Friday, March 24, 2006

Must find cuteness...

I was thinking about what my blog is missing that the cash-cow blogs have and I came up with a few things:
  1. Political commentary which riles up readers on both sides of the proverbial aisle prompting return visits and comments in the triple digits for each post.
  2. Some sort of tragedy/disease/personal trauma/condition/injustice that I can write heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, soul-searching posts about causing massive outpourings of emotional support which I can then parlay into impressive visitor statistics.
  3. Something cute. Kid, pet, multicolored talking geranium, whatever. Old ladies and lonely people eat that shit up and could excreet it directly into my pocketbook.

This brought up the following realizations:

  1. I know nothing about politics. When political discussions arise in my presence I find myself looking for room at the kids' table. "Hey Billy, did you hear what happened to Ayad Allawi? No? Scooch over."
  2. I don't have any major health or personal issues. Good news for me or horrible setback for my blogging career? You decide.
  3. I not the child-rearing type so the kid thing is right out. I'm just barely child-tolerant and that's only for short periods. I've got plenty of pets but the day they do anything of interest to anyone will be followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of the 7 pigeons of the apocolypse. Let's just say I'm not holding my breath while waiting for them to start paying their own way. I just don't have anything with a cuteness factor that could stir up any public interest.

A dilemna that I'll need to think about. Until I come up with something you'll have to be satisfied with a work in progress. Or go look at multicoloredtalkinggeranium.com

7 comments:

Zoe said...

I find that if you want to increase your stats you must do the following:
1. talk about lesbians, I know I eat that shit up.
2. profess to the internet at large that you are a nympho.
3. talk about The L Word, that keeps the lesbains coming back
4. in all seriousness, you have to read and comment regularly on other blogs. There are a lot of crap blogs out there, but if you spend some time using the next blog button at the top of the page you will occationally come up with a blog or two that are good. Hopefully those people have links on their page to blogs that they read. Bookmark them, comment on them and visit them regularly. Follow those links.
For me, one blog was the cog, and look at my alter ego now, famous among 10 people or so.
I am surprised by how many people have links to my blog on their pages. I have been finding blogs that I have never been to via statcounter-refering link, who have links to my blog. Get statcounter, personally I like having an invisible counter. You'll get addicting to checking it and seeing where people come from and how often they visit. I have tons of lurkers.
5.You might want to do a special weekily feature where you review a board game a week. Or share recipes you like, or camping tips, or music reviews.. You'd be surprised what lpoeple ike to read.
6. Most importantly, just be you. Make witty observations and tell funny little stories. Put a link to the Willies on your page. You might even try to figure out how to put mp3s for download on your page. I think if you make your blog quirky like you, people will like it.

Zoe said...

Oh yeah, one more thing. Enable your blog to allow anonymous comments, leave word verification on.

lkmanitou said...

Let me just reiterate the increased readership that you can get through posting comments on more popular blogs. Also, posting to relavent message boards will spike readership. Dog pictures help for the cuteness factor; look at how we all have to see Chuckles Friday! Statcounter is awesome just to get a handle on who reads your blog and how they got there. What's sad is when you start recognizing individual readers based off their IP address. :D Adding html meta description tags will help with getting Google searches to your blog, too.

MrsOz said...

HOw would it affect your pocketbook? Do you actually get money for readership?

I don't know anything about getting blog traffic as evidenced by the fact that I can't even get people I'm related to to read the family blog, so I'll stop there.

Phollower said...

I believe you can get ads placed on your blog. The ads generally get on people's nerves and most people (I think) aren't that concerned with profiting from their blog so relatively few have them. But if you look at Dooce, she has a bunch of ads and supposedly makes enough $ to support her family. Granted she gets like 50,000 unique hits a day.

Elle said...

I agree with Loki. It takes some strange persuasion to get into complete strangers' blogs. I use stat-counter too, just because I like to keep tabs on people (another creepy thing). Also, I've found that when I go out, my roommate tends to tell compete strangers about my blog, and that always gets a few people interested. Although, I find that it's more counterproductive because I have to drink more to be able to have really good things to post, and sometimes it just results in really bad hangovers and incoherent posts. But, so is life I suppose.

Anonymous said...

I vote you keep being funny - like you are. I am wiping my eyes from laughing so hard!