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I have been blogging for about 16 months now. My blog is very popular, and I am in the middle of launching 3 blogs. For the first few months it seemed as if I was only writing for myself. Then as time went on, I found an audience. The core of that audience has shifted over the past year, but the site has grown in popularity. Here is the best advice I can give:

1) First, take your time and write correctly. Everyone makes the occasional spelling or grammatical error, but do your best to write cleary, concisely, and error-free.

2) The look of your blog can play an important part in gaining readership. Personally, if a template is dull, I don't care. I care more about content than anything else. It is not as important to look great as it is not to look horrible. Don't pick a color scheme that clashes. Don't put light colored text on a white background. Make it easy on the eyes. Don't give readers a superficial reason to click over to the next blog.

3) Post as close to every day as you can. This is important to keep readers coming back, but is also useful for all those sites and search engines and spider-things that track that sort of activity (as you can see, I am not technically savvy at all LOL).

4) Try to respond to comments. Some people never respond to comments, some people respond to the commenter via email, and some respond within the comment section of their blog. I always respond within the comment section. This is an easy way for the commenter to come back to see what you wrote, and as your popularity grows, it fosters a sense of community. Sometimes my comment section resembles a bulletin board.

5) Read and comment on other blogs. This is vital. Don't waste your time on blogs that don't interest you but seek out blogs that you find appealing. Visit them and comment often. This constant interaction with like-minded bloggers will bring you more readers. I cannot overemphasize how important this is.

6) Give a couple of traffic sites a try. Traffic sites are designed specifically to increase your traffic. I belong to about a half dozen sites, but I spend more time on BlogMad and BlogExplosion than the others. Both have their strengths. Join several (there is no cost or obligation) and see which ones you are more comfortable with.

7) Maintain a blogroll. Link the blogs you like, and they will likely do the same. This is another way new readers will find you. Many bloggers, when looking for new blogs to read, will visit the blogs in the sidebar of a favorite blog.

8) Make your writing interesting. Don't fall into the trap of posting "Um..nothing much today. Life sucks. Ho hum. Check back tomorrow". It is better to skip a day if you can't write anything interesting.

9) Don't employ any add-ons that might push people's buttons. Automatic music on blogs is a huge issue for a lot of people. They view it as intrusive. Don't put pop-up ads on your blog. Avoid add-ons that require running Direct-X.

10) As far as the technical end of linking and pinging and all that other stuff, that is important too, and it's easy to set all that up in the beginning. You can learn that from your provider or the traffic sites or services such as Blogrolling or Bloglines.

Those are the basics. There are no shortcuts.

Learn more about this author, Mr. Fabulous.
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