The Year in Review
It seems to be the trend – take a look at the year behind and look forward to the new year with dreams, aspirations and perhaps some common sense goals. I don’t know about the later, but I can certainly dream – it is about the only place where true freedom exists I think.
Whilst only three months old, I am really pleased with the progress of this blog. I have to admit the blog itself has drifted away from my original intention – but then I wonder how many blogs have stayed true to their origins – I am sure I am not the only one to start in one area and find themselves in another.
What has not worked. BlogRush of course. Digg – it just doesn’t digg me. Adsense – not enough traffic. Competitions – I think the blog community may be a little tired of them unless you can come up with something really novel. Trying to build a small community of like minded bloggers – I haven’t given up on that idea yet. Apart from the usual little bugs within some of the themes and within some of my plugins, the rest is working okay.
What has worked. BlogCatolog, MyBlogLog and StumbleUpon have all provided me with some reasonable traffic returns. My best day to date though has only been 400 visitors. I cannot complain, in only three months my unique hits are over 3200. My Alexa amazes me at only 233000 – given I only average around 150 visitors per day – they must all have the Alexa toolbar I think – if you don’t – why not get it.
Apart from pay to post, most advertising on this site has proved to be a dismal failure – this is one area that will be severly trimmed back in the new year. A new venture called Rubicon seems to be promising. One thing that has thrilled me is to see late in the year this blog appearing in the top 100 Australian Blogs – I don’t know how long it will stay there – but it is there – at 97 – now Problogger is at number one – I wonder if I can knock him out of that position by this time next year – oh well – dreams are free.
What else has worked – I guess my flagship now are my radical blog reviews and my blog review catalog. This is one area that is in for a major change – the changes will be revealed next week – Monday actually when the new radical blog reviews are born – so stay tuned. One thing that wont change is the cost of these reviews, always free, always with no reciprocal obligation – feel free to sign up for one.
My aims for 2008. Pretty high actually. By this time next year I would like to see around 750-1000 visitors every day on average. I would like to have the ‘radical blogger‘ name well known and respected. I would like to be earning a reasonable amount each month – at least enough to cover the running costs of this blog. My main ambition above all others is to two fold, first, too have the radical blog reviews respected and in demand and secondly, to build a community of small time bloggers that are able to help each other for the benefit of each other – a community that the big time bloggers cannot take over and dominate. Time will tell – desire on the part of other like minded bloggers will be the key. A lot of bloggers complain about the big timers taking over and dominating other communities, but it seems that with out their drive, these other concepts (eg EntreCard) would not take off. Little bloggers need to look at opportunities and take them – not sit back with a ‘wait and see’ approach.
Finally, I keep tweeking my blog but I have no idea how it is perceived by others so I would appreciate comments back on the look, feel and useability of my blog – without feedback I cannot improve. I know I have a minor problem with comments at present – if you get an error screen just hit your back button – your comment will be saved. I am trying to track the problem down. If you have a subscriptio, either email or RSS, can you let me know if it is working okay. If you don’t why not grab one.
Have a fabulous 2008 – let 2008 be the year of the little blogger.
cheers – the radical blogger
Hi Les
Firstly, congrats on sneaking into the top 100 list
Since you are asking for feedback, here are my thoughts. I like the overall design of the blog (and it looks fine in IE), but I find that there is quite a delay in the content loading (the sidebars load first). I’m not sure how you could fix that, but I’m sure there’s a way.
The other thing I noticed is that you only burn a partial feed. Popular consensus seems to be that most subscribers object to this, and that the negatives outweigh the positives on this score. Maybe it’s just me – this is a pet peeve of mine
Hi Meg – thanks for your comments.
I had no idea that Feedburner was only providing a partial feed – I will follow that up. As for the slow loading, I agree with you there – I have a pet peeve about themes that load the sidebars first and I am in process of trying to fix this.
Being very much an amateur when it comes to programing in php it takes a bit of trial and error – but I will get there.
happy new year
by the way – if anyone has a ‘year in review’ article feel free to leave a link in your comments.
hi i also want to say congratulation for the top 100 hope u still there until the next year… nice to know u
regard,
pandi merdeka
Hey dude sir, from what I can tell you and I are moving up the ladder at about the same pace. Congrats on making that 100 list. I don’t have any I can get into yet and the one I am in I am not anywhere close to hitting the top 100 and that is the list on 45n5. But thats a money making list so that goes with out saying.
about your site, and to be honest with you. The green looks off, I liked your other theme better myself but your layout as you know is great and I try and follow what your doing as it looks nice and clean.
Just so you know, Shoemoney dot com says that adsense dosn’t work well for blogging sites as it takes traffic away from your site, and I can see that being true. I sent you an email with a link to another link style of ads. And what I can say to them is they pay a ton higher then adsense, a ton. Hope you check them out and let me know if you do.
Hi les,
I prefer this green layout to your earlier Black background layout.
Its much easier on the eyes.
However, it would be better if your 2 sidebar were in line with your contents instead of below the fold line.
Congrats and good luck for you to archieve the top in the top 100.
This is ok, although the ads are a little distracting. Put more of the interesting sidebar stuff near the top. The other thing I would suggest is that even if you are using a premade theme, you can personalize it. If nothing else, replace the top banner with your own image. Just create an image of the same size and replace this one with that in the theme directory.
Feedburner is fine for people who like it. But your primary feed should stand alone and be the first choice.
Best of luck in 2008. You’re doing a great job!
Some tweaking yet to go but this theme looks better, really pops. I love it.