Your Blog Sucks
And so does mine.
Here's an idea. People need to stop attempting to pass judgement on what other people choose to do with their blogs. I often hear people say "It's your blog, you should do what you want." But that only seems to apply to when someone wants to post something stupid or contraversial. When they want to post an ad or something that might increase traffic, suddenly they are acting like a greedy whore.
Yes, I have ads on my blog. I blogged for about a year and a half before I received a dime for blogging. If I had never gotten any ads or referrals, I think I would still be blogging.
Yes, I checked my pagerank. I never even knew what pagerank was two months ago, but at that point I wanted to know what mine was. Yes I check statcounter to see how many hits I get. Yes I check to see what searches I get. And yes, I have posted words and phrases SPECIFICALLY TO INCREASE MY BLOG TRAFFIC.
So I guess that totally invalidates anything I have done on this blog to entertain someone for a few seconds. Because I DARE to care about the success of this blog I guess I am a whore and I don't deserve any respect.
That is fucking bullshit. There is absolutely no connection between caring about whether your blog gets a lot of hits and whether you publish anything worth reading.
Nobody is more opinionated about blogs than I am. Another blogger LOVES to ask my opinion about all kinds of blogs because 1) He knows I read them all, and 2) He knows I've probably formed a pretty strong opinion. His favorite of my common responses is "That guy's a fucking psycho."
And while I have even openly criticized what people have put in their blogs in my "You might be a donkey if..." posts, I never begrudge their willingness to put their words out there for people to read.
As far as A-list, B-list, Z-list or whatever, that shit absolutely exists, but it doesn't make a difference who is on what list. There are blogs I LOVE that wouldn't make anyone's B-list, and there are some A-List blogs that I CAN'T STAND.
Anwyay, if you want to improve your blog traffic, I have two pieces of advice for you.
1)Post every day. Post as often as you can. If you post, they will read.
2)Let everything else take care of itself. Links will take care of themselves. Other people's opinions will take care of themselves. If what you are doing is worth reading, then your readership will take care of itself.
That's just advice, you're probably better off if you ignore it. Especially if you ignore anything anyone else has to say on the subject as well.