My Training
My fi My first real instruction in blogging was from Darren Rowse when I discovered his 31 Day blogging course. I joined late and played catchup. For the first time I began to see a structure for blogging. He asked challenging questions like “What is my niche?” “What is my elevator pitch?” I am still struggling to answer those questions and this is surely part of my limited success.
I Experimentation
I I completed the course, although there were some days that I was simply unable to do. I was never able to engage my readers and get them to respond to questions on the content of my posts. I couldn’t manage to find a blogging buddy although a few classmates teamed up to support each other. I played with a schedule of posts following a pattern. I tried a weekly theme for posts within that pattern without any real change in viewers or feed back.
Co Competing Advice
Alon Along the way I gathered other gurus- some offering free advice and connections to other services that might cost money. I bought some stuff – not actually understanding what it purported to do and then never had time to actually put it into actions. I loaded up WordPress, my blogging platform, with plugins on the advice of some of these gurus. Bottom line, all these new features did nothing to make my blog more attractive to search engines-or more to the point real people. I participated in hit boosting systems like Entrecard. At this point, I conclude that I have been distracted from the prime objective of creating valuable content with traffic building gimmicks. But as I have learned this isn’t always easy.
Focus first on writing engaging post, it will be the heart of your blog. Drop everything except writing. Then when you think you have written some good pieces, post them up one at a time.
To gain some traffic, visit others blogs and make some insightful comments, believe me some of them will return the favor by visiting your blog and commenting.
Again, your content will hold your audience. If its not good there’s no reason for your visitors to come back.
When you have established this first important principle. go on the the next step of improving your blog.
Patience, discipline and determination is extremely important for your success.
I started my blog four months ago and I did not rush. I’ve never enrolled on any course, I only observe the successful ones. I believe in my success and I also believe in yours. Keep it up, let us surpass the people on the top. 🙂
Thanks for the advice. It makes sense but it’s hard to plug away with no feedback and wonder what might be the problem. It is hard to make the judgement about whether you are making progress and will see results shortly or whether you are digging a deeper hole and will never see the light.