My blog is in my sig, How is the content? Is the navigation easy? Does it make you want to stay and read more? Thanks for your help!
I am getting a page not found when I click on your link Anyway with blogs, I think your best bet is to go with a self hosted wordpress blog, there are so many templates out there, you will easily be able to pick one out that will work for you and your readers.
don't worry about the comments above. if you are the one writing the posts, then you have a terrific site. forget about the design, it doesn't matter. most people will not get the value of your content, but it is fantastic. i bookmarked it. i was looking for something like this, vaguely intelligent yet entertaining and not too heavy on the cortex, to idly read while my data is being backed up, and now i will be checking your blog alongside techcrunch and icanhascheezburger every day. now since you have great content, how do you promote it? as you probably know, the only way to promote a blog is to leave millions upon millions of witty, snarky, or otherwise interesting comments on other people's blogs. so get busy.
Thanks for the feedback, for now I promote it with Reddit and Digg mostly. How much can commenting on other's blogs help with traffic?
I don't think the fact that your blog is on a Blogger profile makes your content either wrong or worse than the next blogger, but as far as people taking you seriously in the Internet world - it won't get you as far as you could go. To me Blogger is just the social networking world of blogs. Just my opinion, but it is also the opinion of many others. I think you have made the right approach by having your own domain, and I think the switch to WordPress could do you alot better. WordPress is free and SE friendly and is more customizable straight out the box, and any old Joe can optomize it with ease. This would improve SEO, SERP ranking and maximize exposure (maximized to the extent of no marketing of course). But could do your blog a hell of a lot better. Hosting these days is not too expensive either, HostGator can knock you out a pretty hefty package for as little as $4.95/month. I think your design is pretty sleek but minimal, don't get me wrong, everyone has to start somewhere, but your blog could sexy with a simple WordPress theme (http://themes[dot]wordpress[dot]net/), and with most of them being free, you could have a hosting account and a WordPress blog set up within about 5 minutes. Enough of the design and management side of things, I'll get on to your content. I think your content is pretty good, lengthy and to the right reader - pretty interesting (I personally didn't have time to read it all, but I read some and it is rather funny in parts). If you keep your posts consistant, to maybe a minimum of 1 post/day - you could have a community of readers within days. I think your blog itself has a lot of potential, and with minimal work could acheive so much. And maybe, just maybe. If you monotized it correctly could even have yourself some profit in there too. Hope you found my information useful, this is just my honest opinions and views, I'm not an SEO or website reviews expert so don't take all my information as gospel. Links: - http://wordpress[dot]org/ - http://www.hostgator[dot].com/
Thanks for the help UK, I did start a wordpress account, but I didn't want to get a hosting plan at the time. Maybe that will be my next step in the future, when I have more traffic. What is your opinion on advertising? I am having trouble reaching my target audience (wherever they are). Reddit is getting into a political phase and it seems like they are only accepting politics and breaking news. Digg is just too much of a behemoth to get up in the ranks. Although, I figured out that I can just add friends and mutually help each other with up votes, and I have once reached a high point. Also, what would you say is a good amount of traffic? How many visits per day? or week?
Let's break this down a little bit first. Don't run before you walk here. Start from the bottom, in my personal opinion I would do the following; Get a cheap hosting account (something along the lines of HostGator's cheapest plan would be adequate) Install WordPress (I'll do this free of charge if you don't know how to) Start off by adding unique content daily, yes daily - successful blog require at least one interesting article Don't worry about traffic straight away, write your blog posts for ghosts, SERP's will eventually bring you the organic traffic Once you build up a few regular readers, start promoting your blog, either through PPC campaigns, or even simple but effective strategies such as buying signature link space (here is a good place by the looks of things) Pay people to write articles for you, copywriting can be cheap, and if you get a good loyal copywriter, your readers and geological traffic will start creeping higher Monotize your website, don't go over the top, just get something that can go towards the expenses, even if your breaking even it is good, remember a website should not always be for money, writing about something you are interested in can be a good hobby ...give your website time, things never happen overnight. Not unless you have a multimillion dollar budget plan, or you come up with some Internet phenomenon. An answer to your question about traffic and what I think is good. Any organic traffic is good, it is showing you are doing something right. Compare traffic trends, advertisement trends, click-through rates, etc, etc, etc. You will soon find where your traffic is coming from and leaving. Then all you have to do is improve on them. Within no time, you might have a successful blog. But the biggest advice I can give you is to get off Blogger. Hope this helped you a little bit. Feel free to ask more .
Thanks again UK. I have been writing a bit for 6 months, but only in this current month I have put more effort in my blog. I have google traffic analytics and since Nov 16th I only received 84 visits from organic google searches. If you add in other sources, I have about 7,000 (mainly due to one successful post). I don't see how I can get a substantial amount of traffic from SERPs. Earning an actual income from my blog is my last concern, I know I would need like 7,000 visits a month. "Any organic traffic is good, it is showing you are doing something right." Why? What determines if people see my page in their searches?