A Blog on Making Your Blog Popular

Yesterday, I was asked by Ritu over at WorkNPlay to write a guest post on his blog!! Since his website has been such an invaluable blogging resource for me ever since I entered the blogging scene, I instantly accepted his invitation. The post that I wrote on his site discusses the five things that I look for in a blog before I subscribe to it. You can read the guest post here.

Besides the fact that Ritu has been one of my blogging friends from the start, I saw plenty of advantages in writing a post for his blog. For one, I think being a guest poster on an established blog is a great way for newer blogs to gain much needed exposure. The established blog has a much wider and larger audience, which will help you get your name out there. In return, the established blog gets to be lazy for a day and not write a post. But on a more serious notes, there are more benefits for the established blog. The guest blogger brings his/her own style and ideas, adding variety and a vernacular that the regular readers are used too. Being an avid blog reader, I can definitely appreciate the change of pace and eclectic blogging styles that guest posting can offer. So the way I see it, it’s a win/win situation for both parties.

But what if you’re a veteran blogger with a huge readership? Should you just be letting people post on your blog, but not posting on other blogs? In my opinion, veteran bloggers have as much to gain from guest posting as do the new bloggers. When you get the oppurtunity to write a guest post on another blog, you effectively extend your influence to an entirely different audience, which could vastly increase your web traffic, exposure, and subscribers. Hopefully, I get the chance to write guest posts on other blogs so I can extend my blogosphere. Collaboration and cooperation among bloggers can lead to bigger and better growth for all parties involved. If anyone wants to post here on my blog, feel welcome to contact me through the contact page.

It would be easy if everything in life was defined in white and black. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case and we are left with several shades of grey. Last week, I was browsing around the BlogCatalog website, looking to join a network of people similar to myself. Two networks I saw when I did a search were:

• Stumble - Groups where you can ask for stumbles, diggs, link exchanges or anything else to keep them of the boards.
• Technorati - This Group is to help build your Technorati up by links and Favorites

Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, it’s time for me to share my latest progress for this blog. Results for this past week can be seen in the figure to the left (click on it to enlarge the image). On Friday, I woke up promptly checked my Google analytics. For some odd reason, I had an extraordinary number of hits. Apparently, my most recent post was “Stumbled Upon” and brought in more hits than I am accustomed to. So I was quite excited about the whole ordeal, thinking that I had finally broken through the doldrums of blogging. But the next couple of days brought me back to reality as I had 8, 7, and then 25 visits per day. Read the rest of this entry »

There is an inordinate amount of information on the web that pertains to the new blogger. Personally, being immersed in all of this information has resulted in an information overload for me. I think the feeling of being overwhelmed can lead to early blogging burnout, and may adversely affect the confidence and enthusiasm of novice bloggers. When I first started blogging, I had no idea about social networking, monetizing my blog, how to promote my blog, and many other blogcentric things. The only thing I cared about was publishing my stuff and linking my friends to my latest post. There was almost nothing to worry about. But then I had the ambition to extend my blog beyond my family and friends.

Once I started researching/googling how to develop and maintain a successful blog, it all started to hit me at once. There was so much to do and so much to learn. Each site I visited offered helpful hints and tips and the sheer amount of advice was amazing. I think new bloggers like myself can’t get fully immersed in all the blogging details though. We need to take things one at a time as there is simply too much to do, and it all can’t be done in a couple of days. I compare this to weight training. You just can’t expect to be able to bench press 300 lbs from the get go. You have to start with something you can lift, and then gradually add more weights on each time.

My advice for new bloggers is to keep it simple at first. Don’t try to do too much at once. Initially, new bloggers might want to focus on commenting on other blogs and developing their content. Once things start picking up, maybe start looking into monetizing your site. For me, I just try to post daily and to comment on other blogs that I find interesting. I also do some work on the main site, so I try not to spread myself too thin by trying to do too much. Eventually, my hope is to develop this fledgling blog and to apply the techniques I learned to advertising the main site.

I think its safe to say that most new bloggers don’t realize the amount of work and dedication required to create a successful blog. Blogging does not bring instant gratification, which causes a fair amount of new bloggers to quit within the first month of their initial post. Being a newborn blogger, I’ll admit that it can be quite difficult. Things seem to move so slow, and there is so much to do: writing posts, social bookmarking, web design, monetizing the blog, commenting on other blogs, dreaming up new ways to attract traffic, etc. In my opinion, a successful blog probably needs more than one person behind it. I think a duo or trio would have a much better chance at success running one blog because there is simply so much to do! But I guess that’s a different topic for a different day.

The people who succeed at blogging seem to have a very good work ethnic. They don’t get discouraged easily, and dig into the task at hand. I think its safe to label these people as “work horses”. I can’t say that I belong in this class, but I’ve been trying to write a new post everyday. In between, I have been researching other aspects of my blog in addition to writing Matlab tutorials on my main site. The main site and my blog was started at about the same time, but the drastic difference is that the main site is pulling in about 250 visitors daily this past week while this blog is mired in a big time slump! So what keeps me going? Well, today I woke up and noticed that I had three new comments.

As a new blogger, it’s extremely encouraging to see comments on my posts. It reinforces the fact that someone is actually reading my stuff. So thanks to everyone who reads and comments, because nothing is worst than writing multiple entries and having zero comments. When this happens, it makes me wonder why I even bother. But I’m still posting, and I guess that’s what separates me from those other guys. But how much longer can I last? Anyone else have any thoughts on why bloggers stop blogging?