I came across this the other day, too, but it had slipped my mind until reading this post. It really hurts for people trying to grow a following organically and through referrals, and forces them to rely on FB ads more (if that's their thing).

Hadn't heard of Fiverr before, kinda wish I had ;)

These days, I don't know if your blog necessarily needs to be that popular to be a spam magnet. Even my low traffic sites seem to fill up the Akismet bin rather quickly at times. Maybe it's just a keyword play or something, but spammers seem to be pretty desperate to get just about anywhere they can.
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Being accessible and active also touch on the area of engagement in addition to trust. Often times these days engagement extends outside of just replying to comments on your own blog, but other blogs, social media (as you mentioned), and even IRL if you're active in conventions, teaching, etc.

That can be a lot to take on for someone that is only doing this part time like myself, but it is very important if you want to build trust with your readers as well as a strong community.
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Nice topic for a post, something that definitely has a lot of conversation around it.

My thoughts of a niche site - at least a proper one - is not only limited to a particular subject, but for a topic that isn't wildly covered. If you were thinking of creating a site on a niche topic and there were already 100,000 similar sites out there, it would make a lot of sense.

The point you make about WPAddict.com puts the term in a context I personally don't normally think of niche, but it's certainly opening up my definition of it.

I agree whole-heartedly with your mention on targeting your visitors. I have many interests that I blog about that range from web development to photography to Maui, and then just a general "in the life of" personal blog. To account for that, I manage them all as separate sites, since someone that lands on my Maui site that enjoys my pictures of the island may not care for the hockey game I shot at last week or the road trip I'm taking next summer.

As you mentioned, Web Design 101 - know you users and know what they want and don't care for.
My recent post Maui by Photo Gets a Logo

I think it helps with the personal connection, especially if you find yourself reading the same blogs as others. I used to be a regular blogger in the Hawaii travel community, and met a lot of great folks and connected with them further because I happened to see their smiling faces on my posts and posts of other bloggers I respected.

Not sure if I would have made that connection (them being the same user) on the name alone if not for the visual. Gravatar's reach just makes it de facto.
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Great topic and details, as wel as Interesting timing. I just finished updating the About page on one of my sites last week, so this was still top of mind for me.

I went with sort of a Question/Answer approach to help explain the who, what, and how (not in that order). I tried to keep it into smaller chunks although the page is pretty long altogether. I added a few photos as links to the different posts (it's a photo-based site) to try and keep the reader's interest along the way.

I did miss that last point you made about Privacy and Disclosure, so I'll have to go back and add that. I'm thinking it's okay to just work that into a separate Terms of Use or Privacy Page with a reference to it in the About page. Also, I need to rework the About and other supporting pages into the site footer since they're not there now (one of my next tasks).

Here's the page if anyone is interested or had feedback. http://www.mauibyphoto.com/about/
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