I’ve been reading guides on blogs, blogging, and how to get more traffic to your blog.   After all, no one wants to write and write and write if no one is reading it.  Right?

Here are some helpful hints for my bitter fans:

What They Won’t Tell You In Guides For Bloggers

1.  Most Guides About Getting Traffic Are Written To Get More Traffic For The Author.  While in general it’s understandable, you have to keep in mind that they don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about.

2.  Most Guides Are On Sites I Wouldn’t Go Back To.  Seriously.  Before you start reorganising based on someone else’s advice, you might want to see if their site is all that. (Shut up.  I know no one uses that expression anymore.)

3.  Most of These People are Relentless Ass-kissers.  I have no idea why, but they don’t seem to tell you what doesn’t work… only how great such-and-such a service is.  My guess is that they use that service and are hoping that if they can get more people to sign up, it’ll boost their traffic.  See a trend?

I haven’t been doing this all that long, but I do watch my stats to see what works and what doesn’t, and I’ll share with you the little tidbits I’ve found:

1.  Not all blogger networks are worth your time.  If you’re going to clutter up your sidebar with tacky widgets for them (hey I do it too), don’t waste the space on ones that don’t work.  I found that Blogcatalog.com, MyBlogLog.com, and to a lesser extent TheGoodBlogs.com all are decent.  I wouldn’t bother with Blogorama.  I’ve tried about 10-15 different ones, and those were the only ones that brought me more than a couple clicks.    (Oh, and avoid “Others Online”.  I dunno if they work or not, but they make you install a toolbar in your browser.  It made my browser SO slow, and I found it difficult to turn off.   I have a word for that: spyware.)

2.  Put a widget on your posts to allow people to Digg, StumbleUpon, etc your posts.  Yesterday someone put one of my posts on SU, and I got 400 new visitors just from that.  I was so encouraged by that, that I’ve started trying to build up my Stumble Upon network.  You can find me at http://jaynemc.stumbleupon.com/  Feel free to add me as a friend.  If you do, I’ll visit your blog, and if I like it, I’ll Stumble it.  If you’re funny enough to like Bitter Women, no doubt I’ll like your blog too.   SU does require a toolbar, but it doesn’t seem to slow down my browser or cause any problems at all. 

3.  Sponsored Listings: Not worth it!  I put in a bid to be a $15/month sponsor of the ‘Humor’ category on BlogCatalog.com.  I thought that surely hundreds if not thousands of people would come rushing in.  It did NOT work.  In four days of having it up, I’ve gotten only a small handful of people that found me that way. I wish I’d saved the money and bought myself a Boston Cream Pie or five.

4.  Most people so far  have found me through me leaving comments elsewhere.  Yeah, looks like the old-fashioned way of making friends is still the best.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though.  I’ve found some awesome-funny blogs out there. 

Let me know if you have helpful hints!  We can help each other a lot better than these so-called “experts” methinks!

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Yes!  You’re in the right place!  I know it looks very different, huh?!   It’s all schmancy now.  Hope you guys like it, and please let me know if something doesn’t look right, because I have probably missed something.

Thanks to A Non-Smelly Non-Pirate OCD Guy at mynutsitch.com for pointing out that my comment verifier thing was broken.  You should be able to leave comments now.  I’ll find another anti-spam thingmy soon!

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Here’s additions to my list of things on blogs that make me crabby:

1.  Pop-up adverts.  I wish there was a way to perma-block myself from accidentally returning to blogs that do this.  I’m thinking of getting my firewall involved.  I don’t mind advertising, but pop-ups are just annoying.

2.  Restricted Commenting.  It cheeses me off when I find a blog I like, read an interesting post, and then go to comment (I love to comment) and then find that they only accept blogger.com comments.  I don’t mind if I have to be approved or some such, but this is too much!  And then there are a few weird blogs out there, and even a few really funny ones, that don’t accept comments at all!  WTF!  But I have things to say!

3.  Pet Blogs.  Thanks to Wendy for reminding me of this in my previous post about Blogs I Hate, but Pet Blogs are pretty hideous.  I have a cat.  She’s funny, charming, engaging, and snotty all at the same time.  But, sadly, she isn’t interesting.

I’m as yet undecided about blogs where people post for money.  I see a lot of adverts for that on sidebars, but not very many actual paid posts.  I’m not, as I said before, opposed to people making cash on their blogs.  In fact, I’m downright tickled with the $1.47 I’ve earned for my 284980924832 hours work on this blog.  And, if someone were to offer me $100 to post something about them on my blog, I really think I’d have to say ‘hell yes’, because that would pay for my hosting for a year!

So, I think my general reservation about this is unrestricted jealousy.  The best offer I got so far was the folks over at Associated Content were prepared to give me $3. 

So out of sheer jealousy, pettiness, and bitterness, I’ll add:

4.  Pay Per Post Blogs.  Cuz I’m a bitch.

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I made the theme for this blog when I first started it, but barely a day goes by that I don’t think about changing the theme, redoing the graphics, tweaking this or that and it’s really only a matter of the strictest self-control that I’ve managed NOT to change the theme every single day for the past three months.

I have a feeling I’m not the only one, or else there wouldn’t be 22,489,243,920 sites out there that advertise themes.  I’ve even considered paying $51 for one that would just need a couple new imges, some slight tweaking… blah blah blah.. good lord.

I’ve seen some fabulous looking blogs and some so-so blogs, and the truth is, if the content is good I really don’t care if people use canned themes… so why oh why am I so obsessed.

Ahem.. and don’t be surprised if I redo the site within the next month!  I’m breaking!

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