Mind the Beginner

A few hours ago an e-mail entered my inbox. Sent by Problogger, a blogger you might now as Darren Rowse, one of the biggest bloggers out there and one of the happy few who makes a six figure income by blogging.

A long time ago when I started this blog Darren was offering a cycle of the 31 Days to Building a Better Clog challenge. I eagerly jumped on the project and the following 31 days was total pandemonium. Thousands of bloggers took part in the challenge to make their blog a better blog in just 31 days. Every day a new assignment would come online and we’d all implement what Darren was suggesting and follow things up with discussing about the assignments on the forum. THousands of bloggers doing so at the same time, hundreds of bloggers looking at each others blogs.

In 31 days my blog got a really good start in it’s digital life and the lessons learned are still being applied to this day. Now you must be wondering, what does that mail have to do with things and why am I trying to sell you something?

The truth is, yes this is an attempt to sell and the link I’m offering here is an affiliate link. << Click

Now I might have already lost you right there, I sure hope not because I have a very good reason to do this. By following the link you will be taken to the product page, but what it doesn’t tell you as far as I can tell is the temporary (7 days) bonuses that are on offer.

• A report by the name of 9 Things to Do to Get Your Blog On Track for the New Year – it is a 9 day extension of the 31 Day workbook and contains 9 extra tasks, particularly designed for the new year. This means you have 40 days of exercises to get you going.

• A 55 minute podcast with Leo Babauta from ZenHabits.net – this podcast is rich with tips on how Leo has launched his blogs and leveraged them to sell successful e-books and a best selling book.

• A 45 minute podcast interview with Neil Patel from Quicksprout.com – another practical podcast with Neil on how to drive traffic to blogs as well as tips on personal branding, SEO and more.

Now If you are still with me after all that you might be wondering why I’m doing this, why am I lowering myself to this shameless promotion. It’s a simple truth: blogging is an enrichment of your life, at the very least you become skilled in putting your thoughts to words and sharing your thoughts with others. By themselves writing skills are already very useful. Interaction is very likely to follow and you’ll get in touch with people who share your way of thinking or are really interested in what you have to say.

The main item itself is a workbook filled with tasks to get your blog up to speed. If you’re a first time blogger or thinking about writing a blog but don’t know where to begin this is just about the best resource around. You can work through the workbook in your own time and have it all in a nice bundle.

To sum things up: No, this blog is not permanently lowering the standards. I just feel that if you plan on blogging, have a beginning blog or have a writers urge then this really is a good place to start.I really do endorse this product, the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog is the single most significant thing that helped me start this blog and give it the flying start.

Okay, so here it is again back by demand. I skipped number 13 and now it’s on to number 14. With further distractions here are the numbers:

Average number of pageviews over this week: 171 without going “viral” this week. So they’re real numbers. Last time I had 230, but that was with a huge spike in there. They didn’t stick, obviously.

Number of subscribers to my RSS feed: 68, yesterday it was at 69. That’s 10 more than the last upate. If this trend continues I should reach the 100 in a month. (And transfer my blog to it’s own domain as I told you in my previous post.)

Where the traffic is coming from: No surprises here as well, the usual suspects are getting me traffic. Stumble, Google, Twitter, other blogs. They’re all pitching in to make nice numbers.

What I have done this week to get my blog bigger and what I learned: Well, the biggest lesson is trying to stay focused is hard. I haven’t done much with Project Mojave for weeks now and I haven’t been online much. I could say “I’m going to do it this week” but those are just words on a screen. No, it’s action hat’s required and so action it will be.

I actually havn’t done anything actively to get this blog bigger. It’s slowly growing by itself. I think I’ll have another look at all the info I got through the 31DBBB challenge from problogger and see if there are little gems in there I can utilize to make the blog grow just a bit faster and get more sticky traffic.

I’ve also learned something valuable concerning good vs bad I’ll b sharing in a blogpost next week, so stay tuned.

Well, there you have it, the weekly update is back on Saturday. The new goal is 100 subscribers and after that I’ll hunt for those 500 pageviews a day. This topic isn’t exactly about zen, or lifestyle design or personal development for that matter. That’s why I write it on Saturday, a slow day on blogs in general (and Sunday is my day offline). This ongoing topic is to show you the process behind this blog, and to give you a more personal look at me, the grandma guy behind the screens as far as you don’t get it through my blogposts.

I’ve found an interesting new source of insiration by the way. I’ve quoted from it once via twitter so far in the last days. Here’s a challenge for you: Find that tweet and either send it back to my by direct message or (if I’m not following you yet) send me an @ tweet telling me I should follow you because you have the answer. The first three people to get it right get to tell me a subject they want me to write about and I will do so, along with a linkback to their blog (always nice to boost your technorati rank)  and everlasting glory.

Good luck, and spread the word about my blog. As a last note, is it wrong for me to shamelessly ask you to linkback to my blog if you have a blog yourself?

[update]

Alan Perlman found it, two more to go…

Ralph Carlson found it, who will be number three?

[/update]

The weekly update is here again and by just looking at the numbers it hasen’t been a great week:

Average number of pageviews over this week: 70

Number of subscribers to my RSS feed: 21 (very nice!)

Where the traffic is coming from: Again it’s mostly from problogger but twitter is pitching is as are the blogcomments I’ve posted elsewhere. I think it’s getting a bit more stable now. The initial hype is over and now I have to work even harder than before, jut to keep it up.

What I’ve done this week to get my blog bigger and what I learned: I have added a lot of people on twitter in the hopes if getting to know more of my readers. A lot is defined by going from 158 following to over 400 and doubling my followerd to over 250. As I said last week I havn’t jumped on every blogpost at probloger anymroe and I don’t think it has caused my to much traffic I musts say. Most traffic is comming from the forum, not the blog comments. I’m also working on a collaboration of bloggers and it’s growing, we have about 10 members at the moment and it’s still growing. Somewhere this week I’ll be posting my plan in how I would like this collaboration to function. So stay tuned and hang on to your hats. This is going to be a wild ride.

Another post comming this week will be ” What’s in my bag” . I’ve always loved these things and I just have to do one of these. (I’m a regular at the EDC forums after all) Besides, I saw one the other day at The simple dollar and wrote in the comment that I would be doing one too. I have to keep that promise. 

Have a nice weekend everyone.

As some of my readers already know I’m working on a challenge to get my blog to grow big enough so that I can reclaim my domain. Big enough is defined here as >500 pageviews a day for seven consecutive days or >300 subscribers to my RSS feed. There already have been several occasions where readers have asked me how things were going. So I’ve decided to give an update every weekend on how things are going. I’ll split those up into four items:

• Average number of pageviews over this week (Monday-Friday)
• Number of subscribers to my RSS feed
• Where the traffic is coming from
• What I’ve done this week to get my blog bigger and what I learned

The observant reader will also know that not only has my domain been bought and I’ll get it for free if I manage to succeed, but another benefactor has stepped in who offered me free web hosting for a year.

Average number of viewers: 117
Number of subscribers to my RSS feed: 8
Where is the traffic coming from:

Mostly it’s getting here through the problogger.com forum (31DBBB)at the moment, a few more get here through my twitter and a few find their way through comments I’ve left on other blogs. The remainder get here through all sorts of little things I’ve done such as putting up a link to my blog in the signatures I have on all the forums I visit.

What I’ve done this week to get my blog bigger and what I learned:

I’ve become quite active on the 31DBBB forum and that alone has doubled my pageviews. I’ve also managed to be (one of) the first to comment on the new 31DBBB blogpost as it hit the net and as the assignment got announced on the forum. These both have resulted in a lot of traffic coming this way but it’s not the kind of attention you want to be getting in the long run. So as of next week I will no longer react to the assignments within minutes but will wait until after 7 pm to act upon them. That’s a good three to four hours after problogger posts the new assignment for the day. It’s not always good to be first. 

On the problogger forum I’ve set up a topic searching for other bloggers so we can help each other through Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.isi.us. and other means of promotion. As I’m writing this I’ve only gotten two other bloggers to join me but I hope more will follow. Perhaps I’ve turned the 31DBBB forum visitors against me already by being to omnipresent. 

I’ve received several mails of people who did a quick review of my site. Stating what they were missing and how things felt to them. The biggest issue is that the niche of my blog isn’t clear right off the bat although the minimalistic style and the “relaxing” green header combined with the title of my blog gives a vague idea as to what it’s all about. So far people are positive about its as a whole. I’ll tweak the layout when I get Wordpress.org. I like this layout a lot but there are minor things I’d like to change. I’d like a three column layout for instance and a subheading to go with the title of my blog.

I’ve seriously edited my “about” page after getting numerous comments (I asked for a review on the 31DBBB forum,worked like a charm) that my picture was portraying me as very inaccessible. People thought I was a speaker of sorts. Truth be told I was a picture taking during my final presentation in order to graduate as B. Health. I’m not a regular suit wearer though. So the picture got swapped for something friendlier. 

The text on the about page also got an overhaul, I hope it’s now much clearer on what this blog is all about as well as who I am as a person and blogger.

At the end of this article I now realize that getting more than 500 views on both Saturday and Sunday will be the toughest of all. As it stands I’ll only keep everyone informed on the average views Monday – Friday just to keep the excitement.