On the 27th of October 2009, I published my first post on this site and haven’t been able to stop. OK I know the official 3 month birthday was yesterday, but I only realised today. Hopefully this post will show that anyone with a passion for telling the world what they think, who works 60hrs a week can build a site that people come and read and contribute to. So what have I done, what things have been a success and more importantly what mistakes have I made?

  • Posts

170 post have been published here in 3 short months, which include a good amount of quality guest posts. The average length of my posts are around 600-750 words long. I find this is the perfect mix for me and the readers of this site.

  • Tutorial

I wrote ‘7 Days to better traffic’ which has had a really good response, it’s free when you subscribe to my mailing list (which you don’t get bombarded with, in fact I haven’t actually sent an email broadcast out yet) Nervous moment for me this as it was my longest piece of work so far, but thankfully it was received well. Matthew said by employing the tactics I talk about, his traffic went up by 40%. Proof is in the pudding I suppose. It’s not going to suite everyone, but it works for me.

  • Comments

2,575 comments have been left over the 170 posts. The amount of comments being left rocketed just after Christmas Day, I put this down to me guest posting for other sites and installing certain plugins. Commentluv and Top Commenters. Commentluv is a fantastic plugin which allows people who leaves comments to produce a link for they site. I think having the commenter plugin which shows the top ten most active people on this site is great too.

  • Guest Posts

I have written 17 guest posts so far with 3 more pending. The majority of these was done this month and really has increased awareness of my name and this site. Guest posting is a great way of showing your off your work in front of other peoples audience. When a guest post of mine is published I bookmark it and check it regular over a few days to a week and reply to the comments to maximise exposure to their readers.

I haven’t only targeted high traffic sites to guest post for, I guest post for sites I really like that don’t necessarily get a ton of comments but it’s the quality of the site and the atmosphere that draws me in.

  • SEO

Now in the early stages of this site (still am early stages really) I ignored the search engines, thinking I could do it all via social media. Granted social media helped me get going a lot quicker than the norm, but search engine traffic is where it’s at. All I have done to focus on search engine is make sure I have entered my key words etc etc in my thesis theme post editor.

It is slowly getting better and my traffic plugin StatPress shows that I am getting referring traffic from Google etc. Ideally over the next few months I want search engine traffic to start producing close to 80-90% of the sites traffic.

Mistakes

  • Fighting

I never meant to go out and start blog bashing and to this day I actually still don’t think I ever have, not really. I voiced my opinions on how I think website and business owners should reply to everything and how I think products should be marketed. I have admitted all the way through this site, that I am a dumb ass and not in any way a marketing guru. I’m a motivated guy who is finding his own way of doing things.

That said, I have been in the middle and on the out skirts of certain ‘heated’ discussions about probloggers etc. This, if I’m honest was a bit childish of me. I’m uber passionate about this site, it’s readers and about life in general, which sometimes means I don’t engage my brain before my heart takes over, but no more getting involved in all that.

For a twenty something ex-military guy with an IQ of 94, I’m really proud of where we as a community have put this site and I can tell you all that I am dedicated to pushing this site forward and obsessed with helping everyone I can.

the emergent properties of Chia life
Creative Commons License photo credit: nosha

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