Thursday, January 31, 2008

Watching the Traffic Fall

I have these phases that I go through where I blog a lot, everyday, sometimes more then one post per blog per day. Then shortly after that I have a large phase where I struggle to blog. I try to do it, at least every now and again. Sometimes it is apathy that makes it happen. Illness, exhaustion, and maybe a little bit of defeat. It is true that I think blogging can be a huge part of our future and that I think it is important for what I hope to accomplish, but since it is slow work and takes a lot of time, I often think...eh, it's not helping anything any way. This last dry spell (the month of January) had more to do with feeling overwhelmed. With the Helium Reward-athon, I am trying to cram too much into a very short day full of other things. I haven't felt much like blogging and other things seem so important. This has led me to leaving my blogging duties behind.

I know I have said it before, but it is one thing that makes me sad. I struggle with traffic on most of my blogs. Some of them make a great deal of sense. After all I often wonder if I have anything of value that makes people want to read my blogs, link to them, and come back. But usually I watch my traffic grow and feel that maybe, just maybe I do. Then I watch it fall dramatically with a slow month and feel like I have to start over from scratch. Not quite scratch, but almost. I then usually work hard, build it up to a few hundred, and then slip back into the quite phase bringing it down to just over fifty.

It is sad that three hundred visitors excite me. There are some who are disappointed by three hundred visitors a day and here I am excited by three hundred a month. I know that I need to figure out how to work on improving my blogs, networking them, bringing in traffic, and building them up so that they are indeed making money. I just don't often feel like doing that and that gets me down.

I enjoy the writing part. I love writing entries, posts, even the sponsored posts, and am not much for the promoting and marketing part. This is part of why I enjoy writing on other websites. They promote my articles for me because it benefits them as well.

Anyway...that is today's ramble.

1 comment:

Magdalen Islands said...

I'm Gimme A Dream at Helium and followed your link from there. I also make jewelery but it is different beadwork. But I'm not commenting for that reason. I see you are not a member of the social network, which brings traffic to your web log. If you don't want to go that route, the best way so far that I have found is EntreCard. You create a business card from yourself and advertise your site on other sites and they on yours. They have to come to your site to click on your button to ask for advertising privileges and you to theirs. It becomes quite quick once you are used to the methods.

It is at www.entrecard.com and there is nothing in it for me, so there is no referral. I've been a member for months now and some helium have started and noticed dramatic increases in their traffic.

You can only have one site per email address with EntreCard. If you need help I'll be just a screen away and will help all I can. If you go through EntreCard a piece of you jewelry would make a beautiful business card.