A lot of people lurk on blogs without leaving comments. I guess it depends what you mean by "lots of readers". And by your measure, you'd be leaving out popular blogs like ResearchBuzz that don't allow comments. And yet, there are over 3600 subscribers to ResearchBuzz on Bloglines alone.
They don;t allow comments. Im sure if they allowed comments they would get lots of posts. Sometims people glance your blog but do you really want to write all that content and deal with the crappy blog interface just to get your posts 'glanced at'?
I wish I had that problem..I used to make blogs noone would read them...so I quit. I was so gullible I thought a spam comment was an interested reader... I spent something like 1 hour writing articles about webmaster stuff and no comments. Seemed like a waste especially considering I didn;t get paid. Also blog articles shave a short shelf life versus regualr website rticles. Who wants to read an old blog article?
Iamnad: I often wonder why you bother with this forum. You seem to be against everything that a website is designed to do. Regardless of whether it's a blog, image site, or newspaper site, IT IS DESIGNED TO BE READ. Few if any of us actually give a monkeys whether people actually comment on what they read. We put content up for people to read it - or buy it.
I like talking to you guys. I know a website is intendended to be read, but eventually I like to see the money...$$$ Otherwise I would be a magazine collumnist. But If none read your comments you would still keep writing? Really? I find that to be an excercise of futility...
Why does a blog article have a short shelf life? If you have properly-configured blogging software the old articles will always be available and searchable. You can write timeless things and post them to a blog. You can write timeless things and post them as a regular web page. It doesn't really matter. And not everyone posts things up on the Web for profit, thought obviously that's what the people in this forum are interested in. I call it the "Four F's" of the Web: fun, fame, fortune and philanthropy. Any or all of these are reasons to post.
In a way, it may be true that blog articles have a shorter half life. Blogs are mostly about current hapopenings, like a daily newspaper... who reads daily newspapers after a month of publishing? I know there are a lot of exceptions to all these...
My "secret" is to build a high traffic website before thinking about money. Try to get at least 3000-5000 page views per day for one 1 website, it should give you at least $1 / website (depends on how many clicks you get a day ... but in this case, it worked for me like that) If you want to focus on 1 website .. go ahead , but what I did was having many websites like that. Everyone starts with 10 cents a day ... so don't worry .. it will be increased by time if you put more effort into it. I started with $10 a month , and now , guess what ? I spent time reading stuff in DP Forum , and ... boom ... Avg. of $200 / month ( not bad huh?)
But even getting 3-5k page views per day is tough. There's no point having traffic if it doesn't pay. And you may as well try making money at the same time as you're increasing your visitor numbers. I know of a site that makes more than $200/month with under 100 page views a day, but it doesn't use adsense.
Adsense is a real business if you treat it as such, there are plenty of "real world" businesses that make no money or negitive money... are those just "hobbies" because they're not profitable? If you treat it as a business it can and will be one for you, if you treat it as a hobby then of course it wont become a business. If you don't believe anyone can make a fulltime income from it check my blog. I've also shown my bestfriend and girlfriend how to make their fulltime incomes from it as well with a little work.
Medusa, There is a private members only website/newsletter that specifically deals with the your topic "secrets to their success" and oddly enough (smirk) the site name is SecretsToTheirSuccess.com which I happen to be an affiliate of. I'd tell you mine butttt I wouldn't classify myself as succesful right just yet. I tend to be persistant and every once in a while I hit a few flakes of gold. Hope this helps Frank
There is no secret... Set a goal, work hard and achieve it. Nothing can be easier, but yet nothing is more difficult than that..
You keep mentioning your blog, but it has nothing on it except a page for people to sign-up to your mailing list. There is no proof of anything on there except that you are developing tools to sell to the list members eventually. Pete