Here are the keys to my success so far

As we can see in my progress report post, my progress has been pretty good so far and I’m please with it. Here are the main things I attribute to my success so far (there are other actions I’ve taken, but these are the ones that account for the majority of my traffic).

Posting everyday

Posting everyday! Since Feb 18th I have written 36 posts plus; a privacy policy page, a contact page Complete with an embedded contact form) a sample contact page (to go with one of my posts), a “drop 300 entrecards in 20 minutes” page, a blog and RSS feed directory list page, and completely re-did my about me page.

Why is this important? There are a couple reasons.

The first being people want to read a blog that is regularlly updated, it keeps them coming back for more. It also helps to keep readers subscribed to my RSS feed. Imagine if your local newspaper had the same headline on it everyday, you would quickly loose all interest and never read it again.

Secondly it gives me the opportunity to consistently have my posts Stumbled on the social bookmarking website StumbleUpon.com. The more I post, the more traffic I get through StumbleUpon.com If you’re unfamiliar with StumbleUpon.com, get familiar. I attribute almost half my traffic to them and have had readers that have discovered this site through StumbleUpon go on to write reviews of this blog that never would have been written. This brings me to the next thing I attibute my success to

StumbleUpon.com

The social bookmarking site StumbleUpon has been a huge contributor to my success to date. I actively submit my posts to lot of social bookmarking sites (see this post), but StumbleUpon.com is the best by far (in term of generating traffic). There’s a lot to say about it, so much in fact, StumbleUpon.com deserves their own post. Stay tuned to my next post: Getting the most out of StumbleUpon.com. There are a few things you’ll need to know to get the most traffic out of them as possible. If done correctly it can make the difference between 50 visits or 4000 visits - on a single post. I highly suggest you check back for this!

Entrecard, MyBlogLog, and blogcatalog

I’ve done a post or two on Entrecard, so I’ll keep this short. Entrecard is a blogging community, a bloggers forum, and a free advertising network. If You’re not familiar with Entrecard, check them out. My advice: be very active in the Entrecard community and drop your Entrecard often. In the last three weeks alone I have received around 1000 hits from them - all free.

Blogging communities such as blogcatalog.com and MyBlogLog.com drive a bit of traffic to my blog. Not a terribly large amount (20-50 visits/day), but an amount worth mentioning none the less. Stay active in these communities and the amount of traffic you receive from them on a daily basis will grow over time. They are also very useful for participating in RSS feed exchanges. If you’re ever going to monetize your blog via paid reviews the amount you can make will depend highly on your feed count. The more subscribers you have, the more you can charge for reviews!

I’ve also been active in doing link exchanges and promotions with members of the sites above. I’ve spent only a few minutes adding people to my blogroll, joining the coalition of bloggers (see the widget on my right sidebar), and co-hosting and sponsoring the biggest Entrecard contest ever and I receive plenty of traffic and lots of comment in return. It was time very sell spent.

To sum it up

• Post everyday
• Utilize social bookmarking sites
• Be as active as you can in the blogging communities

Three things I spend a little time on each day that have really paid off!

Stumble