Pirate's Cove

So, this Blog Explosion thing is pretty cool. Getting a little traffic, but, more importantly, seeing some other blogs out there that aren’t really political in nature. Couple of strange things, though. All my traffic is coming from other then East Coast time. The majority is coming from the Central time zone.

Now, a few pointers. I am not one of the biggest bloggers out there, I am basically top 500 in the TTLB Ecosystem. I average over 100 unique hits a day, and that is slowly going up. However, I still have some good advice, based on some things I have seen.

1. Do not put a counter up on your site with bullshit numbers. No one will believe it, everyone will see it, and you will be immediately dismissed as a liar. Very rarely does anyone with a couple weeks of blogging have thousands of hits. One of them showed over 25K, and had only been around since October 2004. Nope.
2. Spelling. We all make mistakes, most particularly in our posts. We whip them out, and sometimes forget to spell check. A few here and there is ok, as well as some butchered grammar. But, most definitely make sure that the things that are always there on your page, such as “who I am,” are spelled correctly.
3. Preview the post, and fix any errors.
4. Don’t over do the sidebar graphics. All the little doo dads and stuff are cool, but not really necessary. It just makes loading slower.
5. Along those lines, there is no need for a “donate” button if you have been blogging for less then a few months, and, quite frankly, is probably not necessary for the majority of bloggers. I think I might dump mine, it is taking up space. Same thing with ad boxes.
6. Don’t go crazy adding all sorts of things, such as Haloscan, and trackbacks, etc, until you get the hang of it. Your ideas come first.
7. Make sure it works. Make sure everything you have on your blog works correctly. Links, buttons, graphics. Sure, this is supposed to be fun. But you spent a lot of time setting it up and doing this and that. Take a few more minutes to make sure it works correctly.

For some more blogging hints, see this and this, and this.