Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

I have officially been blogging for more than 6 months. I have learned a lot about the online world and have basically become attached to my computer during any free time I have. I took the immersion approach to learning about online publishing and marketing and somehow have stuck it out. If you have been with me here since the beginning you’ve read several times about my ability to get really excited about things then not finishing them. It’s really what this blog has been developed for. To keep me accountable for my goals.

Back on November 12th, 2005, spurred by Steve Pavlina and his amazing statistics both traffic and monetary I decided to start my own blog. It has been a fun and interesting road and I don’t plan on stopping or slowing down. While I haven’t had the traffic success nor the money success like Steve, I have learned a lot about the online world and what opportunities to find financial freedom there are on the internet. More or less infinite.

I average about 35 unique visitors a day, sometimes 25, sometimes 55, and have at most 43 people subscribed to my feed at any given time. This is really just a drop in the bucket when you look at some of the top blogs. But then again I’ve only been here for 6 months and 43 subscribers, when compared to similar blogs, is good numbers. I have yet to find a great niche following but am hoping my “appeal to the masses” technique will produce results.

Sure most blogs are focused on one niche or another, and most “how-to” articles say find a niche, but I’m opting to try for something a bit different and enjoying the road.

I haven’t made much, from the online world but haven’t really focused on it either. Now that I have what I would call a good base built up with my internet skills I plan on focusing on the monetization of my websites and hopefully building an income from them.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve learned much too much over the past six months to put it all into one post but I can offer a few insights into the two main things I have found bloggers have trouble with.

1. Consistent Posting

The key to consistent posting is to just post. I know that sounds to simplified but the worst thing for posting productivity I find myself engaging in is the dreaded this post isn’t good enough routine. You know the feeling. You read pillar articles by successful bloggers and then compare each and every sentence you write to those articles.

The thing is, if you look back, way back, back to the first six months of most successful blogs you will find stumbling posts, short post, unedited posts, and just that, posts, posts, posts. You have to experiment with what your readers might like, what your writing style will come to be, and have posts back logged or deleted because they weren’t good enough will bring no traffic to your blog.

Just post it baby!

2. Getting readers

As you can see from my numbers I have issues with this part of the successful blogging equation as well. Although my numbers aren’t super they are seeing improvement on a month to month basis. I have hit kind of a lull since February but I attribute that to my lack of blog promotion. I have been working on several projects and neglecting finding readers.

You need to work on a system that works for you, be it forum posting, commenting, or cold emailing other bloggers, but you need to focus at least 20 minutes a day for the first 3 months of your blog promotional period to hard core promoting.

Get out there and promote!

I hope you all are finding my posts helpful. Feel free to spread the word about my blog and blogging endeavours. Maybe someone you know would benefit from reading about how someone else is trying to do it all with a full-time job.