Why I Tried Blaze Again
A few weeks ago, I tried Blaze again so you wouldn’t have to and today I wanted to share my experience with it. But first, let’s talk about why I tried Blaze again even though it’s a WordPress service that I am not a fan of at all.
I had mentioned in one of my posts about two or three months ago about a glitch many bloggers were experiencing where their subscriber numbers were inaccurate. Unfortunately, I was one of them and attempted to rectify the situation by reaching out to the Happiness Engineers. That was my first mistake. As expected, they could not do anything to help but they did give me $50 worth of credits to use on Blaze which I have to admit was really nice of them.
Obviously, I would never use my own money for Blaze and certainly not $50. But since I had the credits anyway, I decided to give Blaze another try. I had tried it earlier as I had gotten credits back then too and was disappointed by the results. I wanted to see if this time would be any different. You can read about my last experience with Blaze here.
So, here’s how it went:
The Campaign
Last time, I got some comments letting me know that I had not created my campaign very well and that was true. I had relied on WP’s AI creating it for me and it sucked. So, this time I did everything myself and took more time to make sure the campaign looked good. I also set everything up as well as I could.
The objective this time was different, I decided to concentrate on sales because a lot of the people considering using Blaze are interested in selling products or services. And I was truly just curious to see if I would actually get any sales. Spoiler alert: I didn’t lol.
The Results
Like last time, I found the results immensely disappointing. 78 clicks for $50 is pretty pathetic if you ask me. You would have to spend hundreds of dollars before you see any results. Which tells me that WordPress really doesn’t know anything about its users. Most bloggers here blog as a hobby or are just starting out which means they can’t or won’t pay that much for Ads. Especially, when the results are less than enticing.
I would also like to point out that on the last day they seem to have really pushed the post onto the right audience because you can see a big increase in both impressions and clicks. If they had the ability to do that all along, I wonder why they didn’t. Were they hoping I would continue the campaign and consider paying more? Although many platforms play dirty games like that, it’s still a messed up thing to do. If they didn’t do it on purpose, then their Ads system isn’t very good and that’s all it is.
I started the campaign with 145 likes and ended it with 149 likes, that’s a really low number in my opinion. I understand that likes were not my primary goal for the campaign though but still. You would think that they would push the post out enough to at least enough of an audience that I would get 10-20 likes.
I got one single comment and I’m pretty sure it was from someone that clicked on the post after seeing the Blaze Ad because I had never seen their profile on my blog before. This was their first and last comment on my blog. It shows the comments went from 122 to 124 because one was the comment I received and the other was my response to it. Again, pretty disappointing for $50.
Was It Worth It?
So, was it worth it? Nope, it absolutely was not worth it. Once more, I have come to the conclusion that WordPress’s Blaze is not worth it.
It’s also odd that they said I spent $30.79 because I spent $50 as you can clearly see on the first image under the results. And it says $50 on my campaign overview page too. So, a little confused about that.
I also want to add, I truly believe that WordPress’s traffic has not been the same since Blaze was first introduced. There was a time when you could easy get thousands of views and hundreds of followers on a free plan without paying a single cent. Now, you have to work your butt off just to retain the views and followers you have. WordPress’s algorithm used to be perfect and it only changed for the worse after they began pushing Blaze on us. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I don’t believe it is.
This is my genuine advice to our WordPress overlords although I doubt they will read this or even care. Go back to letting blogs grow organically the way it was before Blaze was introduced. People are leaving this platform daily because of the lack of growth and interaction. If you don’t want WordPress to die a slow and painful death, listen to your users and let our blogs grow the way they used to.
What are your thoughts on Blaze? Have you ever tried using it? Did it yield positive results? Let me know in the comments below because I would love to hear your thoughts. Or simply stop by and say hi!
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