I made this image using a Poser Figure in Bryce, she looks a bit lonely, don’t you think?
It is easy to blog in a vacuum. You look at Google Trends or Yahoo Buzz and crank out a post about whatever nonsense is going on in the world at the moment. Following this model has gotten me most of my traffic over the past few months.
Want traffic? Blog about Vanessa Anne Hudgens. Really. My highest viewed post is about the naked Vanessa Anne Hudgens photos. I really should delete it, the yahoos who stop by don’t care what I have to say. But it has taken on a life of its own and it is not really mine anymore.
Another topic that has generated a lot of comments, mainly of the Your An Idiot sort, has to do with Micheal Vick and his dog troubles. There are a lot of people that just don’t think Vick did anything wrong and that he is being unfairly punished for being a black NFL quarterback. This has been amazing to watch, and these posts have also taken on lives of their own. People commenting to each other as if the blog post were the corner pub.
1-18-08, the J.J. Abrams movie now known as Cloverfield, has been a big traffic machine for me. I will be truly sad to see the film open. I’m sure there are other viral marketing campaigns whose bandwagons I can jump on, but this one was just so easy to find the bread crumbs and have fun with. There is a new Jamie and Teddy video by the way, # 6. Password jllovesth.
I also got a bit of traffic from Showtime, and it’s Blogbuzz feature. I still get a few email hits from their newsletter. You just have to blog about any of their shows and if they like what you say, they will give you a link. I got 250 hits from my post on The Tutors. They have not given me a link since, maybe they didn’t like the fact that I was getting more traffic from them than they were getting from me. Either that or they don’t like what I had to say about Dexter and Meadowlands.
In all of this, I have had a few readers stop by and check out one or two of my posts and then move on. I have a pretty steady stream of visitors. But I write about a wide variety of topics and pretty much thought that someone who wants to read about Jessica Rabbit might not be interested in Burl Ives. Ok, the point is that I have never written with an audience in mind other than the users of Google.
Writing for myself is how I write. If I give out SEO tips, those are tips that I have used and found to work for me. If I find something funny, like Payton Manning giving advice to drivers of mini-vans, I will write a post about it. I have worked on my posts to the point that I can often get a Top Ten Google spot, at least for a short time, and if it is a hot topic that no one else seems to be yakking about, I can have several spots in the top ten at once. Google EntreCard Link Love at the moment and you will find me twice in the Top Ten, once at number one.
This is a small victory that will soon fade, but from time to time, I find that my posts retain their Top Ten placement for certain keywords for a very long time. There are posts that I wrote months ago that still turn up on the first page of Google results. This was my goal, but it was not one I really expected to achieve.
The Social Networks have been a big help, but the bulk of my traffic arrives fresh from Google everyday. I would like to make a living from blogging, but I don’t trust any of the yahoos telling me they make twenty thousand dollars a month from selling ad space. I’m not a gear head like John Chow or Wil Wheaton. I don’t live in southern LA like Perez Hilton and TMZ. I have never understood why people flock to Little Green Footballs and Boing Boing.
I am not sure that I will ever find my way to the cool kids table, I never did in high school. But if I can resist the urge to goad the bullies, I may be ok. But that whole keeping my mouth shut thing has never really worked for me. And hence I became a blogger, albeit an anti-social one.
