Almost a week since my last blog post. No excuses really, but stuff and other stuff are interfering with my online stuff. I’ll admit, it would be great to be in a position where I could put all my efforts into my online projects, and while I obviously do believe it would help me be “successful”much quicker, I’m really quite happy with the way things are right now. Sure, I have to spend a bit too much time on a “real” job to stay afloat, and I have to spend a lot of time at University preparing myself for exams, I really don’t mind. Maybe one day the time will be right again, and I can prioritize my online projects ahead of some of the other things in my life, but who knows? Maybe I’ll never be just that successful online again, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve had a blast doing what I do!
I got a bit sidetracked there I suppose, seeing how this post is going to be another Bloggst update. Things are going pretty well over there actually, despite the fact that I’ve, like I mentioned, has been limited a bit lately with the amount of effort I’ve been able to put into it. The live blog directory has drawn quite a bit of attention, and I’ve already got a large backlog of at least 20 blogs I’ll need to review. I plan on going through all of these applications tomorrow afternoon to get rid of the backlog though, so if you’ve applied and haven’t heard back yet, don’t worry.
What amazes me though, is people’s inability to read. Seriously, it’s pointed out quite clearly on that page what should be included in the application, yet most people just include a link to either the feed or the blog, and that’s it. If these are people that I’ve never seen before, I don’t hesitate to just delete the applications. If I recognize the name from the community though, I’m inclined to be a bit more lenient and check out the blog and see if I can easily categorize it myself. There’s lesson to be learned here though, if you’re applying for something, read the guidelines and make sure you include the requested details. It’s bound to increase your chances of success!
Next, let’s take a look at the numbers to see how things have been growing. We just recently passed 3,000 posts, and I’m really happy about it. By all estimations, we are well on track for reaching the set goal of 5,000 posts by the start of June. I’m starting to realize though that reaching 500 registered members by the start of June might not happen. Even though growth is pretty good, at the current rate we’ll probably end up at around 400-something by that time. It’s never fun to not reach your goals, but that just means you have to evaluate what you’ve been doing, and see how you can improve.
What’s good is that I still have well over a month to turn the trend, and get us back on track. Recently I’ve experienced a bit with both StumbleUpon and Technorati’s WTF, and so far I’ve had great success with WTF. As a result of our efforts with it, the visitor numbers have steadily increased over the past few weeks from averaging between 300-400 visitors per day to about 500-600. I’m quite happy with this, and hopefully I’ll be able to keep the positive trend, and see the numbers increase further in the coming weeks.
I’m starting to realize that it will be some time before I get to see the results I want from search engines, especially Google though. I’ve read up the Sandbox and PageRank recently, and it seems I can’t expect much from the coming PR update at least. And with the site still being placed in the sandbox, I’ll still be seeing limited results from Google in the coming months. This month we’ve gotten around 500 visits from Google searches, and pretty much all of those are specific “long-tail” searches. By the time the site gets out of the sandbox, and gets a better reputation in Google, I firmly believe that we’ll experience steady growth from Google traffic.
What’s important in the meantime is to keep working patiently on keeping up the activity, and building quality content and trying to generate more incoming links. This is the most effective way to get the site out of the sandbox as quickly as possible, and hopefully as a result of it, we’ll get a decent result from the next PR update at least. The only reason I’m actually concerned about the PR is because I know it matters when I want to sell ads, and as I’ve already mentioned, I hope to generate most of the income through selling ads myself, as opposed to the placeholder AdSense ads I have up right now.
That’s almost it, but just incase anyone is wondering, I can mention that we’re well on track to reaching the set goal of 100 subscribers to our feed by the start of June. In fact, we’re already over half way there, so that should at least be able to reach. What’s important here, is that I’m able to keep it updated with new articles frequently, or else we’ll quickly lose subscribers. That’s it! And as you can all tell, it’s important for me when it comes to Bloggst to follow a very transparent “business model”, and such if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
