I spent time looking through some of the blogs in the technorati top 100 today. If I’m missing something - please let me know! Sure, a large percent of them are tech or political blogs - but dooce is still there, at least a couple science blogs, etc. The actual topic of the blog doesn’t seem to matter much. I saw some blogs that are very niche and some that write about just about everything. I saw some with one writer, some with many bloggers. Some with just personal opinion and stories and others with very detailed, factual information. I didn’t see a trend except that they all have a lot more readers than I do. And quite honestly, some really aren’t that good.

One good thing however is that I seem to be able to write faster. At one time long, long ago it would literally take me an entire day to write one post. A couple weeks ago I wrote 4 posts in one day for my women’s site and last weekend I wrote 6 posts in one day for herproblog.

Granted those were either simple posts or things I could write right off the top of my head. But the simple posts seem to do better anyway. In July I wrote a post called 3 Execises Every Woman Should Do without putting much thought into it. It got 12 comments - pretty good for me - and was picked up by other sites through Blogburst.

When I actually put more thought or time into something it doesn’t seem to do as well. Maybe if I keep writing the simpler posts I will do better. I may run out of ideas like that though, I will have to see.

But, if in general, I am now able to write faster and write posts that get more comments - that’s good.

What I still find difficult is the promoting/marketing stuff. I don’t have money to advertise so what I’ve been doing is leaving comments, participating at social networking sites when I have the time, trying to contact individual bloggers, etc. All that is very time consuming and doesn’t seem to help a lot.

There must be a better way. A smarter way. Advertising, if I had the money would seem to be smarter. I do have a lot of entrecard credits saved up to use soon. I don’t know if that will help much or not.

Maybe if I restricted my commenting at the most popular blogs - with lots of readers - that would be better. Or if I could guest post at more popular blogs. I don’t know. Those are things I need to try.

Either way I need a smarter way to promote/market/get more readers.

I can’t say a whole lot has changed in one month. That doesn’t sound good especially paired with me saying I’ve been busy working on the site does it? I know I’ve done something and I don’t think I’ve done useless things - but I’m not seeing much in the way of improvement. At least not with subscriber numbers. It seems to just keep hovering around the same place. Well, my page views have gone up a bit according to google analytics. Although I’m a bit concerned that that may be only from using entrecard. And so far my adsense income seems to be a bit higher this month. But the increases are small.

So what the hell have I done?

- I’ve been blogging at HerProBlog. Hopefully that will help at some point.

- I’ve written up a set of guidelines for myself for writing that I’ve started to use. I think it is helping - at least I seem to get more comments on the posts that I write using them.

- I’ve added a few doodads to the blog - a chat thing and a poll and easier way to subscribe by email. Also some plugins, like one that will help to make sure I get back to commenters

- I’ve participated in networking opportunities at Liz Strauss’s blog and Problogger.

- I’ve started interviewing other women bloggers on my blog

- I’m getting some guest posters lined up

- I’m working on guest posting myself at at least one blog that has a lot more readers than I do

- I’m working on some posts that take more effort to write that I’m hoping will draw more attention to my blog. It will be a few weeks before those are ready though.

- I’m doing a bit better with following up with commenters

What else can I do? Any suggestions?

One of my long term goals is to add more blogs to the site. On the shorter term I need to first get more visitors to the current blog - and I set some specific goals based on some data I collected for that too.

Last month I gave an update on my progress here too.

So? Where am I now? Originally I wanted to get an average of 10-15 comments per post and 1000 Feedburner subscribers in 6 months. I have 3 months left.

I now think that 5 comments on ave. per post would be pretty good and I would be satisfied with that. I’d still like to have 1000 subscribers if possible - or at least close to it.

How close am I? Not very. But not from lack of trying.

Comments - I haven’t actually counted the number of comments but a rough estimate is that I’m getting close, and that number is still certainly achievable. On some posts I do get as many as 5 comments left.

Subscribers - This number is still really low. I have less than 100 people subscribed. The big feed button and a subscribe by email option hasn’t seemed to have helped any. I still think it should at least theoretically be achievable however. I just posted recently about Tina Su from ThinkSimpleNow.com who got 2000 subscribers in 90 days, so it certainly is possible.

I looked at her blog closely and some others and read advice from some other bloggers and wrote up a list of guidelines for myself to follow when writing.

I started writing at HerProBlog.COM too. Maybe that will help me out some too.

At any rate, I’ve got 3 more months to go to reach the goals I set. I don’t know if I’ll make it or not. But I’ll sure try the best I can.

Tina makes some good points in it that might help me. She thinks her blog has been successful for these reasons:

1) Concrete Goals & Focus

I think I’ve needed to be more focussed and maybe that has been one of my problems. I’ve got my blog a bit more narrowed down though. Sort of anyway. I think so.

2) Content Creation

This is always still a challenge for me - I’m better with coming up with ideas now but still find it hard to find the time to write.

She gave some good tips though that I really need to keep in mind:

“I like to write as if I’m talking to my best friend, giving them the best I have.”

“Use Personal Examples - People love stories. This allows them to relate with you on a personal level and connect with you as friends.”

I don’t use picture though. Personally I could never see the point of getting an image somewhere that really isn’t exactly of the thing you are writing about. Maybe I could try to come up with some other type of graphics to use.

3) Getting the Word Out

A long time ago this was really a problem for me - I do better with it now, but I need to do better. One problem I have is I really don’t know what’s acceptable. For example, I just redesigned by blog but I don’t know to what extent it is acceptable to tell everyone. I have people and bloggers I know, but I don’t feel that I know them well enough to tell them to come look at my new design. Seems too pushy or rude. But I don’t know, I’m not good at gaging that type of stuff.

I need to be better with replying back to people who leave comments too. I was doing this for a while, but am pretty behind with it now.

And I need to get more familiar with Stumble and Digg.

Tina also says not to be shy and to email people and introduce yourself and even suggests emailing her for practice - so I will do that as soon as I’m finished writing this!

There are blogs using it that would probably have readers that would be interested in mine too - so it could be a way to get ’sort of’ free advertising.

I’ve bought a few ads already but I’m thinking I might hold off before buying any more and save up my credits. Then after I have a lot built up buy a bunch of ads to run all around the same time.

Anyone know if they have a limit to how many credits you can build up? Has anyone got many visitors (real visitors, not just ones dropping cards) with it? Any tips?

- something to add here:

entrecard is doing weird things to me, even after just 3 days. Now, any time I look at a blog the first things my eyes and brain start to do is look for that ‘Drop’ link! Sometimes I forget what I really came to the blog for even!

I’ll be writing at HerProBlog.COM soon too! The site was going to be launched this week but was postponed until the 15th.

It went fairly well with the fitness interviews I did for the blog. Next, with my new design and tag line I’m going to start looking for guest bloggers and also interview other women bloggers.

I’ve got a list of some good ideas for regular blog posts too - but I feel like I’d rather have more visitors before I write them. Still can’t seem to get many more subscribers or visitors. I need to come up with some more ideas to get more people to the blog.

1) “Introduce Yourself” - I only wrote a very brief introduction in the emails I sent out. I didn’t want it long because I also wanted to get right to the point and not waste their time.

2) “Outline How and When the Interview Will be Used” - I gave them my url (such an obvious thing, but one that could be easily overlooked) and said I hoped to post the interviews in the next week or two. I couldn’t say for certain because I didn’t know how many people (if any) I’d hear back from or when.

3) “Give Incentive” - I didn’t give any kind of incentive because I have no idea what it would be. The PR on that blog is pretty high but I didn’t really want to mention that and I don’t know that it won’t go back down anyway.

4) “Don’t Overwhelm With Questions” - I asked 3 questions. Now, I’m asking the same questions to a few people all about a particular topic. I thought about asking each one additional question that was specific to their blog, but I didn’t (quite honestly that was too much work!).

Darren also suggest sending an introductory email first with no questions in it. I didn’t do it that way, I asked the questions right in the first email I sent.

5)”Give Different Options for Medium” - I didn’t do this either.

6) “Do some research First” - since I am asking each of them the same questions this was less relevant to me. I did spend some time on each of their blogs though and two of the people I knew fairly well already.

7) ” Don’t be Offended if ‘Rejected’” - I sent out 10 requests last night and have heard back from 6 already - so I’m not doing too bad, with 2 of those already sending in their answers. But I know I may not hear from all of them.

8 ) “Notify them When You Hit Publish” - this I will do when the times comes and I told them I would let them know then the interview gets posted.

So far this first experiment with interviewing people for my blog seems to be going pretty well. I figure I will learn from this and then I have plans for more interviews later on.

For anyone recently joining in - this blog is where I am writing about what I want to accomplish with another blog of mine: http://www.ideasforwomen.com/news/. Ideally what I would like is to start a small blog network on that domain. But from reading Darren’s “A Strategy for Building Niche Focused Blog Networks” the first thing I need to do is work on my traffic levels on the first blog.

So what have I accomplished in the past 2 months? Back on April 23rd I set some goals for where I want to be in six months (now 4 months). I would like to have 1000 Feedburner subscribers and around 5-10 comments on average per post in six months (I originally said 10-15 comments per post, but I think that sounds like a lot now.).

I now have a lot more subscribers than I had, but I still have a long way to go. I don’t know if I will make it to 1000 or not in 4 months. Not only did I add a really big subscribe button in an obvious place, but I also added the FeedButton and a subscribe by email link. I haven’t had many email subscribers yet, which leads me to one of the various things I’ve had on my mind lately.

I suspect most of my readers at this point are also bloggers. I’m basing this on the fact that most people commenting leave a link. I love that I have other bloggers reading my blog, but eventually I will need people without blogs reading here too. I guessing that non-bloggers are less likely to understand what subscribing to a blog means too. I should add something to my blog explaining it.

I’m getting quite a few more comments too, but it seems they come more often on posts where I’ve linked to other bloggers, rather than on posts where I’ve actually written something more substantial. I hope that changes too.

One cool thing though - I’m reviewing a book that was sent to me on Thursdays and the author of the book has stopped by and commented a couple of times! She says she likes how I am writing about her book!

I have a whole list of things planned to help build up my traffic levels. I am also working on a redesign for the site which I hope to start testing on the 4th of July weekend. I’m really excited about that! I even have a little tag line - although its kind of long and not real catchy it describes what I want the site to be.

Hopefully in another month my subscriber numbers will have picked some!

(I see the archives on this blog are not working now - I’ll have to see what that’s about)