What are your pet peeves with other blogger's sites?

[moneymatters]

what are some things that cause you to quickly de-link another blogger's site from your daily reads? Is it a bad graphical design? bad content? swearing? What are your pet peeves?

[The Honest Dollar]

Probably bad content. If it's not worth reading at least 75% of the time, it's not worth a place on my ever-growing feed.

Another pet peeve - over-monetization. My feed reader makes this less of a concern, but if I visit a site and the content is barely on the front page, drowning under above-the-fold ads, I'm very quickly turned off.

Umm ... misspellings and blatant grammar mistakes, because it takes so little effort to run spell-checks.

New bloggers need to worry about design, as first impressions really matter now that good web design is so easy (using pre-designed themes, for example). However, there are some great PF blogs out there with truly awful designs. As long as the content is good, I don't mind - especially since I do most of my reading through RSS feeds.

Also, swearing doesn't bother me. I avoid it myself since I want to keep things professional. Actually, I don't think there are that many swearers among PF bloggers.

[purplefdu]

And people wonder why I complain Adsense ads are so huge, I want them tucked away in my sidebar, not in a huge banner spanning my footer, lol.

I cringe at bad grammar, or poorly researched topics full of bad information. I don't mind swearing unless its not needed.

The same topic thats on everyone's blog drives me off most times. I don't want to read the same thing ten times on ten blogs.

[Gootsy]

Oh man I could go on and on but... here're a few.

1: Blogs that keep recycling posts like, "The trick to retiring early is... Spend less than you make! Pay off debt! Create an emergency fund! Invest wisely and early!..." I say to myself, "Good god, this is a blog that's been going on for how long and they keep regularly making these posts, but change a few words?!" It's like they just do it for the sake of putting something out. It annoys me and wastes my time.

2: Blogs that are filled with "you" and no, "I". A blog that only makes posts telling me what I should do, or what I don't know, tests my patience. They MUST have stories about their own experiences if they expect to stay on my feed. It makes no sense not to include "I" type posts since they're also easier to write and flow well.

3: Blogs that're all about "I" and no, "you". Seriously I don't care if you spent 7 dollars on coffee on tuesday, then find out on wednesday night you went out for dinner spending 25, then read on thursday how you were late for work, then on friday how glad you are the weeks over. It's all about balance, mix it up!

4: Credit Card posts about some new great deal. For 1, I'm Canadian so I rarely benefit from this. But even if it's for Canadians, I really don't want to hear about over and over again. Mention it once and then move on. So many posts repeat this stuff like wtf? Tell me if this sounds familiar, "So here's my list of the top credit cards again. I know I posted this 1000000 times before, but 1 of the cards is new, and 1 isn't offered anymore." Yeeesh!

5: Posts that just say, "Yeah sorry guys I am real busy and haven't been able to post. I'll definitely get something up tomorrow. In the mean time check out this post I made 3 years ago that doesn't apply at al today." Gee thanks for filling up my feeder with this

6: No pictures/graphs/charts/stats (or too many) is definitely a downer. It adds a little colour, and can make a good post great.

7: For new blogs, if their first page doesn't have a single original post, I simply cannot justify putting it in my feeder. No matter how pretty the layout is.

8: Spelling errors kinda annoy me, especially since they can easily read it after posting and catch them. Or heck how bout spellcheck

9: Posts where the author is talking about some announcement, but they don't bother to link to where they heard about it. Ok I don't doubt what they've said is true(most of the time), but if I mention it to someone in converstion, they might(and I'll sound like an idiot if I just say, "Well I read about it in some guy's blog on the internet.")

10: Massive amounts of ads on a clearly new blog. I see this, and then laugh when they talk about how they aren't blogging for the money. Gimme a break bwahahahahaha!

Some of these are obviously a bigger deal than others. But once I get started hehehehe.

[moneymatters]

Wow Gootsy, i think i hit a chord here with you... haha..

i realized i hadn't posted my own pet peeves.. I hope this doesn't sound like complaining to anyone because I honestly only hope this post can help someone to improve their own site -hey maybe even mine!

My own personal pet peeve is bad design and/or design that makes you cringe. More and more this is less of an issue for me because i tend to read most stuff through my RSS reader. But when I do go to a website and they have some garish colors, or a big flashing banner on the top - or it is just a big jumble of graphics, badly edited posts and other things that just turns me off. It is much easier nowadays to find a free template for whatever platform you're using, and tailor it to suit your needs. Even if you don't know html or anything, it is easy enough now that you can have someone do most of it for you, free of charge!

[Gootsy]

Hehe, I actually have thought about making a post like this before . Here's another annoying one I really don't like

When a blog reads like an infomercial: "I've made over a million dollars by living the way I do. If you read my blog, I am supremely confident that with a little effort and elbow grease, you can as well!" No way can I take someone seriously if they remind me of those guys on TV trying to sell me a 5 minute ab machine. C'mon!

[cheapskate]

Definitely too much first person.

Too many words in general.

Not enough photos!

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by moneymatters

Wow Gootsy, i think i hit a chord here with you... haha..

i realized i hadn't posted my own pet peeves.. I hope this doesn't sound like complaining to anyone because I honestly only hope this post can help someone to improve their own site -hey maybe even mine!

My own personal pet peeve is bad design and/or design that makes you cringe. More and more this is less of an issue for me because i tend to read most stuff through my RSS reader. But when I do go to a website and they have some garish colors, or a big flashing banner on the top - or it is just a big jumble of graphics, badly edited posts and other things that just turns me off. It is much easier nowadays to find a free template for whatever platform you're using, and tailor it to suit your needs. Even if you don't know html or anything, it is easy enough now that you can have someone do most of it for you, free of charge!

Garish designs are a huge turnoff.

[Ginger]

I should also say I don't mind monetization at all. I read Consumerism Commentary and a few others regularly and the ads don't bother me.

[amandajane]

The first thing that I avoid is bad design and colour choices - come on guys - it has to be readable, even to us normal sighted people, heaven knows what it's like for the colour blind etc.

Then flashing banner ads and too many ads in general. I'm outa there as fast as I can be.

Next boring content, even if the design is mediocre and I've got past it the content has to be good to get my attention. There are so many blogs that are as boring as watching the grass grow!

Oh and not forgetting badly coded sites that look different in the different browsers, I know how hard it is to get it looking the same in all but please... make the effort if you want to be recognised. I used FF and Opera primarily, it's amazing how many sites don't view properly in these browsers but look good in IE. Argh, I won't go on, I've been designing web sites for 7 years, so this stuff *really* annoys me.