Looking Back into Your Blogging Past
Where you are right now is because of things you’ve done in the past. Whether you take this and look at your life, your job or your blog, you can’t argue that. You don’t get very far on ‘potential’, without ever living up to it.
Today, look back into your archives and find your pivotal moments that really let get to where you are today. For me, I had some posts early on in this blog that really pushed forward, but were sort of ahead of their time. Some provided quite a bit of traffic, but I personally had no clue what to do or how to get it back.
- 5 Reasons I’ll be Buying a Mac - This was about my 10th post. In retrospect, I must’ve looked like a pro getting over 1500 hits a day after that post, and then releasing a free WordPress theme the day after for more traffic. Sadly, I was faaar from even competent. Live and learn.
- Two free WordPress themes, admittedly not great, but each served their traffic purpose. Random names, BBT and Ministry, but these must’ve helped somehow.
Besides that, no other posts have gotten excessive traffic in a short amount of time. However, there are some things from way back that still chip in quite a bit to traffic today.
How to Change Icons in OS X was a quick article that to this day gets up to 30 hits a day. All sorts of long tail queries pick up that post, and that was kind of the intention. You can see me getting smarter over time 
The rest is just articles I thought were just well written and was proud of (more than a usual one). I have them in the footer section of the page, but I’ll save you the scrolling:
- WordPress and its Various WordPressness
- How to Write Link Bait For Viral Traffic
- Are you a Sellout? You may think you are but…
- Why users can’t moderate Everything
- Where Digg’s Democratic System Fails
Various ranting and raving, possibly some attempts at linkbait, but nothing too far out there. Sometimes I feel the need to subject my feelings on certain topics to my readers. I’m sure it makes for good reading, but it’s something I do sparingly.
Where are You Going With This!?
Enough of my reminiscing here, and cutting to my point. Look back at your past to see where you’re going in the future. You know what worked and what failed, so learn from your mistakes (and mine) and make the future as good as it can be. Philosophy time is over!
Leave a comment
Daniel Johnson
September 18th, 2007 at 10:27 AM
Yeah theres definetly been some posts that have changed my blogging history. Good times indeed.
I think that what I have learnt is that you are more successful when you deliver relevent content right away. If you have a great idea and it times into recent events then run with it.
Freebies
September 18th, 2007 at 12:31 PM
Looking through your archives not only can tell you what type of posts your readers react positively to, but can also remind yourself of how far you’ve come as a writer and what style your readers tend to enjoy most.
Whenever I look at some of the stuff I wrote back in 2002 on my first site, I constantly cringe at how horribly written it all was! But at the same time, it makes me smile when I stop and think about how far I’ve come.
Henry
September 18th, 2007 at 2:36 PM
You also see a lot of comments by L3ggy (me :P)
I don’t comment now because i view via rss reader so i just don’t bother. I still read.
Connor Wilson
September 18th, 2007 at 7:05 PM
Goob, I definitely see that too. Some of my earlier blog entries make me cry at how pathetic they were. It’s crazy how you can evolve so quickly.
Neil Turner - Acopic Web Design
September 21st, 2007 at 10:08 AM
Interesting idea. I’ve never really thought about it like that. I suppose every post has the potential to alter your blogging direction but not many actually do. It’d be interesting to ask some ‘high profile’ bloggers this question and do an article about their responses.
Neil Turner - Acopic Web Design
September 21st, 2007 at 10:10 AM
I want some credit for the article mind you!!!
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