Why Do I Do This?

Sitting here doing some light reading before going to bed this evening, I noticed another rash of "how to build your blog traffic without Instalanches" posts that are going up all around the 'sphere. Dean Esmay has one, Robert Prather has one, The Commissar has one, as does Donnie at Ain't It Done.

OK, now I'll admit that for a while I chased the fabled Instalanche, only to find out when it came that it wasn't all that impressive. And it kind of missed the point of why I started writing this whole blog thing to begin with.

I started this as a way for me to write down some of my ideas and to expose them to the harsh criticism of the world. It was (and still is) intended to allow me to continue working on my communication and debating skills even though I don't have the money to continue in school right now.

I don't do it for the hit count (although it is nice, especially when you pass a milestone like 25,000 visitors as I did an hour or so ago! Woo Hoo!). I don't do it for ego reasons (although it does feel good when my Dad tells me that he thought something was really well written). And I certainly don't do it for monetary reasons.

I do it because I want to. I do it because I think that it makes me a better person in some way (although I'm sure a few would disagree). But mainly I do it because it is fun.

Somehow, I've built my traffic up to an average of about 215 visitors a day, despite two seperate week long outages caused by problems with my ISP. I partially credit it to advice I got from David at Better Living Through Blogging who told me early on to try to post something every day, even if it's just a "no posting today" post. Something to let people know you're still alive. Oftentimes, I use my Quick Links posts, a roundup of interesting news stories that I didn't write on during the day as that post.

There's a lot of good advice in the above posts. The biggest thing to get out of those posts is that a true readership is based on being yourself, on posting regularly (ideally at slack times in the 'sphere - less competition for eyes at that time), and be generous with the links. An Instalanche is nice, but watching your readership go from 30 to 60 to 125 to 200 readers a day is much more satisfying long term.