Last year I had a bit of luck and got a few hits on a couple of Popular Posts, well, for me anyway. These posts kept my daily visitors at around 1,000 and often over a 1,000 a day. I know, you scoff at my measly 1,000 hits a day. Muhahah! I get that before breakfast! You say with justifiable contempt. Or maybe you’re one of those bloggers whose hits all come from you checking your stats every hour. I was there in the beginning as well.
But now that I have a couple of years under my belt and still have not mastered the manly/womanly art of blogging, I have decided to just look around and see what is working. I have used Google Trends with pretty good results, but it gets old blogging about the random stuff that shows up everyday. I still do it once in a while and still land on the first page from time to time. But it is not very much fun.
Which is likely the case with all the blogs I want to be when I grow up as well. These blogs are not fun, they are businesses. Most of them are damned serious businesses with large staffs and professional magazine layouts and have real writers and editors and all of that stuff that goes with being a real publication. So I have always been on the lookout for a blog that has a lot of hits, but doesn’t look like a Lotus when parked next to my Dodge Minivan.
5. Boing Boing-There have been times when If You Write It and Boing Boing were running the same story at the same time, but not enough for me garner much good from it. At first blush I found Boing Boing to be like Howard Stern-a kind of hodge podge of random stuff without rhyme or reason that it looks like anyone can do. As with all theater, this is the magician making it look easy when it is any but. I like Boing Boing, and I would like do what they do-but somehow I never have.
4. Little Green Footballs-LGFs is amazing for the dedication of its commenters. There will be a post with an image or an Open Thread and there will be 600 to 1500 comments on the post. There are a few random duds that only have 60 or 80 comments-I think 10 or 11 is the max comments I have ever had-wow these people like to talk. LGFs is another blog that looks like a blog-with just a few extra dodads added and most of the page dedicated to content.
3. Zen Habits-a blog with a little more serious look to its design. Zen Habits has ads and a bit of random content wrapped up in a general list of categories-such as Simplicity and Happiness and Health. Zen Habits also has the amazing Uncopyright where says its ok to steal their content. The logic is something along the lines of hey, their gonna steal it away-he doesn’t even ask for a link back, but says it would be nice. Gotta love Zen Habits and that whole non-materialism thing.
2. The Huffington Post-Ok, this is not a real blog. This is an online publication exactly like Wired, The New York Times, The Rolling Stone, or any other real world magazine or newspaper you care to name. This is a slick publication with a seemingly endless staff of writers, photographers, editors, and webmasters. So it is no wonder that The Huffington Post is the Biggest Blog in the world after being around for only 4 years or so. Having said all that, I would really like my blog to be The Huffington Post when it grows up. Ads, but not too many, comments galore, and more content than I could whip up on my own in a lifetime, let alone on a daily basis.
#1 The J-Walk Blog–here is a blog after my own heart. Random stuff, YouTube Videos, Odd Lists, and whatever other stuff John Walkenbach feels like posting today. This blog looks like a blog. The big difference between me and John-besides his 5500 hits a day-is that he posts a lot. Like seven or eight times a day. Of course, the other blogs on this list post a lot as well. The power of numbers comes into play. One post a day is 365 posts a year. Eight posts a day is 2920 posts a year. Most of these posts are just copy and paste jobs with an intro and outro-hey, I could do that. Will I? Not very likely-I like the writing part of blogging. But I wouldn’t mind getting about 5000 hits a day.
p.s.-thanks for the link J-Walk!
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Have you thought about including news aggregation to articles to current events, whatever they may be, that interest you? Update it frequently and people might visit your site to see what you’re reading. And read your original posts while they’re at it.
News aggregation-what a concept.
I like Zen Habits, been contemplating creating a blog on mind power. Very Inspirational stuff on there.
Hmmn…