No Reads

Do you comment at other blogs? Hit enter? Wait I'll just go see your blog. More later.

~ Jennifer

I'm back. Your blog is super new first off. You really can't expect to have tons of readers yet. The best thing to do is gain some focus and comment at other blogs. I like that you do short posts but they seem a little scattered (non-focused) however, that's not very uncommon with new blogs either. It can take some time to find the perfect mix and focus for a blog.

Really though, I'd give it more time before you get upset over not having regular readers and comments.

To gain regular readers I will say this you need to post regularly. To be totally honest if I visit a new blog and there's no new post for days and days I likely won't go back because each click for me is time I could be reading new content elsewhere.

Good luck -- it can just take some time.
~ Jennifer

Jennifer offered some fantastic ideas but I just wanted to add that it IS a slow few weeks. My blog has been established for a couple of months now and I had great traffic through September and early October. Things have slowed right down now. Activity always fluctuates on the web. It's important to keep posting (mental note to self to keep posting ON TIME too). You will develop regular readers in time but it's important to establish yourself and to keep at it even during the lulls. Take the time you're not replying to comments to read on other blogs and leave comments there.

I agree with the other comments and also I decided to check it out for myself, which I probably would have done sooner, but honestly I tend to check out blogs on blogrolls and whatnot. Maybe a good idea would be to join a blogroll or more. Here's the link with instructions to join the AW blogroll, http://2passthetorch.com/2006/08/18/absolute-write-blogroll/
You can also do link exchanges with people. If you like someone's blog, send them a PM or email and ask if they want to exchange links; that way you will begin to build your own blogroll of sites you like and since you'll be on other people's blogrolls, others will see your link and may click on it, and on and on. (Yes, there are some hollier than thou bloggers out there, but most I've met are pretty cool!)
I'm quite new to blogging myself, but would be happy to help out in any way I can.
Hope this helps, Jerry

Sometimes it helps to pose questions in your blog that invite comments and encourage people to discuss a topic rather than just read about it. I used to have blogs that received a great deal of attention/comments/etc. I had to take them down for personal reasons, sadly. I might start again one day!

I get a relatively steady traffic flow, but very few comments. The most I'd ever gotten was when I'd commented on Jenny Crusie's blog about the Anne Stuart thing about a year ago. Quite a few people used it as an opportunity to blast me - which was pretty funny, actually.

I use Statcounter to see how many hits I've gotten. I admit, I don't blog about a whole lot of controversial subjects, mine's more of a day in the life sort of thing. Maybe I need to rethink that a little?

Somehow, blog traffic, and I suppose blogging in general, isn't extremely important to me (perhaps you can tell by my number of entries and date of last entry), but whenever you add a new entry to your blog, you might want to make a short post with a sentence or so describing your new entry, and with a link of course, in the "Did you update your blog today?" thread. I know I've posted there at least once...

I'm really new to blogging - how do you track your traffic? I'm on blogger.

Thanks.

I'm also new and would love to know what numbers are low, medium, high, etc. For example, is it good to get 130 visits in a day or is that lame? Is 5 visits normal for a new blog, or is that dismal? How many visitors a day is considered successful? It's difficult to know when you're so new.

-- Joanna

melaniehoo said:

I'm really new to blogging - how do you track your traffic? I'm on blogger.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

There are a few different counters, I'm also on blogger and I use StatCounter. Just go to their site and they'll give you the instructions - it's easy. Just copy code and paste it into your blog. You see how many hits, return visits, where they're from, how they found you. All sorts of info. I've been surprised to see visits from New Zealand, Russia, Sweden - and you can see how many are returning as well.

Jersey Chick said:

There are a few different counters, I'm also on blogger and I use StatCounter. Just go to their site and they'll give you the instructions - it's easy. Just copy code and paste it into your blog. You see how many hits, return visits, where they're from, how they found you. All sorts of info. I've been surprised to see visits from New Zealand, Russia, Sweden - and you can see how many are returning as well.

Click to expand...

Very cool, thanks!

Joanna_S said:

I'm also new and would love to know what numbers are low, medium, high, etc. For example, is it good to get 130 visits in a day or is that lame? Is 5 visits normal for a new blog, or is that dismal? How many visitors a day is considered successful? It's difficult to know when you're so new.

-- Joanna

Click to expand...

I would say that if you are getting 130 visits a day for a normal blog, you're kicking some butt, seriously. Five for a new blog is not dismal, but rather, normal. It will change.

melaniehoo said:

I'm really new to blogging - how do you track your traffic? I'm on blogger.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I like sitemeter (All I've tried actually) 'cause it counts both visits and return visits, I think... http://www.sitemeter.com

I looked into the tracker last night but it was more confusing than my migraine could handle. I'll try again today.

rejectME said:

I would say that if you are getting 130 visits a day for a normal blog, you're kicking some butt, seriously. Five for a new blog is not dismal, but rather, normal. It will change.

Click to expand...

Thank you. I just had no idea at all what was considered good or bad or indifferent.

My personal blog varies wildly (from almost no one to over a hundred -- the latter due to a link on someone else's blog to one of my entries). That blog is about two weeks old. The comic blog is a little steadier. Despite it's only being a few days old, it averages in the 80s. However, that's also due to links and I'm expecting the numbers to go down once those links thread off. I'm just trying to get some of those readers to stick around.

I can see that it would be tough to keep people reading because of the sheer volume of variety out there. I did some random blog surfing and oh, my -- I found a lot of awful blogs. Terrible writing, tedious entries, lots of "what I had for lunch" entries, etc. But there were also some interesting ones among the lot. So far, the AW blogs I've visited have all had merit. Quality shines through, AWers!

-- Joanna