How to get 10,000 Page Views for your Blog in 90 Days

 

Create a Traffic Storm!

It seems like everyone and their brother has a personal or business blog today, from the very simple ones that utilize free hosting sites (e.g., Blogger or WordPress) to the extremely elaborate kinds where people will invest thousands of dollars into it. And the motivation of those who start these blogs can range from just wanting a forum to express your ideas and thoughts or daily happenings, to those who are looking to be the next Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post) or Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) who sold their blogs to AOL for $315 million and $40 million respectively. Or maybe they’d settle for being just like John Chow who makes $500K per year selling affiliate products and ad space on his blog for sharing his ideas about how to create a successful blog…Wow, what a concept!!

I’ve just recently gotten the blog fever, and it’s been a heck of a wild ride for the past 3-4 months. I do it mainly to write what I see and hear out in the world, and not really motivated to make any significant money with it. It’s really just a fun hobby, since it’s kinda cool to write about stuff I observe. What has happened in the process is crazy and I wanted to share some personal blogger do’s and don’ts that worked for me. This is by no means some full proof strategy that I’m trying to hock to the masses (with a free eBook that you can download at the end of this article), but it’s just what I personally did to get to 10,000 page views for my blog in 90 days. I’d appreciate any comments as I’m still learning a ton from the adventure.

5 ways that propelled me to that 10,000^th page view on my blog in just 90 days:

5) Watched “The Social Network”, got inspired, created a free blog and just started writing. Yes, sounds really simple, huh?! But it seems like this is the hardest part of the process for most people. They really can’t take that first step to set up a free Blogger or WordPress blog and start writing about something they are really passionate about. And of course, we all have at least one thing that we have a passion for (e.g., sports, cooking, hiking, dieting, knitting, etc…the list goes on and on). You really don’t have to over-engineer the initial start up phase. Do: Just set it up, put on your creative writing hat and have some fun with it. Don’t: unless you’re a huge company with lots of resources and dollars, you don’t need to do a lot of research trying to identify a professional website creation company to build something for you. Just utilize the free sites…they’ll do just fine. If you’re not convinced take a look at mine...100% free of charge using Blogger and a free template service: http://www.ThatisSoHighSchool.com

4) Set a realistic goal of how many articles you will write per week and stick to it. You don’t need to blast out of the gate and start writing 2-3 articles per day to be able to get good traffic. It’s what I did and I definitely got burned out, put pressure on myself to come up with fresh new ideas every day, and almost quit 30 days in. A decent blog can survive for years with just 1-3 new articles written per week. Unless your goal is to write about up to date hour by hour news stories, and are motivated to compete with CNN or Fox News or Perez Hilton or Mashable, then just take your time and stick to a schedule that fits into your lifestyle. You probably already have a stressful job and/or family life, so why make yourself miserable and add to those pressures? Remember the KISS rule...Keep It Simple Stupid!

3) Don’t just repeat what everyone else is saying, because people want to read your OPINIONS not others’ Cliffs Notes. This one will help set you apart from the millions of others out there. If you want thousands of visitors to your blog, you need to have a different voice than the masses. How do you do that? How else, give your individual opinion on the subject you are talking about. Remember, you can talk about anything you want to on your blog, and most likely there will be someone who wants to read about it. But to drive more than just a handful of people to those subjects, you need to inject your own personality and perspective to those things and have a uniqueness that will put a special spotlight on your URL. Step outside of your little box, take some chances and risks, get a bit controversial, and as a former boss of mine used to say “get in trouble.” It’s those that are able to put themselves out there and expand out of their comfort level for an extended time, which can make a real difference in the lives of others.

2) Be interesting and don’t just create a journal of your own personal life happenings. It may seem really cool to you that you just brushed your teeth this morning after having Wheaties for breakfast, but to the rest of us it just doesn’t sound that exciting and will not drive us back to your blog more than once. You may have a few of your friends and family as frequent readers, but to get that huge bulk of visitors that you strive for start writing about things that people have a strong hunger for. Start talking about why YOU THINK the L.A. Lakers need to be retooled, why YOU FEEL president Obama is not doing a great job with the economy, or what YOUR OPINION is of “the Dukan Diet” that’s sweeping the globe. Be original, have your own voice and just have fun with it. The more you do, the more people can tell that you are passionate about the subjects you write about and the more frequent they will come back. It will you put you on the fast track to success.

1) Don’t worry so much about SEO, backlinks, SERP’s, PageRank, monetization, optimization, etc. etc. Yes, if you’re Toyota or Microsoft or GE by all means you need to focus on these things since you have a bottom line, a P/L and shareholders to appease. But for the rest of us little guys, don’t stress about these things and put added pressure on yourself that you aren’t yet making $100 per day with Adsense. Connect your blog to Facebook and Twitter, join Stumbleupon, Reddit and Digg, and tell all of your friends and family about your blog. And then just start writing fresh new content with your own personal twist a couple of times per week. I have a degree in psychology and sucked bad in my English classes at UCLA…so my writing skills pretty much blow. But what I’ve done is write about things that I’m passionate about and rile me up at night. And looked what happened since I started focusing on this aspect of my blogging exercise. I’m at over 11,000 page views now after starting in January of 2011. And you know what, only a handful of my personal network knows about my blog.
Remember, set a schedule for yourself, be original, write about your biggest interests, and have fun with it. You’ll then be on your way to 10,000 page views in 90 days just like I was a short time ago. And if you're really cutting edge, sky's the limit!