is supposed to be on fire.” I don’t charge anyone to read my posts (I write to be read). But if visitors were dollars, I’d have gone broke.
Meanwhile, I discovered that not only were people being auto-unsubscribed from my blog, I was being auto-unsubscribed from theirs. Plus, I was receiving fewer and fewer notifications. I was blogging in the dark! What should I do?
At WordPress’s suggestion, I moved “up” to the Business Plan. Result? Bigger declines than ever! Then I noticed that the old, “Subscribe” option had been replaced by a new email-oriented Follow button — and that WordPress was steadily un-subscribing people who weren’t email followers.
So, I decided to play their game. I chose to receive emails of every post from every person I followed. I got almost 2,000 emails in the next few hours! Disastrous, yes.
But…
Once I started figuring out how to channel the deluge, I realized I was seeing your posts again! And you were seeing mine! And now, as I continue to hunt down absentee blogger friends and re-follow them by email, traffic has finally begun to flow again. Hey, it’s WordPress’s world. I’m just re-learning…
How to live in it!
Thank you so much for sharing this incredibly helpful information! I sometimes miss what should be obvious, and posts like yours make everything so much clearer and easier to understand. I really appreciate it!
My pleasure, Ben.
I’ve been doing the email thing too, and the “instantly” option floods my inbox with hundreds of emails. It’s overwhelming! I tried switching to “daily” or “weekly” for some of the more active blogs, but now I don’t get notifications for those at all. 🤦🏽♀️
So sorry to hear that, BK. I have plenty of other issues with WordPress, but so far the switches to Daily and Weekly are showing up.
Whatever happened to “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? I’ve stopped getting notifications for most of the blogs I follow and it’s really annoying!
I feel your pain, Nelli!
Wow, Mitch! This explains so much! Thanks for the info!
My pleasure, Lori. WordPress does seem to operate below our radar.
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Stay happy always Mitch! 💐▶️:-)
Thank you, Ramani. Wishing you the same.