Blogging The First 54 Days

I have been blogging seriously on ScissorMonkey for over 54 Days, and I thought I would tell you how the blog is doing.

Blog Stats

Day 30 – Thursday 6/21/07

Day 54 – Sunday 7/14/07 (WordPress end of day is 5:00 pm PST)

	Day 30	Day 54
Total Views	4,269	6,429
Best Day Ever	304	304
Views Today	137	147
Technorati Authority	31	64
Technorati Rank	157,410	89,085

The following are usage stats for the last 30 days my blog

WordPress Dashboard Page View Stats

SiteMeter Usage / Page View Stats – Yellow = Visits / Red = Page Views

The one difference is WordPress stats start and end at 5:00 pm PST for my blog. Sitemeter appears to end at 12:00 am. Also the WordPress stats do not include my own visits, SiteMeter does not differentiate between visits from readers or myself.

Almost 70% of my traffic came from a couple high view days I had after my first 9 days

5/31/07 – 299

6/1/07 – 270

6/2/07 – 301

6/3/07 – 304

Initial Methods

At that point I was trying to comment on 10+ posts a day, and I was able to get in early on some high profile topics.

• Positive Press for Zoho and Sun Microsystems
• Google Notebook, OneNote and Zoho Notebook – First Impressions

I was writing anywhere from 4 – 9 medium – large sized posts a day, and I was pretty tired. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this pace up for any extended period of time.

Refocus

In all honesty after my couple of high traffic days, I figured I was starting to get some traction and that my traffic would continue to escalate. I started to write articles on topics I thought would be popular and the focus of my blog wavered. When readers continued to dwindle I was bummed. Jeremiah Owyang wrote a post From Creation to Achivement: the other 5 Stages of Blogging that included the following graphic. I was starting to head from Step 3 Frustration to Step 4 Alienation.

Then I decided I needed to refocus my postings getting back on the positive track and I proceeded to Step 3 Focus. I started forwarding Information that I found interesting, but didn’t fit my niche, to people who blogged about those topics. Just a short, you might find this interesting with the link and a little bit of background information. First I search their blogs to ensure they haven’t already blogged about the content already. I only send email ideas to blogs that I read and post comments. One exciting day for me, was receiving a response from Robert Scoble and he actually agreed the content I sent him was interesting.

Now I still make an effort to comment, but I am reading more feeds so it is a little more difficult. I am also trying to comment on more blogs to build relationships with more people. I am trying to figure out my own points system that I read about on ProBlogger: How to Keep Momentum Going on Your Blog with a ‘Points System’  From the post:

I work full-time on the side as well. The way I get things done is by using a point system.

Some days I don’t feel like writing, some days I don’t feel like commenting, some days I don’t feel like networking, or whatever… I have to reach at least 50 points per day.

• 10 points for a long blog post
• 5 for a short one
• 2 points for a comment on a blog I’ve commented on before
• 5 points for commenting on a site I’ve never commented on before
• 1 point per comment on my own blog
• 10 points for installing a new module/plug-in, etc.

Summary

At this point I am trying to focus on Web 2.0, Rich Internet Applications, Online Collaborative Applications, Careers in Technology and some family content. I realize the topics are still pretty broad, but by at least having this amount of focus, I don’t feel so scattered, and don’t feel the need to blog about everything. I will post on general technology topics but I try to keep those related to my focus topics.

By trying to keep my comments good and on topic, and yes that includes reading the whole post before commenting, I am getting feedback on my on blog. I try to write quality posts – some of my more popular posts seem to be walkthroughs of technologies, or comparing how programs work.

In almost 55 days:

• I have received 3 requests to review programs
• I received a book proposal review request – the promise of an interesting book
• I have been invited to a conference
• I have a Technorati Authority of 64
• I have had over 6,400 page views

I would say that for a new blog I am doing well. Of course I always want to do better. I need to get my points system worked out, so I will have a better metric for the effort I am putting into my blog.

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