Tastybuds

Yesterday I got my first day of 10 visits, so if I can sustain and grow that traffic, I will have completed my first goals.

A few factors have recently helped me to get this traffic. The articles I submitted just got approved, which has not only gotten me traffic, but has also helped out on SEO. Every article i write gives me an extra inbound link or two. The day after they were approved, the ranking on Google for “Danny Gabriner” jumped ahead of my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to #1. I have noticed gains on other terms as well, and hope to soon have my tool available to automatically track my ranking progress.

I have also noticed that bots are beginning to find me, post spam comments, and steal my content. Not that this is necessarily a good thing, but at least it means I’m getting noticed, and I am getting some inbound links from it.

Jason Menayen also just wrote a post listing a few blogs, resources, and forums which deal with AdSense. I am happy to have been listed there, as it will drive traffic my way, is a solid inbound link, and gives me a bit of credibility. I am also very excited to learn about the other resources out there, and plan on exploring the areas he listed.

So it looks like I will need to be setting some new goals for myself. I will be thinking about these, but in the mean time I wiki continue to post, comment elsewhere, and submit my articles.

It has been 20 days since I started this blog, and although I am trying to build it up as quick as possible, it is a long process.

My initial goals were to get an average of 10 visitors per day, and 4 comments on my blog. The idea is that in addition to pure traffic, I am trying to build up a community of people interested in optimizing AdSense, and other analytics. In order to accomplish these goals, I set out to average a posts day, comment twice on 5 different blogs, and accumulate 20 posts.

I now have 35 posts, which is almost 2 posts per day. Commenting has been difficult for me; I commented 3 or 4 times on the YieldBuild blog, but I have not found any other blogs to heavily comment on. I think I have scattered a single comment on 6 other blogs, which brings my total to 10, but I still need to find blogs which I am deeply interested in.

How has this payed off? I am now averaging 3 visits per day, and have gotten my 4 comments. I still have a bit to go before I am at 10 visits per day, but feel I am beginning to get traction. What I am happiest about so far in terms of my progress is that I’ve managed to get a free lunch from one of my readers for blogging and commenting.

I also have begun to monitor my SEO process. Almost all my traffic so far has come from comments, but in the last day or two, more is coming from Google. My ranking for “optimizing adsense” has jumped from 89 to now 26. My next goal will be to get that into the top 10.

So what do need to do to finish off my first goals? Continuing to post at least once a day shouldn’t be a problem, but I need to really find more blogs that interest me and comment heavily. I will try to average at least one comment a day. I also have submitted a few articles to EzineArticles, and if those get approved, will submit more. My hope is to achieve my goals within th next 20 days.

I have always been a bit lost when it comes to Twitter. I started off using it by following a few people who had blogs I read, but because I was only following these few people, I was pretty much getting their blog posts recycled back to me.

A short while ago, twitter bought Summarize, and turned it into search.twitter.com. This tool is very useful for quite a few reasons. First of all, you can search for your niche topics (like optimizing AdSense), and find people who have either just posted, or who are interested in your topic. This is similar to searching on Google, but there are some added benefits.

First of all, the content is much fresher, as many of Google’s results will be years old (although some of those can be good too). Second, if people are asking questions or are having difficulty with something, you can respond to them directly and immediately. So not only are you finding good resources, but you are establishing yourself in a community of people interested in the same topics as yourself.

As you begin to find these people on Twitter who share your interests, you can refer them to your posts, and if you have good enough content, gain some dedicated readers.

Digging around the YieldBuild Blog, I just noticed a Trackback from “Optimize AdSense for your Blog”. Considering I am trying to find other bloggers in this niche, I followed the link to their site, and found that they are a blog that only writes snippets of other people’s blogs. The great thing is that all the posts are AdSense related. Not all of the articles are things I am interested in, as much of it is very basic, but it looks like I will be able to find many other bloggers through this resource that are writing about some of the same things I am.

I have been looking for some sort of centralized directory, but have been unable to find all of the bloggers out there who talk about AdSense. Both Digg and Technorati had very little in the way of “optimizing adsense”. So I am happy to have found this resource, and will definitely be looking around it for a while. I will let you know what comes out of it.

Part of what I am struggling with right now is deciding what format to post in to best get traffic. Although I would rather be worrying about writing extremely insightful posts, without readers, I have no one to discuss things with. So I am left wondering if I should go off on very technical rants that people might like if they knew about this blog, or if I should try to play the traffic game first, and then refine my audience. I think I pretty much have to do both; I will have a few posts which are very in depth and technical, but I also need quick easy posts that the masses can read in order to start building up inbound links. I wish I could just start with a dedicated group of users, but it doesn’t appear that that is an option.

I just read Seth Godin’s post on how to get traffic, and the number one item on his list of ideas is to create lists. I think this is dead on, and I have seen it elsewhere. People love lists, and they are easy to make. It is a way to highly concentrate a subject matter, and bring up many ideas very quickly. Also, many people hate reading long posts, and would rather just quickly scan the ideas, which is extremely easy if it is in list format. The downside is that if you rely too much on lists, you never really get to the heart of the subject. Lists are superficial, and they really do need backup.

So to try to reach out to the masses and get some traffic, I will start making lists in addition to my regular blog posts. I might as well start here with a list of things that I want to make lists of:

1. Best blogs that relate to optimizing AdSense
2. Best posts on optimizing AdSense
3. Posts that explain the details of creating a test
4. My posts I like most
5. Places to submit articles on AdSense
6. Variables you can tweak with AdSense
7. Ways to get traffic
8. Useful Wordpress Plugins

When I first started this blog, I had two main categories I was interested in: optimizing AdSense, and cooking. So far I have written quite a bit about the first topic, mothing about the second topic, and various posts about a few other topics.

There are a few questions I have, but am not exactly sure what yw “best” approach is, or what by approach should be. Everyone who looks into the matter knows that getting your self into a tightly defined niche is one of the best ways to establish traffic and a community. But what about the question of closely related niches and extremely different niches? It makes sense for me to talk about SEO and getting traffic, because anyone interested in opitimizing AdSense should also be interested in these topics.

Some of these people might even me interested in cooking, or rockclimbing, or other of my passions, although that number probably won’t be large. The reverse is even more true: if I attract a following of cooks, most will not be interested in SEO or AdSense.

But can this problem be solved merely by categorizing an tagging my posts in a well organized matter? Or should I create a completely seperate blog for those other interests. I know people like Dave Winer (http://www.scriptingnews.com) often combine anything they are interested together on their blog, such as technology, politics, and communities.

I’m sure as I do more of this, I will get more comfortable writing whatever I want to be writing, but I also think that since this blog is for a community of people, I should occasionally (or constantly) reach out to find what others want.

Just after posting about being excited about getting a minuscule amount of traffic, I have two more milestone I just passed.  I just got my first comment and my first signup into an RSS reader.  The person in question works and posts for YieldBuild, the blog I just got interested in.  I had commented on one of their articles, posted here that I liked their blog, and then added them on in my links section.

Not sure exactly how they landed here, but it just goes to show that involving yourself in the community is the best way to get more traffic and dedicated traffic.  It is definitely necessary to build up a strong library of good posts (both for content and SEO purposes), but I am more and more beginning to think that some of the most important aspects of blogging happen outside of your blog.  I am going to continue to try to find good blogs, comment on those blogs, and write about those blogs.  I only have so much time, so I will have to balance this with my other objective of building up enough quality posts, but I don’t see that as much of a problem.

My first day of traffic I got 2 visitors who both left the site immediately. Now on my second day of traffic I got 7 more visitors, and one of those people visited 7 pages over the course of 6 minutes. That is exactly the type of highly engaged visitor I want.

But I didn’t get this traffic through Google or my attempts at SEO, I got it through participating in the blog community. Two of the three comments I have left so far elsewhere have resulted in traffic coming my way. And even more unexpected, when I mentioned a TechCrunch article I was interested in, I automatically got put on that page as a trackback. That trackback has already resulted in 4 visitors in under a day.

Granted, these numbers are extremely small, but it is giving me an idea of where to focus my attention. Linking to other articles seems like a huge potential source of traffic, and it is all part of an overall community and discussion I am trying to get myself into anyway.

At first I thought getting traffic was all posting a ton and SEO, but now I see it is really about actively participating in a community you are interested in.

One reason I decided to start blogging is that I was so impressed by bloggers being able to ask a question, and get their readers to answer in the comments. I have seen Dave Winer do this several times, and I have always wanted the ability to do the same.

The funny thing is that I was just thinking about this very issue when I saw Shel Isreal post about it. It seems that even beyond blogging, simply using twitter is an effective way to get questions answered from the community around you. To take it one step further, TechCrunch then posts about ToAnswer, which seems like the perfect service for someone like me who has no community.

However, although ToAnswer might work well for me, I still would like to build up a base community of people I can learn from and share knowledge with. I have been reading a few blogs for a few years now, but I have never really participated. I have already started posting quite a bit on this blog, but my next steps will be to actually use my Twitter account, and maybe sign up on FriendFeed (which it seems is another branch that needs to be explored).

My main issue right now is finding what blogs to read, and who to follow on Twiter. I don’t think it will be too hard, I just have never tried before, so am a bit confused as to which directions to look. I just signed up on Digg, so I hope I will begin to find interesting stuff over there. I also am trying to be more active about searching Google for information I am interested in, and then commenting when something catches my eye.

Anyway, any suggestions of how I can build a community of people (through blogs, twitter) who I can ask questions to, and give and get answers from would be much appreciated.