Demotivation of Rank

I have never been a great one for worrying about "rankings" but I must admit when I look at my Wizzley Dashboard and see a page which has a "Rank" of 17% I do find it a bit pyschologically demotivating - am I alone in that?

The page(s) with low rankings bring in a reasonable amount of traffic but have never been "liked" or commented upon by Wizzley members.  That's probably because I published them when America was asleep - as I have noticed that if I publish at certain times of day I get less initial internal traffic.

I know it's quite ridiculous to be thinking about deleting them because of their low ranking.  I know I have the "Top Writers" icon on my profile but still in terms of Maslow's Hierachy of Needs (Self Actualisation) they do dent my ego a tad LOL

Anyone else experience that?

If you start leaving messages and liking the articles of others, you will get the same in return. Also, sign up as a fan of as many people as you can.

Actually I find it really motivating to be on a platform where an article that's doing reasonably well is down at 17%. 

I find that some of my subjects just won't attract internal viewers. I wouldn't be interested in them if I wasn't a Mum to two young boys, so I completely understand that. So they don't get internal comments. They might pick up some external comments after a while though. 

I publish almost all of my articles in the UK morning while the US is asleep!

I can't say I worry about rank at all. 

I must admit I am glad to read what some of you more experienced people think because I do defintiely find the rank thing a bit demotivating, especially when you write something you think is amazing and then...the rank goes lower and lower but well, I have decided to carry on writing anyway.  

I live in the UK and tend to publish mostly late at night my time as the children are in bed - Not much sleeping occurs in my life at present! So I suppose it is evening in the US so I should get more traffic, shouldn't I?

Maybe, my writing is rubbish! or as you say Brenda, I need to do more commenting.

O well...

Thanks all for the responses which I appreciate

Brenda I think I have about 192 Fans to date and am a fan of about 214 but I have never been one for running around reciprocating to be honest - with that number of people, that I am fans, of I would spend half the day doing it LOL But you are right perhaps I should do more!

Terri I completely agree - and I know it's just an ego thing and takes me back to my academic/professional studies where I would have hung my head in shame if I had scored 17% in an examination.

MuminBusiness - the truth is of course what matters is the number of visitors from search engines and of course what they do on the page.

Forgive me my ego LOL

My best money makers have horrible internal ranks. As long as chefkeem likes me, what do I care about a mathematical algorithm.

I don't disagree :)

I think of it in the same way that appearing on Squidoo's Homepage flatters our ego and enables us to achieve that elusive self-actualisation - it's not important of itself but is just about how we feel or should I say - how I feel :)

Digby_Adams: 12. Feb 2012, 12:54

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My best money makers have horrible internal ranks. As long as chefkeem likes me, what do I care about a mathematical algorithm.

 

I would paraphrase that to 'as long as Mr. Google likes me and Chefkeem doesn't kick me out' I don't care about rankings, I care about traffic ;-) SY

Interesting conversation.  Paul, in my opinion, rank is meaningless as long as you know that your article is built with the components that create success however you describe it.  I have to admit that I do not even look at rank on Wizzley, because I know that my articles have the potential to earn, and they will as long as I created them correctly.  If they don't, which I judge by traffic and sales, not rank, then I did something wrong or missed a keyword opportunity, and I need to revisit or just move on.

This is different than on Squidoo where rank has a part to play in income.  And as we all know, sometimes our best earners have poor ranks compared to other not as good articles on any site.

I say, if you wrote a worthy article to meet your needs, then forget about rank.

I work on the assumption that the important thing to do is to gradually build Google traffic over a period of at least several months.  It's nice to have internal traffic straight after posting, but I doubt that it has much bearing on longterm traffic and earnings, as internal traffic usually falls away within a few days.  You might write a very good article on how to fix a specific plumbing problem, or how to resovle a certain software problem, which is excellent quality and information, but will never going to attract general interest or internal traffic, as the target audience is very specific and comes via the search engines, esp Google.  My experience on Wizzley is limited but that's what I've found from HubPages, anyway. 

I do understand where you are coming from, Paul. Those low ranks are discouraging. But every time that thought goes through my mind, I remind myself that the ranks don't matter. (I guess that rank could be one's success measurement, but for most of us, it's $ or something else.) Yes, the high ranking articles are a nice stroke to the ego, but in the long run they don't matter.

You are all quite right of course and I shall banish that column of the dashboard from my memory and pretend it isn't there LOL

What is the point of rank on Wizzley anyway?  How does a having good rank help us? 

Like others, I pay no attention to rank.   I block it out completely. 

Janet21: 12. Feb 2012, 15:32

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What is the point of rank on Wizzley anyway?  How does a having good rank help us? 

Like others, I pay no attention to rank.   I block it out completely. 

Janet to quote from the explanation - the bolding below is mine and is probably why 17% irks me a little - from the factors that are taken into account it would seem that likes and comments do have a very large impact

The Wizzley page rank is a quality measure of published pages and is expressed as a percentage, where 100% represents the highest level. Outstanding articles are displayed more often on the Wizzley front pages and may attract more traffic.

The Wizzley page rank is calculated from several factors:

1. Likes/thumb-ups
2. Number of visitors and comments
3. Content and uniqueness of the article

We optimize the ranking system on a regular basis. This may cause occasional changes to individual ranks.

I get what you mean, Paul. I feel that way, too. Somewhere there must be that magic potion or a wand you can wave over your wizzles and other articles that will make them somehow rise above the online slush pile and bring in oodles of traffic.

I am sometimes surprised when one of my articles do well here and elsewhere while another article flops, even though in the writing, that was the article I thought had more potential because of the keyword research I'd done or because I really cared about the subject. I feel as if I should know better by now, but there you go.

When I had a low ranking wizzle and asked for feedback on it, Chef advised me to change the title. That seemed to do the trick and the rating started to rise. Maybe there's a minor change like that, Paul, that could improve the ranking of those wizzles you feel are going down the tubes. 

And just a question, don't the rankings take into account the traffic that comes into the site as well as internal visits and comments? I had thought it did, but I could be wrong. If it's true, however, an article's rating does matter and we need to take notice of it and act on it to bring it up.

Does anyone know the difference between Buzzing Articles and Popular Articles? They seem to usually be almost the same.

Sheila good question.

I just had a look at a couple of my articles and here's the interesting thing:

1 article has 120 visitors to date - 6 likes and a few comments - rank = 88%

1 article has 160 visitors date - 1 like and 1 comment - rank = 16%

So to my mind clearly the likes are a VERY significant matter in terms of rank.

Is rank important? On one level no - but when it is termed as a "quality measure" then yes it could be seen as important

Is it demotivating to have one's work described as low quality based on low ranked pages being lower quality? Yes I think it is but that's very much a personal perceptionn of course.

Edited to add:  this is clearly about perception and whilst logic dictates that we ignore rank - it is hard to avoid the perception that one's work is being deemed low quality and that is a little hard to merely brush off - but not to worry I am fine and have confidence in my own skill and ability :)

Digby_Adams: 12. Feb 2012, 16:13

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Does anyone know the difference between Buzzing Articles and Popular Articles? They seem to usually be almost the same.

As far as I understand it 'buzzing' means more comments / interactions in shorter period of time, popular means more likes and the like in total - but I might be wrong ;-) SY

@ Sam I agree buzzing seems to be those hot at the moment or quickly hot right off the press, currently buzzing

     while popular is more of a longer term popularity, traffic etc.

When we first discussed different features on Wizzley, we dismissed the idea of internal rankings altogether. But then we thought you guys might enjoy a bit of internal competition, so our developers developed---hence their title---a ranking algo. 

What's exactly in that soup, I don't know. However, the social aspect seems to be one of the main ingredients.

So, what I would suggest is don't worry too much about it. What you can do, though, is improve the social engagement on your low ranking articles. Especially in light of Google's recent algo changes toward greater emphasis on an author's social profile.

That way, our internal ranking system may be a nice little measuring device instead of a source of frustrations and bruised egos. (Although it seemed to have a wonderful healing effect on Paul's think-aloud epiphanies.  )