Day 1 - Preparing the blog to be promoted

I started my blog in December 2007. It was my first attempt at creating anything on the internet. From December through June 2008, I attempted to write a new post every week or so and I didn't spend any effort promoting my blog. The main reason is that I didn't know how. To be completely honest, I did really know that I should promote my blog. I haven't really told my friends or family about my blog either, so my traffic consisted of me and occasionally my wife. Once or twice someone else stumbled onto my blog but they stumbled away just as quickly.

July 9th 2008, I decide to jump in and start blogging and promoting with a passion. I started writing posts several times a week. I aim for a daily update but can't quite make it. I also started promoting my site. In that last month, I have gone from 0 to 2 visitors who weren't me to having more than 40 unique visitors every day. During the week ending August 8th, I had 293 unique visitors totalling 372 visits and yes, this does count my wife. So far, each week I have more visitors and more visits. While I can't predict how many visitors I will be able to reach, I am going to try.

Some of the questions I see new bloggers ask most frequently are how do I promote my blog, how do I get traffic, how will people find my blog and how can I get visitors. More experienced people than me have written about how to get traffic. There are the 25 ways to get traffic, the 50 ways to get traffic, the 99 ways to get traffic and the 100 ways to get traffic. What is missing from this articles is the fresh experience. Therefore, I thought I would start a new blog aimed at teaching new bloggers how to get traffic from a new bloggers point of view, namely me.

On any day that I actively promote my blog, I will post what I did. I will try to explain why I did it. Sometimes I honestly won't know and I am just being hopeful.

Ok. The first step is to write something. OK, I've written something.

Second, I need a way to measure my success. Therefore, I am going to add sitemeter and google analytics. Sitemeter is just http://www.sitemeter.com/. Get an account. I'm signing up for a free account. Fill in the form. Click on the "manager" area. Open your blogger dashboard in a second window. Click on layout, and then on add a page element on the right hand side of your page. In the pop up window, select HTML/JavaScript. Back in sitemeter, click on HTML code. Copy and paste sitemeter code to the open window in your blogger dashboard and save. Finally on sitemeter, click Ignore Visits. That will prevent sitemeter from counting your visits to your own site.

Then sign into google analytics and repeat adding HTML code.

Another very important thing to do is to go to the dashboard and click on edit profile. Put your blog address in and allow others to see it. The will allow others to find your blog when you leave comments on posts.

For my final blog promotion for tonight, I am going to go Google Help Groups – The Coffee Shop and add a discussion. For tonight, I am just going to announce my new blog, tell readers it’s purpose and invite them to stop by. Note that I am going to leave my blog address in the discussion. If the reader wants, they can also find me by clicking on my profile.