Blog Readership

Over at Ecliptic Rift casiella put up a great post on how to drive some traffic to your blog. I thought that I would throw my own $0.02 into the mix.

I suppose an article from me on how to drive traffic to your blog seems a bit like a one-legged man writing a "How To" guide for ass kicking contests. ".5 or Higher!" has a grand has a grand total of 9 followers and less than 50 posts, but this is not my first time to a rodeo. I actually run a website for a small local group and it is a blog based medium. The average readership is about 200 to 300 unique visitors a month, which for a local news site is relatively high. So here are my insights into blogging in general.

The one thing I can say from pouring over the site statistics for my other blog that casiella didn't mention in her post over at Ecliptic Rift was this: Content is King.

Whenever you have consistent new posts readship will go up. Whenever you have fewer news posts readship will go down. Being in the huge blog feed lists is important, but people quickly develop favorites. I know that when I shoot up Capsuleer there are certain feeds that I scroll to first and there are certain ones that I just pass by. Not to mention, there are some people who don't use RSS feeds or readers and just go directly to the blog sites. If you update frequently you give them a reason to check back frequently. If you update sporadically they will be less likely to get infrequent traffic.

This is why a lot of websites and web comics set up schedules, and it isn't a bad idea for blogs as well. If you have a string of great ideas don't post them all at once. Use the schedule feature and set them to spread out over a week or two. It is better to have a post every two days for two weeks than having 14 posts in one day.

One final piece of advice is to write often even if you don't post often. Writing is an art, like painting, drawing, or music. Everyone can create on a basic level, but the more you practice the skill and take in the work of others the more you will hone your art. Lets face it, an artist who can create beautiful masterpieces is more likely to get an audience than a series of crayon drawings on construction paper.

I hope my suggestions have helped out in a little way. The Eve blogging community is very diverse group, I think that almost any could find a niche, be it fiction, expertise, humor, or a grab bag (like this one).