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31 days to building a better blog

No Comments »3rd August, 2007; Category: Blogging, Blogs

Darren Rowse on ProBlogger is running a month long series of articles on building a better blog. He has called it 31 days to building a better blog. Each day he will feature a simple, easily applied tip about blogging. He is inviting readers to participate in this month long project by giving their tips and hints for improving their blogs.

Here are the links to the first two hints:

  • Email a new reader of your blog – I’ve been doing this since day one of my three blogs. I believe this is a very effective way of developing not only loyal readers but also a community of readers based around your blog.
  • Run a first time reader audit on your blog – this is one technique I haven’t yet tried, but it seems like something very easy to do and will show up some strength and weaknesses on your blog.

Related articles:

How to have 250,000 blog visitors a day

45 Comments »2nd August, 2007; Category: Blogging, Blogs, Writing Hints

I wish I knew how to get 250,000 blog visitors a day. Truth is – I don’t.

I plod along happily with several hundred a day and this figure is steadily growing, a fact I find very encouraging. Of course I’d like the numbers to be growing exponentially, but I have to be a realist. My voice is one of many thousands of people blogging about writing and blogging.

I started from nothing eighteen months ago. I now have had well over one hundred thousand visitors in total to my three blogs this year. Most months there is a steady increase. All very encouraging but far short of a quarter million a day.

What would you give to have 250,000 visitors a day?

Let’s stretch the dream a little – what would you give to have 250,000 visitors PER HOUR?

That seems totally out of the realms of fantasy. But wait – consider the following quote from the Writer’s Digest newsletter that came to me yesterday:

The latest Harry Potter sold 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours on the newsstand. For you mathematicians out there, that’s more than 250,000 per hour. Hard to believe, considering most pundits tell you that kids (and adults) are reading fewer books than they used to.

Now THAT is the stuff of every writer’s dreams. To sell that many books worldwide is unprecedented – but it happened. I don’t think I’ll try to calculate the royalties that flowed in per minute as it might make me a little envious, not to mention sick.

Let’s dream a little more. If it is possible with a book, why isn’t possible with a blog? How do we go about that? Consider the paragraph next to the one quoted above:

No matter what you write, gather all the advice you can – even if it’s from a different genre. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be selling 250,000 books per hour. All it takes is one magical book.

Perhaps it might take one magical post, but I daresay it might just take a great deal of hard work over many years of solid learning about writing and blogging and then applying that to our blogs. The latest Potter book may have been on overnight runaway bestseller. The writing process that made it so was steadily carved out over more than a decade of hard writing, day after day after day.

We may marvel at this one author’s success; we may even envy her. That success was hard won, word after word after word writing endlessly hour after hour and day after day for twelve years. When we have devoted every minute of our lives to our blogging for twelve years, we too can bask in the glow of success.

All it takes is a long term commitment. In today’s instant society, that is not ever a welcome message.

Update: and this blog is still plodding along nicely more than ten years later. (Updated September 9th, 2017)

How to increase your blog readership: participate in carnivals

21 Comments »1st August, 2007; Category: Blogging, Writing Hints

One very effective technique I’ve used to increase the readership on my blogs is to participate in various carnivals relevant to the topic of each blog. Carnivals are an excellent way of getting exposure in your particular niche.

I see the following benefits:

  1. People in your niche become aware of your blog.
  2. It is a good source of developing incoming links.
  3. You discover other blogs in your niche and by reading their blogs you discover new ways of writing about and presenting your subject.
  4. Many of those reading your blog for the first time will leave comments.
  5. You become part of the community in your niche.

While I don’t see huge inflows of traffic from participating in carnivals, I do see a strong bond of loyalty from those who participate in the carnivals. We visit each other’s blogs frequently, we leave relevant comments and we make links back to each others articles where relevant.

Related articles:

Links:

UPDATE: I have written a follow up article in answer to the questions left by people commenting on this post. It is called:  How to participate in blog carnivals – I hope this answers a few questions.

    Poem #32 Beach Sunset

    No Comments »29th July, 2007; Category: Poetry

    The deserted beach
    Became quiet and soft
    As the sun set
    Over the smooth water.

    Gentle ripples
    The only waves,
    Caressing breeze
    The only movement.

    Red sky
    Growing pink,
    Then grey
    As the disappearing sun
    Left us alone
    Together
    On the deserted beach.

    Copyright 2007 Trevor W. Hampel

    All rights reserved.

    Short fiction: What a Day

    No Comments »28th July, 2007; Category: Short Fiction

    One day I had to stay indoors the whole day because it was raining cats and dogs. I was bored out of my brain. I started getting under Mum’s skin. I thought that she was going to blow her top.

    ‘Stop getting under my feet!’ she yelled. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Mum never yells at me. I’m so perfect.

    So I went to my room to let off some steam. I picked up my favourite joke book. Soon I was laughing my head off. I laughed so much I soon had a frog in my throat.

    Later that day my cousin Pete came over. He’s a real pain in the neck. Anyway, we decided to play a game of cards. I knew at once that this was a huge mistake. He started cheating and wanted to change the rules all the time. I couldn’t hold my tongue.

    ‘Hold your horses!’ I said. ‘Have you got rocks in your head? You can’t do that.’

    Well, Pete was really burned up by my little outburst.

    ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Have you lost your marbles? Are you as nutty as a fruitcake? You are really getting in my hair.’

    ‘And you are driving me up the wall!’ I yelled back at him. ‘And now I’m starting to get a splitting headache!’

    ‘Don’t scream your head off at me!’ Pete screamed.

    ‘And don’t bite my head off!’ I shouted.

    We stopped yelling as Mum came into the room. We knew that we had really blown it. I knew by the look on her face that we were in the doghouse. This made me feel down in the dumps. I was up to my neck in trouble.

    ‘Oh, well,’ I thought. ‘No use crying over spilt milk. I might as well face the music. I really am in a pickle.’ But Pete just spat the dummy. He swore at Mum!

    ‘You are grounded for two weeks,’ Mum said, pointing to me. ‘And Pete, you will not be allowed to visit for a month.’

    ‘Yes!’ I thought to myself. ‘A whole month without Pesky Pete. That was as easy as falling off a log.’

    Copyright 2007 Trevor W. Hampel. All rights reserved.

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