Last Updated on April 20, 2020

bookmark… you started to see that social bookmarking is not just another way of keeping your bookmarks …

no vote… nobody ever votes for your submissions …

loneliness… you don’t have any friends, so you submit your own articles …

twisted… you see the same crap you wrote, twisted a little bit and submitted by a “top authority” gaining a huge momentum, which you’ll never experience …

fishing for money… you don’t want to write about making money online, because you didn’t make any yet …

ipod ear buds… you don’t want to write about iPod, iPhone, iWhatever else, because you think those are just expensive toys for those who want to show off …

… you write about iWhatever, but you still get no attention …

Think twice. There is still hope

Remember that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (Albert Einstein).

Although blogging is dumb, stupid and successful, bloggers shouldn’t be dumb and stupid, and not all of them will be successful. So, leave insanity behind, and focus on the “wind of change”:

1. Define your blogging goals:

Think back and remember why you started blogging in the first place. Did you follow your goal, or you forgot about it in the process of daily blogging? It is very tempting to write about a hot topic, but if you describe how to make a bomb on a blog about peace, don’t expect hugs and kisses.

2. Revise your blog:

3. Revise your marketing & promotion strategy:

  • Try to draw the line where promotion ends and spam begins: don’t wait for others to discover your stuff (they are too busy promoting theirs), but don’t flood the internet with it, either. If you don’t know how to differentiate, before submitting a post, put yourself in readers’ shoes: if you’d enjoy reading it, go ahead.
  • Spend some time on the social sites where you’d like to get on the front page. Take the pulse of the community. Don’t waste your energy submitting to Sphinn your post about cheese cauliflower. Although those people eat, too, they won’t give a damn (except if cheese cauliflower was recently mentioned on Matt Cutt’s blog, which, of course, is another story)
  • Do some good to 5 bloggers every day: a stumble, a digg, a comment, a link, a Technorati fave… it takes less than 10 minutes to make a few people happy a day. The law of attraction says you’ll get the good back.

4. Set your short term goals:

  • 5% traffic increase in one month time
  • 10 new feed subscribers
  • 2 new Technorati faves
  • 20 new friends on two social networking sites

5. Make some changes and evaluate your blog again after one month.

6. Most important of all: never take it personally if people ignore you. It’s not an intention, it’s only the daily rush we are all experiencing.

Think of cars in traffic: if you want to change the lane, just put the signal, slow down a little bit, seek permission from the driver behind, and integrate yourself on the new lane. If you wait for the car behind you to stop and let you pass, you’re lost. You’ll have to wait forever, because if people are willing to make a bit of room for you, they are not willing to stop, in order to wait for you to join the party. Go with the flow and you’ll see how the community will open to embrace you.

To end in a thoughtful note, what do you think would have happened if Edgar Allan Poe had a computer?