Thank you very much!
Its funny, but a few people have now sent me photos they have taken, but with no explanation. I guess they would like me to post them on my blog. Now I am thinking that maybe I should add a page for photos submitted by readers…
Its definitely a work in progress…
I run an independent nail polish company, so I started a blog reviewing other indie companies across the cosmetics board (both of which are far larger phenomena that I would have thought just a few short months ago!) I only began a few weeks ago (with the blog), but have been posting at least twice a week. Should be more 
It’s here if there are any other polish lovers out there.
I’ve got a blog to which I post daily, mostly commenting on sexual bondage, with an eye to being humorous or at least insightful if I can’t manage humor. I get about 1500 hits a day, prolly because it’s copiously illustrated with pics from Kink.com (I’m an affiliate). Lately about half my posts have been about 50 Shades of Gray, it’s a freaking PHENOMENON, I mean, I have Google keyword searches I call my flying monkeys that I’ve been using for years, and 50 Shades has completely swamped almost all of them.
I post daily, but if I am just out of inspiration, I just post a pic with a funny caption, so it never really gets to be the drag it could be.
Here’s a link, spoilered, cause it’s totally, totally NSFW:
From a blog about nail polish to a blog about sexual bondage…fascinating! 1500 hits a day! It sounds like bondage is a popular subject. Now let’s see…how can I work that into my blog about macro photography…?
Come to think of it, I did post photos of a spider that had a bumblebee suspended by one leg…
Jman is doing a lot better than me. His blog just started in January of this year, he’s got 1200 hits a day already, and prolly no porn on his site. I’ve been at it for years, though I have not worked nearly as hard on marketing my blog as I should. I’m sure there are porny pic posts that blow my numbers right out of the water. But that would be no fun.
A bit off the true subject, but …
If you start a blog, and you aren’t going around posting about it everywhere, how do people who might be interested in it find it?
I see where some people use a regular blog source like Blog, for instance, and some use their own unique domain name. Which is better?
As we learned earlier, if you mention Justin Bieber, your milkshake will bring all the girls to the yard.
A universal blog site is easier, but a unique domain name is better. You have more control, can get better as revenue, and have a more legit vibe.
Well…I am still figuring out how to get people interested in my blog. I routinely post my blog address and photos on forums related to arachnids, insects and photography. That has created some traffic, plus reaching out to friends, etc. On a good day I will get 100 views. Not sure what to do next…
I did both: I created my blog on wordpress.com. It was way easier than trying to do it on my own (I’m not a tech-head) plus free. But I also purchased macrocritters.com in case I want to migrate the site in th future. I also set-up twitter and facebook in that name.
I have a sort of blog (it’s part of a forum on a board) that I keep forgetting to update. It’s about my mother and her descent into dementia. It’s not a lovey dovey poetic oh woe is me type thing, I curse and swear in it and rail against everything and everyone who pisses me off in my efforts to care for this woman who was emotionally and mentally abusive towards me - well all my life actually. She’s not so good at hiding her behaviour any more…
My two main sources of hits are Google, Yahoo and Bing searches, and other websites. I use keywords whenever I post, and I do OK with them, but not spectacularly well. I link to other websites when I can, and some of them link backto me, generally the ones that are part of the R-rated bondage commentary community, for lack of a better term. Being part of a community is an excellent way to build up a readership and also cred. The Web is really not the seething pool of piranhas some marketers portray it as. A cooperative model can be very successful for most bloggers.
Justin Bieber is a poor choice for attracting people to your site, high-profile celebrities are very much exploited turf on the Web. Google his name and see what I mean … how much chance does a new, unknown site have of getting into the first 100 results on that mob? I have had a fair amount of success with lower-profile celebrities such as Felicia Day, Ksenia Solo, Ana Kasparian and Lee Newton. Basically, Web celebs. However, I’m not REALLY good at working Google and other search engines, or else my page views would be much higher, as long as I’ve been at it.
You should be able to have namecheap.com simply re-direct that url to your blog url. Godaddy does it for mine.
ETA: Yes, you can: See here under ‘Free URL and email forwarding’
I do use keywords, and I am getting a few hits from Google and Yahoo, etc. But the reality is there are probably a lot more people out there looking for the content found on your blog than there are for mine! 
I’m not sure if it counts, but I write on Open Salon every month or so. Even had a couple Editor’s Picks and made the cover once.
It’s possible more people are interested in porn than your site, but there’s also a matter of quality visitors. I’m sure a lof of the hits I get just copy a pic or several pics and go, they are no more interested in my text than the man in the moon. Lots of guys are kind of secretive and grabby about porn, so you get the big numbers but really, I don’t get a lot of people buying things. I’m betting a much higher percentage of people who visit your site stick around.
I do, but I post to it infrequently due to lack of anything resembling free time. I started it as a kind of essay board. I had the intention of posting there mostly for my friends and family. It almost immediately morphed into something else as I found that I don’t really have much interest in writing the kind of day-to-day stuff that people usually want to read when they read a personal blog.
I started reading Daring Fireball regularly several years ago and it had a big influence on the kinds of things I wanted to write about. I’ve probably posted more on technology than anything else at this point.
I get maybe a handful of hits to nothing on most days. My two busiest posts were one about September 11 that probably popped up on a search engine for some reason, and one about Japanese working conditions that a friend linked to. Those got 70- and 90-something hits respectively. I haven’t tried promoting it, though I treat it as if I were writing a professional-level blog, albeit one with cussing.
I don’t feel comfortable linking it to my real name, so I haven’t promoted it through Facebook or anything. I probably would remove most of the personal posts if I did, or just start a new blog for the public persona. It’s been more of a learning exercise than a real blog, I think, so maybe I should just scrap it and start over.
The design is a barely-modified free Wordpress template, and I haven’t had time to learn CSS to make it look the way I want it to. If I do want to start promoting, I need to get it looking presentable. I think the design is shit now, and I’m a total snob when it comes to design, so I’ve got a lot to work on there.
Despite doing this off and on for nearly 4 years, I don’t feel like I’m ready to “go public” since I’m still learning how to write for an audience rather than academically. The other problem with the writing is focus: there isn’t any. I have varied interests and a lack of the kind of obsession that marks many of the best blogs. Plus, there are other people doing the few mainstream topics I post about better than me (see: Daring Fireball, for example).
I also have absolutely no interest in moderating comments, so I have that off by default. That probably turns off some people.
For what it’s worth, here’s a link to it, warts and all.
Very interesting site…great warts too!
Hmmm…that’s an interesting perspective. You are probably right, I expect that the people visiting my site are really interested in learning more about the subjects. I am running a poll now to see whether folks are more interested in macro photography or the animals I write about. I expect a mix.
After reading your earlier post I had another look at the keywords I have been using. I realized that although I was using words that get a lot of hits on google, there is also a lot of competition…a large number of sites that use those words. I seached and found a couple of keywords that have high numbers of hits (more than 1,000,000/month) that are relevant to my site and have low competition. I’ll start using them and see what happens…
EC
I’ve got my site as a blog, because it’s easier to update. I keep meaning to post more, but since I don’t have internet at home yet it’s less convenient.
I get a lot of spam, but not much else (I need to do something so the spam gets more automatically shit-canned)
I don’t call it a blog - I hate that word. I do have an online webjournal I have maintained more or less consistently since 2005. I love to write, and it fulfulls some need inside of me. I have a few followers, but you have to be friended to be able to read my things. Occasionally I entertain, but primarily it’s for me and not for others, so I write whatever and however I feel, just with a mind that there is an audience reading it.
Thanks for saying so, and thanks for visiting the site.