Jake’s Life

I have some long days. Even though my work week is only usually four days long, it’s busy for me, and blogging isn’t always on top of my priority list. Earlier this year I just about quit blogging and instead used my server space for storage. I decided to try to use some common sense in networking with other blogs and sites to raise my stats:

• Choose at least one to three blog entries a day which strikes my interest and post a comment to them
• Check the blogs of other bloggers who post on blogs I read to add to Google Reader to apply the above principle
• Add my URL and my RSS feeds to each signature I have (e-mail, web forums, etc.)
• E-mail new visitors and posters to my site

I began doing these things in May and have found a noticeable jump in unique visitors and length of visits.

Before the eyes fool you, the total number of hits for August isn’t that high — about 900 — which puts daily readership at a little more than 30 (and these are unique IP hits which do not count search engines). They have steadily improved since I started. I’ve also looked at hourly, daily, and weekly stats, if not to just look at them then to form my own wild opinions.

Looking at the daily stats I don’t feel so bad to let blog reading and posting sit on the back burner during my work week. There is an average of 160 hits during the week, and 220 on Sunday.

It’s also interesting to see where people usually enter my site from.

All in all I’m fairly happy with the traffic I’ve gained, although lately I have been slacking on commenting as much as I would like to. I read everyone’s posts each day (I don’t go a day without checking Google Reader) and am going to try to set aside a specific time each day to do this stuff.

How do the rest of you guys boost your stats other than simple networking? I know there are several social bookmarking sites, technorati, etc., but I’m not a major commercial blog so I don’t really want to go that route.