Mail Call! 10/16/07

Lately I’ve gotten a few emails from folks asking me some questions so I figured I would answer them here so everyone can see what I have to say on the subject. You’ll notice I haven’t linked back to any of the authors because only one provided a linkback address and the one that did I’m not about to link to that site, sorry.

Dennis writes:

hi. i was just reading your article about promoting a blog on Blog Catalog and was wondering how much traffic it really gets you? Can you put a percentage on it for me?

Thanks for the question Dennis. I can tell you that in the past month (9/15-10/15/07) I’ve received a grand total… wait for it, wait for it… of 119 visitors from Blog Catalog sources. Yep 119 out of 21,857 total. That’s some pretty miserable numbers, BUT like I mentioned in my response comment to Blackysky I’m not depending on Blog Catalog for traffic generation so much as name recognition which I believe to be far more important when building a brand.

KC writes:

ur an idiot and your post about your god/my god proves it! do you really think there is only one god?! you should get educated before talking!

KC thanks for sharing your opinion. No I don’t believe there is only one “god” I believe there are tens of millions of “gods”. About 75% of them are figments of our imagination and the other 25% are, I believe heavenly angels, both pure and fallen. I do however know that there is only one God. Jehovah, El Shaddai, El, Jehovah Rophe, Jehovah Shalom, Elohim, Addonai… or whatever of His covenant names is appropriate for you to cry out to depending on your situation.

Mark K. write:

How much money do you make from blogging?

Thanks Mark for such an easy question! The answer is a resounding none. Ok I suppose I should clarify a little bit. Until recently I had been flip-flopping between monetizing this blog or not monetizing this blog. A couple of weeks ago I finally reached the conclusion that I would like to monetize it. Since then I’ve slowly been working on ways to do that. Grand total I’ve made is a little over $60.00 in the past week however it has been spread between several sources so I’ve not made enough for a payout by anyone at this point.

Dayscha writes:

In your article about having “skillz” you wrote that by blogging we improve our writing skills. I disagree. If anything my writing skills have gotten worse because I’m trying to write in “bullet point” fashion for a blogging audience. I think that’s true of anyone who blogs.

Dayscha (great name by the way) don’t ever let the readers dictate your writing style. There are plenty of readers out there and while we’d like to please each and every one of them we never can. So write in your own style and your own voice and you’ll attract people who want to read what you have to say. If you like to write long posts do so and people will read it. If you like bullet point posts of 300 words or less there’s an audience for them as well. Just write how you know and people will come. Consider this, Stephen King doesn’t change his writing style to please everyone else yet millions of people read his books.

If anyone else has any questions please feel free to contact me and we’ll see if we can make this a bi-weekly question and answer session. Also if you’d like a link back when I answer the question please don’t forget to include a url for me to use!