My blogchallenge, a weekly update 4
This will be the first time I’d rather not do the weekly update. It would probably scare away some people who just discovered this blog. I have however made an obligation out do this post and so I am going to do it however. It’s a Saturday post after all and traffic is slow during the weekend. The great stuff will be back on Monday, stay tuned. You can expect around 3-4 proper posts a week from me and the weekend update.
For the newer readers here, my target is to reach 500 pageviews a day for 7 consecutive days or 300 subscribers to my RSS feed, whichever comes first. The deadline is the 12th of August. If you’re curious as to why I have that deadline you can read more about it here.
It’s all about getting known and being appreciated.
Average number of pageviews over this week: 104 With some help of a powerful retweet the numbers went up on Friday. My estimation for traffic on Friday was way off as you might imagine.
Number of subscribers to my RSS feed: The subscribers are at a steady increase. I have counted 35 of you who have subscribed to my feed. Thank you for that. It feels good to know that you like my content enough to want to read more.
Where the traffic is coming from: Traffic is getting more diverse every week. More people are coming in through search engines. Mainly around the topic of “minimalist living” (even had one reference from Google through “Living in a truck”) Although I didn’t know it at the time of writing the post on living on a small footprint is proving popular. Twitter is pitching in as always, the forum I talked about last week is still generating some traffic as well. Other than that, there are no real big sources, it’s all over the board.
What I have done this week to get my blog bigger and what I learned:In accordance with what I write about I have rewritten the subheading to my blog (on my about page) it now states “Zen and the art of living the beginner’s life” In stead of “Zen and the art of beginning” I feel that it suits my niche better as I slowly but surely make a name for myself and settle in this quite comfortable niche. It’s very important that people get a good idea on what the blog is about after seeing the about page for a second. If it’s not clear you just lost a reader. I might start blogging a bit more about freedom businesses in the near future and where the zen is in that. It seems freedom businesses are becoming more and more mainstream these days and beginning one is exactly what I’m about. (The “beginning” is where it’s at or me.) Blogging is freedom after all and every blogpost is a new beginning. Setting up a business is also beginning. Let’s explore that further in future blogposts.
This week I started to really chase around the people in the collaboration to get everyone to pitch in. It’s not working exactly as I hoped but there is some traffic being generated by it and I’m seeing consistent growth everywhere. I also started digging other blogposts of course. I’m not just in it to grow my own blog as quickly as possible over the backs of others but to really help everyone get to where they want to be and to get them noticed. I have used several lessons I learned in the 31DBBB to make friends. I gladly provide links to other blogs and pick out specific people to “make famous” as Darren puts it. It might not get my blog bigger directly but when the time comes and people see I’m honest about my links to them they will remember me. It’s all about getting known and being appreciated.
On a sidenote: I feel more and more hampered by having a wordpress.com hosted blog. The last few days thoughts have gone through my head about buying the domain I wanted (and is now in safe keeping) and just get on with things. All the links out there that point to my blog point to the wordpress hosted site. I’ll loose all those direct linkbacks as soon as I transfer. Also, setting up a little bit of advertising is very hard to achieve on a wordpress hosted blog. I’m restricted by this theme (that I like a lot but would redesign to add a third column I think).
Catching up with the collaborative today. I am surprised to hear that you are feeling constrainted by Wordpress. There are so many options and plugins that I am just beginning to explore. I use Wordpress for my own domain on GoDaddy but hosted by Hostgator.
My problem is not with wordpress.org, it’s with the restrictions of wordpress.com. I can’t upload plugins and tweak everything just the way I want it.
You have your own domain and as such use the .org version.
I just bookmarked you, so I’ll check back and do my small part to help you with your goal. Good stuff!