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How to Have a Successful Blog: Increase Your Blog's Appeal

There are many things that one can do to have a successful blog - one of the easiest ideas to implement is to broaden one's horizons.  Now, before I go any further, let it be known that there are plenty of great, highly specialized blogs out there.  However, for the average blogger without a specific niche, a great way to generate more visits (and thus, more comments) is to appeal to more than one specific demographic.

As a prime example, let's pick on my blog.  I probably have about 90% of my blog entries related to sports (and of that 90%, probably 75-80% on baseball cards specifically).  However, it's that other 10% that consistently draws new people to my blog.  Whether I'm writing about a certain recipe that I've tried, an origami model, or something else entirely, I'm able to draw in new viewers each time.  Of those new viewers, occasionally some email me with a comment like the following "wow, I never though to look for baseball card blogs, I'll be sure to visit often!"  I think it's safe to say, at this point, the vast majority of my new readers arrive at my blog thanks to my "off topic" posts!

Speaking of appealing to many people - a recent post of mine prompted the following question from Ryan:
I don't keep track of this data, but I remember you saying that you keep an excel spreadsheet with everybody's address that you've traded with. I'm curious what states you've traded with and which ones you have yet to trade with. My guess is that you've traded with people from every state except for Hawaii, Alaska, and Montana... I don't think that baseball cards have made it to those states yet!

Well, Ryan, I decided to look into the matter.  I do indeed keep a spreadsheet of all the trades I've made (since August of 2009).  From that date on, I've traded with people from 34 states (plus two countries - Canada and Australia).

Here's my map of trades in the past year and two months or so:

If I were to go back further in time, I used to keep a single Word document (that quickly became too cumbersome) - I suppose I could see what other states I traded with early in my blog's existence, but I think for now I'll stick to post August 2009.  If I happened to miss anyone who lives in one of the states I didn't shade in green, let me know so I can update my map!  ...and if you happen to live in one of the non-green states and would like to help me color my map, check out my want list and propose a trade!

Comments

  1. I really like this feature of your blog. Keep it up!!

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  2. Thanks for the kind words!

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  3. Haha! you posted it! I'm not going to lie, since I'm pretty much heavily distracted by the 2.5x3.5 pieces of cardboard I pull out of my envelopes I never think to keep track of the people who send me those cards. It's nice to live vicariously through you on this little experiment and see where your trading travels have taken you. Maybe I'll start to keep tabs on where my collection comes from.

    As always, keep up the great blogging!

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