My blog hasn't gone viral or get a million hits a day. But it's respectable for what it is, at around 300 or so per day. But I get bored easily. Figured it needed a bit of a change to bring it on in life, so I changed it to a simple view. Looked nice and I was happy with it.
Oh dear. Went from 300+ hits a day to a tenth of that instantly. No idea why it should, but it did. Obviously although the simple view looks nice, it isn't popular. My blog was dying and I'd killed it.
In playing around with things it became obvious that in doing too many changes at once, it was difficult to tell what alteration screwed things up. I'd changed the title, format and page layout all in one go. Which element was too blame? Naturally I couldn't remember what it had started out like, so couldn't go back to square one easily. I'll get there, but really in the big real world, unless you make money from the blog, it's no big deal having 1 or a thousand readers is it? Mine is there because I kind of enjoy the writing, and in playing around with words it means my proper, work reports are much more interesting. Don't be afraid to play about with your blog composition, as it's not the end of the world if you screw up is it? And really, if you don't play, don't change it now and then, the thing will stagnate anyway. Change is ultimately good. Move on people, move on.
So if your blog is a bit limited in terms of page views, you may just need to alter the settings a little. That and be more interesting, or just do eternal I.T. reviews.
Since putting the blog back together in a format that people like, the hits have risen. Not quite to where they were, but way better. Again I'd be in a big panic if there was any income attached to this, but I'm pretty chilled. It is what it is.
You can also increase the hit ratio by linking to a Twitter account, but then you have to be bothered to not only write a blog article, but post it up elsewhere as well. A much better thing to do, if you're just going to do one thing other than write the blog, is to add an image to the post. Not some stock photo off the web, or dodgy porn, but something you took yourself that relates to the post in question. Quite a few people flick through the blogs, and they're not going to stop at a load of text now are they? Put up a nice photograph, drawing or illustration and you may well catch their attention enough for them to become involved in that post.
But don't get too hung up on the numbers game. Lots of blogs get good hits, as do websites. Are those hits any good, or have you been trawled by some automated function? A lot of my hits come from vampirestat......
9/7/13 update: Well yes all of the above has worked, and my blog now gets 300 visits a day again. An improvement over the 30 it had fallen to. However, given that this is the web and my blog has no border limitations, 300 visits out of a population of 7,000,000,000 people gives some idea as to how popular it actually is. So please take my advice with a pinch of salt; I'm way down the popularity list, but if your blog is only attracting one or two visits a day, well......
It also helps to have lots of posts, and to add to the blog almost daily. Some people treat the blog like a diary, which is a good tactic but you have to be an interesting person for that to work. "Fed tiddles this morning" type posts wouldn't cut it. Sorry.
Oh dear. Went from 300+ hits a day to a tenth of that instantly. No idea why it should, but it did. Obviously although the simple view looks nice, it isn't popular. My blog was dying and I'd killed it.
In playing around with things it became obvious that in doing too many changes at once, it was difficult to tell what alteration screwed things up. I'd changed the title, format and page layout all in one go. Which element was too blame? Naturally I couldn't remember what it had started out like, so couldn't go back to square one easily. I'll get there, but really in the big real world, unless you make money from the blog, it's no big deal having 1 or a thousand readers is it? Mine is there because I kind of enjoy the writing, and in playing around with words it means my proper, work reports are much more interesting. Don't be afraid to play about with your blog composition, as it's not the end of the world if you screw up is it? And really, if you don't play, don't change it now and then, the thing will stagnate anyway. Change is ultimately good. Move on people, move on.
So if your blog is a bit limited in terms of page views, you may just need to alter the settings a little. That and be more interesting, or just do eternal I.T. reviews.
Since putting the blog back together in a format that people like, the hits have risen. Not quite to where they were, but way better. Again I'd be in a big panic if there was any income attached to this, but I'm pretty chilled. It is what it is.
You can also increase the hit ratio by linking to a Twitter account, but then you have to be bothered to not only write a blog article, but post it up elsewhere as well. A much better thing to do, if you're just going to do one thing other than write the blog, is to add an image to the post. Not some stock photo off the web, or dodgy porn, but something you took yourself that relates to the post in question. Quite a few people flick through the blogs, and they're not going to stop at a load of text now are they? Put up a nice photograph, drawing or illustration and you may well catch their attention enough for them to become involved in that post.
But don't get too hung up on the numbers game. Lots of blogs get good hits, as do websites. Are those hits any good, or have you been trawled by some automated function? A lot of my hits come from vampirestat......
9/7/13 update: Well yes all of the above has worked, and my blog now gets 300 visits a day again. An improvement over the 30 it had fallen to. However, given that this is the web and my blog has no border limitations, 300 visits out of a population of 7,000,000,000 people gives some idea as to how popular it actually is. So please take my advice with a pinch of salt; I'm way down the popularity list, but if your blog is only attracting one or two visits a day, well......
It also helps to have lots of posts, and to add to the blog almost daily. Some people treat the blog like a diary, which is a good tactic but you have to be an interesting person for that to work. "Fed tiddles this morning" type posts wouldn't cut it. Sorry.
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