Don’t Use Pop-Ups on Your Website

I mean it. Seriously. Just don’t.

I’m not going to link to the site, nor am I going to name it. Yesterday, I spent some time reading about how to improve my blog. The blogosphere has shrunk massively since I last looked into finding readers, writing better posts, and related topics. Still, there are so-called experts out there claiming to know how it’s done. A blogging expert I am not, so I dug into a dozen or so articles, ready to learn something new.

But instead of finding enlightenment, I got hit with pop-ups. Every single article I opened came with the same intrusive ad asking me to sign up for a mailing list. By the eighth time I had to click “close,” I was so irritated that I abandoned the rest of the articles I had already opened in background tabs.

I couldn’t even tell you what the site was offering in exchange for my email. Was it an e-book? A newsletter? “10 secrets to building an audience on Twitter no one talks about”? It could have been a free Bitcoin, and I wouldn’t have noticed—because the pop-up was so distracting that it made me start to irrationally dislike the person behind the site.

We all want an audience. We all want people to join our mailing lists. But here’s the thing: nobody who hates you will ever sign up.

The internet has changed. Everyone is on social media now. And on social media, you follow people you like and block people you don’t. Reading a blog isn’t any different. Information is everywhere—thousands of versions on thousands of sites on the same topic. Why should I choose your blog to read? Only because I like you and not the thousand others writing about the same topic.

Treat your blog like a welcoming home, and people will stay. They’ll get to know you—and maybe even start to like you.

But if the very first impression of your site is an unwanted pop-up, most visitors will walk away and never give you another chance. Is that worth it getting a handful of mailing list sign-ups. I don’t think so!

To drive the point home, look at this:

Does that look like a successful club you’d want to be a fan of?

Why I’m Going to Write Daily Blog Posts Now

I finally got my mailing list set up, which means I now have some extra time to spend on other things. I’ve decided that blogging will be my main focus for the moment, and daily blogging feels like the right approach.

I’m not an expert, and I barely have any readers here. So I’ve looked at what the so-called experts say who seem to have readers. And almost all of them advise: Don’t blog daily.

Their advice is to publish one big article a week—something like a massive 2,000-word authority post. But I think that’s bad advice. Hear me out:

About ten years ago, I started watching YouTube. I had gotten rid of my TV and was working online, so at some point I inevitably stumbled across YouTube. One of the first creators I started following was Casey Neistat.

Everyone knows him now, but when I first watched his vlogs, he probably had just 5% of the audience he has today. It’s hard to explain exactly why I kept watching, but one of the things that hooked me was his commitment to posting a new video every single day.

Back then, I knew nothing about video production, and I was amazed that one person could produce something of that quality within 24 hours. Even more impressive, he managed to do it for more than a year—without missing a single upload. It was crazy.

These days, Casey doesn’t vlog daily anymore. And honestly, I stopped watching him soon after he ended his daily vlog. Out of curiosity, I checked his channel again while writing this post: he now has over 12 million subscribers but uploads only about once a month. If I hadn’t looked him up, I would have forgotten he even existed.

And that’s exactly why I believe daily writing is the right move—at least for someone like me, who’s documenting an online project in real time.

  • If someone stumbles across my blog, they’ll know it’s worth checking in regularly, because there will always be something new.
  • Readers get to see my author journey unfold as it happens—raw and in real time.
  • Writing daily forces me to sit down and hammer out words, keeping me in a creative mindset while also improving my English.
  • People won’t forget about me. Just like I forgot Casey existed when he stopped showing up daily, readers will forget me too if I only post occasionally.

Sure, I won’t build a traditional “authority blog” with long mega posts. But that’s not my goal anyway. My goal is to find readers for my books, grow an audience along the way, and stay in the creative flow for as long as I live—hopefully for many decades to come.

Daily writing (or daily vlogging) has worked for nearly everyone I’ve followed over the years. So why not do the same myself?

I Like Seth Godin’s Approach to Blogging

When you’re famous, you can get away with breaking the rules.

I’ve read a fair bit about “how to blog” recently—those posts by internet marketers who hand out basic advice that most people with half a braincell can come up with instinctively. Then I thought about the blogs I actually enjoy reading, and I realized that the bloggers I follow pretty much ignore all the so-called rules.

Take Seth Godin, for example: Seth’s Blog
He’s in the marketing niche himself, but his blog completely disregards the most common advice like:

  • Use descriptive headline formulas like “How to…,” “I made $5,117.63 in 4 weeks—here’s how,” or “7 tricks experts recommend (number 6 will surprise you).”
  • Write long posts of 2,000+ words.
  • Publish one “authority post” a week instead of short daily opinion pieces.
  • Optimize everything for SEO.
  • Focus on specific long-tail keywords.
  • …and so on.

Seth Godin does none of that. In fact, he does the opposite: he writes every day, his posts are usually short, his headlines are often cryptic until you read the article, and there’s little evidence of SEO or keyword-specific writing anywhere.

Of course, he has a huge reputation and a loyal following built over decades of hard work. He can afford to do it “the wrong way”.

But here’s the question I keep coming back to: if he’s supposedly doing it wrong, why do I prefer reading his posts over the latest 2,000-word “authority” article from some self-proclaimed SEO expert?

Almost all the bloggers I read write primarily because they want to. Sure, they’ll cover trending topics when they’re relevant, but it never feels like they’re chasing keywords or thinking about covering niches. Their writing comes across as genuine—like they simply want to share an idea or opinion.

That kind of writing may not win over Google, but it wins over readers like me.

So shouldn’t I write the same way?

In the end, the reader is always the judge. But I’m fairly certain of this: I could happily keep writing for decades in Seth Godin’s style, while I’d probably burn out and lose interest in less than a year trying to follow the advice of the so-called blogging experts.

Life’s a Journey, Not a Destination (So Is Blogging)

I’ve been thinking a lot about AI lately. My website is small, my Twitter is mostly filled with follow-for-follow accounts, and my YouTube isn’t even worth mentioning. Still, I get flooded with spam.

It’s sad. But it’s also impressive.

Scammers have built massive automated systems that spray their nonsense into every corner of the internet—no matter how small.

The OnlyFans e-girl sphere slides into my DMs. The AI entrepreneurs fill my inbox. Political grifters want me to share their stuff. It’s everywhere, all the time. Before long, real, authentic content might make up just 1% of the internet—while the rest is bots and scammers trying to sell junk to each other.

That made me stop and ask myself: How do you even find an audience in an environment like this?

The only answer I can think of: do what the scammers don’t do.

What does that mean?

Here’s an altered version of the kind of email I get at least once a day: The best all-in-one AI solution to grow your business!

Scam products are always the best, the first, the ultimate, the final solution. The price is always free to join, the lowest, the best, discounted, limited-time only.

What you never see is: Watch us develop in real time. Give us feedback on our startup. Help us improve. See us fail until we succeed.

Scammers can only sell if it’s “the best,” “free to join,” and “only available for a limited time.” So they never advertise the real truth, they advertise only bullshit.

But I don’t have to play that game. I can tell you that I’m still learning, trying, testing, failing. I can write about the book that didn’t sell, the blog post no one read, the Twitter account nobody follows. By doing that, I become something AI never will: human.

Life’s a journey, not a destination, they say. The same goes for blogging—at least when you’re human. Plans fall apart, we fail more often than we succeed. Why not write about that too? Why not write about failing 99 times until the 100th try becomes a success?

I believe this isn’t just the future of blogging. It’s already the present.

Blogging in English or Your Native Language

If you’ve read any of my articles before, you’ve probably noticed that English is not my native language. I make mistakes—more than I’d like—but with every article I write, I get a little better. Despite the challenges, blogging in English has too many advantages for me to stick to my native language instead.

Writing in a Non-English Language

I’ve run several websites in the past, most of them in German. Writing in my native language had its benefits: I could express myself more precisely and made fewer mistakes. It also felt easier and took less time.

But I quickly discovered the limitations of blogging in German. Back then, I ran a niche site that built a small but dedicated community. Still, compared to similar English-language sites, the reach was modest. Over time, it felt like I had already reached the maximum possible audience. In short: I peaked early.

Part of that was due to the niche I was targeting, but it was also because writing in German limited my potential audience.

Now, I’m in this for the long run. I plan to create content online for the rest of my life. My basic needs are covered, my bills are paid, I’m debt-free, and I even have a bit of “fuck you” money saved up. That gives me the freedom to think long-term. And long-term, the audience for English-language content is hundreds—if not thousands—of times larger than for German content.

Writing in English as a Non-Native Speaker

Making mistakes doesn’t look great. I understand that hiring a native speaker to polish my writing would seem more professional. But there are also benefits to making mistakes.

Learning – You can’t improve without making mistakes. Of course, mistakes alone don’t guarantee progress, but if you never act out of fear of getting it wrong, you’ll never move forward.

Personality – One of the best things about blogs is the personality behind them. Big corporations may deliver flawless content, but readers know there’s a faceless entity behind it. Blogs are different—they’re personal. A one-person show creates a direct connection between the writer and the reader. Mistakes can actually enhance that authenticity. They reflect honesty and vulnerability.

AI – In the near future, the only way to tell if content is written by a human might be the presence of small mistakes. AI will produce perfect output. We may end up in a kind of reverse Turing Test, where imperfection becomes proof of humanity.

The Trap of Perfection – Striving for perfection can paralyze you. As a hobby fiction writer, I get stuck in endless revision cycles. Even after five rounds of editing, I still want to tweak sentences. But perfection isn’t the best goal when publishing content. Getting your thoughts out of your head and onto the page matters more—even if it means making a few mistakes along the way.

Will English Always Dominate the Internet?

The Western world is going through a period of change. The Arab world and China are gaining influence, while America’s dominance appears to be waning. It’s possible that one day, Arabic or Chinese could rival English as the dominant language online.

But for now, English remains the global standard. Most people in the Western world learn English in school, at least to a basic level. Any significant shift in language dominance—where Arabic or Chinese are taught globally—will likely take decades. And who knows? The West could still experience a renaissance that boosts its global influence even further.

For the foreseeable future, English will remain the language of the internet.

So if you want to grow online—write in English.