I know there haven't been any articles for a while, and I'm sorry… I've been working a LOT of overtime, and have been running close to the edge of burning out. I haven't had any mental resources left over with which to write.
Things are slowing down a bit now, so soon I should be able to get back to writing on a regular basis.
Again, I apologize… expect a new article soon, though.
Strangely enough, I get asked questions about this frequently, in spite of the fact that my blog is not that large (though it's growing rapidly), and the fact that my articles are about self development and relationships. Perhaps that's because others in my niche don't know where to look outside of it, or maybe those other sites are too intimidating, with thousands of articles, many of which are written for the benefit of people already familiar with the basics.
There are four basic elements to drawing traffic to your site, and I'll cover each one individually, but for your convenience here they are, in order of when you should deal with them: content, design, SEO (search engine optimization… making your site Google friendly), and social interaction.
We'll start off with content, or what you write… the niche, or specific area, that your articles cover doesn't really matter for the purposes of discussing the very basics. What does matter is the basics of writing… spelling, grammar, etc. If you miss the basics, you will miss out on a substantial number of readers, who will turn away before they even read the core of your article.
Once you have the basics of writing covered, there are a few things which specifically help when writing on the web. One of these is the formatting of your article… you need to have your content in easily readable "chunks".
That means limiting paragraphs to just two or three sentences, all focused on one idea. It also means breaking your article, if it's of any substantial length, into pieces, each with their own "sub-heading"… like the items in this list, for example.
Speaking of lists, lists tend to be one of the most popular forms of content, and if your article can be broken down into a list, it's probably worth doing so. Even better is if you can list specific things that the reader can do in regards to the topic of the article (see my most popular article for an example). Large lists of resources to help your reader, especially little known but useful resources, can also be very popular.
Now you have some content, but what do you do with it? Design is extremely important in building your traffic… poor design can turn people away instantly, while good design can grab their attention, leading them to actually read your material.
What is good design? Well, that's a widely debated topic, but there are a few things which are nearly universal… the most important of which is making sure that the site is easily readable (a large enough font with enough contrast to the background, etc.), followed closely by the concept of "above the fold".
"Above the fold" refers to what a visitor can see of your website without having to scroll… because a large percentage of people will not do so unless your design captures their attention enough. One mistake a lot of people make is to have the beginning of their article fall below this point… especially if your title does, too (How are they going to even know what the page is about?).
What you want to have above the fold is up to you… but it's generally good to have the title of your article, a picture (pictures grab our attention more than words) that goes with your article, and, if possible, the first paragraph of the article itself. You may also want to make sure that the most important items on your sidebar are above the fold… for instance, I have subscribe buttons there, and the header for my "Most Popular Articles" section.
Other important areas of the page are the top left corner (the most viewed part of a web page), just below the first paragraph, and at the bottom of the article (they finished reading, now what should they do?). These are all good places, especially at the bottom of the article, to put things that encourage them to read more of your content… links to other articles, links to subscribe, etc.
SEO is short for search engine optimization, a fancy way of to describe making your website more easily understood, and therefore higher ranked, by Google, Yahoo, etc. SEO consists of two main elements, on-site SEO and off-site SEO. We'll stick to on-site SEO, other than to say that off-site generally consists of getting people to link to your article using link text (the words you actually click on) that is relevant (ie not "click here", though that still lends SOME help in ranking higher).
On-site SEO essentially consists of two pieces… having your articles link to each other in intelligent places, and making it clear what the article is about. Having your articles link to each other is easy… any time you have another article that you've written that is relevant, make sure you link to it, preferrably with words under which you would like to appear when someone searches on Google. For example, I could do something like linking to my article on how to be a good dad.
The second piece, making it clear what it's about, is in reference to search engines… but it helps to make it clear to your readers, as well. The basics work like this… you think of what you would put in Google if you were wanting to find the article you're writing. You then take that and look at the most important words in it… these are your "keywords" (a common SEO term).
Once you know what your keywords are, you'll need to write an interesting title containing them, ie "The Very Basics Of SEO And Getting Traffic For Your Blog". Keep in mind that this title is what shows up in Google (or should be if you're using any halfway decent blogging software, at any rate) for people to click… so in addition to helping Google understand better, it's also what has to convince searchers to click on it to come to your site.
Once you have your title, it should show up at the top of your article in large print, using what's called a header tag (H1, H2, H3, etc… the smaller the number the larger the font is, with H1 being the largest). In addition to that, if you include an image (and you should), you should use it again, or a reworded form, as the "alt" tag, which is a text description of the picture. If you can find a way to use the keywords again in bold (or another header tag, such as the "sub-titles" mentioned above), that helps also.
Besides these intentional placements of your keywords, it is also important to make sure you use them a few times naturally in the text… but that should happen anyway, since you're writing an article that can be described by the title that contains them.
This is, as the title states, the very basics of SEO… there are far more advanced techniques available, if you want to get into them, but I'll leave it to sites who specialize in it to cover them.
The final piece of getting traffic is the social aspect. You already have good content, a decent design, and are including little hints for Google as to what your articles are about… but none of that gets you too far without some sort of social interaction.
The social interaction that I'm referring to here, the kind that gets you traffic, breaks down into three pieces: other bloggers, forums, and social media… all of which can interact with each other. Let's cover each piece separately.
You can't really rate any one of these as being "better" than the others… while social media will, generally, drive more traffic directly, traffic from bloggers and forums is generally better quality traffic, meaning that they are more likely to add to the conversation on your own blog, and more likely to come back or even subscribe. Being mentioned on a high-profile blogger's site can also cause people to transfer some of the authority/respect that they give that blogger to you… a guest article on their site even more so.
The different types of social interaction also often intertwine… readers of forums may be bloggers, or a mention on a blogger's site can get people to submit your article to a social media site, which in turn can drive bloggers and forum members to talk about it.
The greatest difference between the three types may be in the difficulty of starting out… forums are very easy, right from the beginning: you find a thread that interests you, you write a response, and people will read it. Bloggers are the next step up in difficulty, at least if you're trying to get the attention of any of the bigger ones… you may have to be a regular commenter for weeks before they really become familiar with who you are enough for the interaction to move beyond just comments. Social media sites, in general, are the most difficult… it can take some serious effort over months to build your social profile up to the point where you are influential.
There is a fair amount of material here, but if you learn it and use it, it should be enough information to get you started on the road to getting more traffic, including from the search engines. If you want to know more, there are a lot of good sources across the web… a few of my favorites are ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, and SEOMoz.
What do you think? Did I leave anything important out, or give too much attention to something that is not of that much importance? Let me know… I love to learn.
Normally I post an article a day from Monday through Friday, but I haven't been able to recently, due to chaos at my place of work and various other things at home. My place of work is being sold off from the larger company which owns it, and there is a lot of work from my department… plus they keep changing which day the actual change will take place. Once things settle back down just a bit (probably about two weeks from now), you can expect my normal rate of articles again… until then, I'll post when I can, which should be at least a couple per week.
My apologies to those of you looking forward to my articles… hold on just a little longer.
As a side note, for those of you who write yourselves, if you're interested in sending me a guest article, let me know… it's jasonivers at yahoo dot com.
Different things are significant to different people, but this month marks something of significance to me: I have now been blogging for six months.
A lot has changed in that half of a year, for me… I've gone from 34 visitors my first month to over 50,000 in both October and November. I have had my articles viewed over a quarter of a million times.
More importantly, I've gotten to know myself better, and I have grown (in the mental and spiritual sense) more rapidly since I started writing than at any other time. I am doing something now that I am actually passionate about, rather than just doing what I need to in order to survive.
I have also found what it is that I want to do for a living: write. If I could do that off of A Miracle A Day, that would be fantastic, though I make very, very little money at all from it right now (I do run Google ads at the bottom of each article). If it comes from some other source (I have started, though never finished, a book, a work of fiction), I would still be happy… after all, I run this site from a passion, not for the money.
That being said, regardless of income, I have goals for the website, and I'll share them with you now… hopefully this will help me keep them in mind, and perhaps someone will read them and lend a helping hand, whether through advice, or simply spreading the word.
Of course, if you want to help me hit the first of those goals, you can subscribe now in a reader or by email (if you haven't already), or you can recommend A Miracle A Day to a friend, and encourage them to subscribe.
Over the six months I've been writing, I have written 171 articles (this one is #172). I like most of them, obviously (there are a couple I'm not so happy with, like this one), but some of them are ones that I particularly like. Now seems like a good time to share my favorites, so here are a few of them:
So… there you go, that's where six months of blogging has gotten me, and where I'd like to go in the next six months. And all of my goals depend on help from you, my readers… so if you like my site, subscribe (by email) if you aren't already or spread the word and recommend it to someone you know (or a lot of people, I don't mind 
).
Peter tagged me the other day for his Think Differently Challenge, and so I am going to do exactly what he challenged me to do… think differently.
In fact, I'm going to think differently about the very group writing project. Here is my thinking differently:
A group writing project usually involves coming up with a theme, a la "think differently", and then "tagging", better known as requesting an article from, certain writers that they like and/or feel would be a good fit for the topic. This is a relatively common thing in blogging, and I've been tagged a few times before.
I, on the other hand, am starting a group writing project right here, and tagging people (the list of who I am tagging is below), but I'm standing the whole thing on its head. Instead of me choosing a topic and requesting that all of the writers listed below respond with an article, I'm listing authors and requesting that they each give ME a topic for an article.
I will link each article to the home page of the blog of the person suggesting the topic, as well as back to this article. I will also update this article after I complete each article associated with the project, so that there is one comprehensive list of each person who responded, what topic they suggested, and the article that resulted.
Hopefully those whom I tag are game to try my reverse writing project… all I ask is that the topics have something to do with self-development and/or relationships. So, on to the list:
Aaron at Today Is That Day
Peter at I Will Change Your Life
Jenny at Jenny And Erin
Mark at The Winding Path
Jean at The Cheeful Monk
Suzie at Turtles Paradise – Her request – My response: How To Find Time To Be Creative
You certainly don't have to write a post about this, though of course if you'd like to I always appreciate the links… just leave a comment or send me an email. If you're not on the list and still want to be in on this experiment, leave a comment (or send an email to jasonivers at yahoo) with your website and suggested topic… if your website passes my "good enough" evaluation, I'll include you in the body of this article, and write an article on your subject.
Also, if anyone wants to, they can feel free to steal my idea, or even pass a link to this article to anyone who might be interested.
So, Peter, how's that for thinking differently?
I need your help with something. I set a goal, quite some time back, of reaching 100 subscribers. As you can see if you look near the top left corner of this page, I've reached that goal. I was talking about this fact with my wife last night, and she asked me what my next goal would be. I had already thought about this, of course, so it didn't take me long to answer: 500 subscribers.
Now here comes the part where I need your help: She told me that she wanted that as an anniversary present. My anniversary is November 20th, or less than two months away. My subscriber count HAS nearly quintupled over the last six weeks, going from around 22 to, as of last time I looked, 104. If I continued that trend, I WOULD be able to give my wife the present she asked for.
On the other hand, increasing my subscribers by 82 over 6 weeks is a very different thing than increasing it by 396, even if the percentages are similar. The only way I can think of to reach that count is if I get linked by bigger bloggers. So, this is where I need help: If you are one of the bigger bloggers I link to in this article, and you check your links, if you find something of interest on my site (and I'll provide a choice or two I think might interest you), please help me and link to it.
If you are one of my normal readers, and have a blog of your own, I would appreciate any link from you, as well… any link can bring readers, who can then become subscribers if they so choose. Or, if you happen to be reading this and know someone who might be interested in linking to my content to help me give my wife her present, let them know. I know I'm unlikely to send enough traffic to any of these links to get the attention of a blog of any size, so I'm hoping they watch who links to them, and if not, that we can contact them by other means and get them to participate.
Okay, so all of that out of the way, here are some of the bloggers that I read, that have higher (mostly a LOT higher) traffic and subscriber count, and whom might be interested in content on this site:
This request is by no means limited to the people listed above… as I said above, if you know someone else who might be interested in my content, and willing to help me out, please feel free to contact them and give them the address of this website in general or this article in particular… in fact, here is a link that you can copy and paste for this article, in case you would like to pass it along: I Need Your Help at A Miracle A Day.
So… sorry to call in the good will of my readers, but I really do need help in order to give my wife the anniversary present she asked for, which, of course, I walked blindly into. Oh, and to any bloggers who read this, whether mentioned above or not, if you were to pass along this request, that would be much appreciated.
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site with a feature most (if not all) others lack… you can choose categories of interest and then "stumble", which takes you to a page that someone else bookmarked in one of those categories. It can be a fun way to kill time when you're at the computer and bored. It can also, and this is the focus of this article, drive a lot of traffic to your website.
StumbleUpon users can, and do, click the button to go to the next page unless you grab their attention quickly. Pictures can help with this, as can a good site design. Probably the most important, however, as with most ways of generating traffic, is your title… if you have an interesting title, you can grab their attention, and get them to read more.
So now that you have their attention, what gets them to give you a thumbs up? One of the easiest things to get a thumbs up for is a picture, preferrably a funny one, but interesting or beautiful can work, as well. But since this isn't a photo blog, I'm going to go more into what I've found works with written content.
StumbleUpon users, or "stumblers", tend to like content that is easily digested. Most of my articles that have gotten the most thumbs up, and the most traffic, are simple to understand. I get a few votes for my more in-depth articles, but two of my top three articles even have "Simple" in the title: How To Make Your Life Happier In One Simple Change and The Very Simple Secret To A Happy Marriage.
That doesn't mean that the content is shallow and meaningless, however. My top article, A Potentially Fatal Mistake, is about how low self-worth leads to depression, not low self-esteem. It's still easy to read and understand, however.
So easy to understand content on a topic that is commonly (or even more so, currently) discussed, laid out in a reasonably attractive manner, with a good picture and headline to catch their first attention will often do well in StumbleUpon, bringing you thousands of visitors in a day or two, with the traffic continuing in dribbles after that.
Bonus Information: The headline is how many page views StumbleUpon has brought me so far this month… but it's misleading: StumbleUpon loads the stumbled article twice for each visitor it sends your way by default, artificially inflating your page view count. This option for "pre-fetch" can be turned off, but it very seldom is. If you want to know how many actual people saw your article, divide the StumbleUpon traffic in half… in other words, for 17158 page views, StumbleUpon sent me roughly 8500 visitors.
If you write creatively much, you’ve come across the thing known as writer’s block. You may be sitting there looking at a blank document (I’m a blogger… I write using my computer, not paper), or you may get “blocked” in the middle of your writing. I, personally, actually experience the second more than the first.
You may have a deadline, or you may just want to get it done and out, even though there is no real deadline. But you’re stuck… you don’t know how to get out in words the concepts that are hiding in your mind. The longer you sit there unable to write, the more frustrated you get, making it even harder to find the words you want.
Don’t panic. There are things you can do to free the words from your mind, free them to flow out onto your chosen writing medium. Here are seven of the techniques that seem to work fairly consistently for me:
This virtually always works for me, but is limited by the fact that you need to find someone who will actually listen. Depending on what you are writing about, that can be easier said than done. Given that you have someone, however, this works because it forces your mind to come at the subject from a different angle. Your mind simply uses different pathways when having a conversation with another individual than it does when writing for an audience.
This concept is well known in psychology, but is great for writing, as well, especially since you already have the tools right there: your mind and a means to write. The technique is simple… just write down whatever comes to mind, whether it seems relevant or not. This method has the advantage of working at the block from two directions. One, it may give you different angles of seeing the subject, and two, it can clear some distractions from your mind (writing them down seems to address them sufficiently to make them go away, much of the time). In other words, it combines some of the advantages of #1 and #3.
Distractions can make it hard to focus your thoughts. Many times the distractions are as much in our minds as in the world around us, so it can be useful to clear your mind. There are many techniques for doing this, too many to list. My favorite, however, is to take quiet time.
Sometimes the best way to break through writer’s block is to step away from the writing. Stretch your legs, go for a walk, get some sunlight (if it’s available). A few moments away from the writing, accompanied by a little physical activity, can bring you fresh insight on your subject.
This technique is really about tricking your mind. It consists of stopping writing on your main subject, and going and writing a small amount, such as a few paragraphs, about a related subject. If you’re writing about blogging, for example, you could write a little bit about SEO. If you’re writing about relationships, you could do a little bit about communication. This often shifts your thinking enough that you go around the writer’s block instead of trying to punch through it.
This is similar to #1, but doesn’t require an actual other person. It does, however, require that you give a few details to your imaginary person, or that you picture explaining it to a specific person you know. In order to get your mind to shift over to “conversation mode”, the person you’re thinking about has to have enough detail to make it real enough to your subconscious. They don’t necessarily have to have a name, for example (though imagining specific people that you know is often the most effective form of this), but you do need a rough mental picture like relative age (child, young, old, etc.), sex, level of knowledge in the field, etc. As mentioned in #1, conversation mode is a different way of thinking, and the switch from mode to the other is often enough to break your block.
This is really my last resort. Basically, I put my writing on the back burner, giving it time to stew and my subconscious time to kick in something to get me over the hump, so to speak. Having a conversation with someone about a different subject requires enough of your attention (or should… if it doesn’t, you’re not doing it right) to get you to mentally drop what you were writing about, giving yourself some mental space to look at the subject with fresh(er) eyes when you come back to it. The danger with this one is that you may entirely lose the thread of what you were writing, and have to start over, or at least back somewhat. Of course, that could actually be a good thing, too… sometimes when I lose the thread and start over, the end product is much better than the original.
You can use any one, or any combination, of the ways listed above to try to break past the block. Some of them are more effective for me than others… #6, for example, is usually a last resort, while #1 almost always works, if I can find someone interested enough in whatever I’m writing about to actually have a conversation.
What else do you do when you hit writer’s block? How do you get the words out when they’re stuck? If you have a technique not listed above, I humbly request that you share it in the comments, to help me the next time I can’t get the words to flow like they normally do.
A lot of people want to get traffic for their blog more than anything else. Digg is one of the biggest social bookmarking sites, and is famous for sending huge volumes of traffic in a short time (other sites can do it, too, such as Slashdot, but it's much harder to get a story on there, as it has to pass the editors).
So, how do you get on Digg? Well, you can add a button to each of your articles to allow users to submit it (or vote for it, if it's already been submitted). That allows it to get on there in the first place, and may yield dribs and drabs of traffic. If you have friends who use Digg, you can get them to vote for your story, too, so that the social herd instinct starts kicking in ("Hey, this one interested x people already, I'll go check it out!").
One of the most important things, though, is to recognize what topics are of interest to Digg users. This is true for any social bookmarking site, of course, but this article is about Digg. So what do Digg users like?
If you can't guess by the title of this article (the results are at the bottom of this article), you need some serious help. Digg users love politics (with a liberal slant), IT (especially Apple), and of course, articles about Digg itself.
So what are you to do if you don't like any of those things, or don't want to write about them? Well, there are a few other topics that are slightly less popular, including games, photos, and general web related things. None of those float your boat, either? Find another social bookmarking site… Digg users like what they like (see my point above about knowing the interests of the site's users).
For those of us who (generally) write in a niche not popular amonst Digg users, one you might be interested in trying is StumbleUpon, which has more targeted traffic, and users who are interested in a much wider range of niches (You don't see that word plurarlized much, do you?).
So, for Digg users:
Steve Jobs has, as of the time of my writing this, 3388 stories with the highest one having 7013 diggs.
George Bush has 4486 stories, with the highest one having 6268 diggs.
So, if it were a fight, George Bush landed the most blows, but Steve Jobs landed the best shot.
* My apologies to my regular readers… I allowed myself to get bored, and didn't have enough time to write a self-development article up to my normal quality, so I decided to let my humor express itself.
.
Click the link below to enter:
A Miracle A Day Contests – Win A Free Copy Of ‘The Secret’
We all know what deja vu is… when you feel like you've experienced whatever it is you're going through before. Blogja vu is my made up word (phrase?) for when you write about something, and then it comes up in a conversation with someone outside of the online world.
It makes you feel odd, like you're echoing yourself, or quoting something you've read. You can have seventeen conversations with different people about one subject, all offline, and it doesn't feel weird. But as soon as you write about it, even (or maybe especially) if the article was inspired by talking about that subject with that very same person, it feels different.
It's not necessarily a bad feeling… just odd. It can feel a little awkward, too, like the example above, quoting something you've read. It just doesn't feel like it belongs in the natural flow of a conversation, more like it belongs in a prepared speech.
So what can you do about it? Not much, as far as I can tell… I haven't been blogging THAT long, and it may be more prevalent in my specific niche of self-development (I'm not sure how often that feeling would come up for someone who blogs about, say, digital photography). Hopefully, with more time and exposure to the feeling, the awkwardness will fade.
.
Click the link below to enter:
A Miracle A Day Contests – Win A Free Copy Of ‘The Secret’
