I'm by no means an established writer. So take this opinion with a grain of salt. But I think the time of fast turn-around blogging with the use of a single news source as primary to support an obvious opinion is coming to an end. The reason for this is because too many people do it and the process doesn't offer much additional content to entice readers. This is a somewhat obvious opinion, yet there are piles of people who want to start blogs doing just this. If you want to pull in readers, go get sources that aren't easily available on the Internet. Go to books. Interview someone on your own. Take your own photographs. Pull it all together in a crafted piece and take the time necessary to get it right. That also means revise the work before publication. Sure, pass a rough around among friends or in a small community to get critique. But don't publish initial rough drafts. They always suck. You know what drives hits? Recipes. Self-help advice. Pop trivia. Extreme opinions that piss people off. And completely original content. Put together something that goes beyond topics on the 24 hour news cycle and write for the Google search market. Create something that has staying power. Prepare to write longer pieces beyond just a thousand or two thousand words. And screw all those people who say you have to post a short piece every day. Even if that's true, it doesn't teach you how to write long form for newspapers and magazines professionally; much less books. Finally, if you want to write fiction and are new to the craft, consider going to Literotica under a pen name and posting pr0n. There are a pile of readers there. You'll get thousands of hits off the bat, and the rating system will quickly show you piece by piece what works and what doesn't. Use the place as a means to test technique and craftsmanship, then walk away and move on to more traditional venues. Hope this helped. Again, JMO. And I'm sure there are other folks better able to give a pro opinion on the site. I'll poke my head in here again and to see what others have to say.
All those me-too blogs I think are symptomatic of result-orientation, as if content were merely a means to gain hits, as if the real interest was popularity, money. No, we are breathers and feelers and thinkers and makers damnit! We are looking to connect in the most basic sense with other people! We are looking to see our babies exist in the world. To find home. Money is the root of all of this. Capitalism is bad for culture. Yeah, I said it!But I think the time of fast turn-around blogging with the use of a single news source as primary to support an obvious opinion is coming to an end. The reason for this is because too many people do it and the process doesn't offer much additional content to entice readers. This is a somewhat obvious opinion, yet there are piles of people who want to start blogs doing just this.