A Small Celebration

I hit a blog milestone yesterday:

Only 3/4 of a million to go!

For more Six Word Saturdays go here.

How To Entice New Visitors To Your Blog

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Have a regular feature.

I tell a joke a day.  Sometimes they’re funny.  People come across one joke and they’re hooked, poor fools.

Join in.

I participate in Six Word Saturday and 101 Tasks in 1001 Days.  People come along to read those posts, and sometimes stay.

Make ’em laugh when they get here.

I tell a joke a day; did I mention that?  I also poke fun at my family, myself and my readers.  Some people come back for more.  (I know; I don’t get it, either.)

Use an interesting title calculated to attract.

Funny is good, but hasn’t helped me much in the title department, if I’m honest.  That’s why I’m using one today calculated to appeal to all those bloggers who, like me, are desperate to be noticed.  I would definitely read a post with this title.  I’m guessing that’s why you’re here, too.

Use popular tags.

Since I started adding tags such as postaday2011, joke and humour, I’ve been getting more new readers.  Well, people taking one look at my blog and never coming back again but, hey, the numbers are up.

Use the same tags in more than one language.

For example:

• English: Humour
• American: Humor

Just because your readers can’t spell, doesn’t mean you should exclude them.

Link to other blogs.

Nancy at Spirit Lights The Way is generous with her link backs but that’s no good to me because she’s already a captive reader.   I read blogs new to me and link back to them, so they will come over and see me and link back to me and I’ll link back to them and some of my readers read them and link back to me saying they’re linking to them and them’ll tell their readers and link back to me and their readers’ll link to them and to me and it all gets pretty incestuous and the posts are interbreeding and don’t make much sense any more but that’s okay I can live with that because the main thing is the stats go up.

Specifically, link to popular blogs.

If you’re lucky, that nogoodnik whose popularity you don’t understand but might as well use will return the visit and like what they see enough to mention you in a post.  If they don’t, who needs ’em anyway?  Note: Don’t get tears on the keyboard; it makes it difficult to type.

Post regularly.

Join postaday2011 or postaweek2011, or tell your readers you’re going to post on the third Tuesday of the month when the moon is in Uranus and you need to rant about your partner.  So long as your readers know when to expect you, they’ll stay.

To be on the safe side, I post on average three times a day.  My readers are too exhausted to visit other blogs.

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I hope you found this little guide useful and will tell all your friends about me.  If you hated it, don’t leave a comment, just tell all your friends about me.

Bon chance! (French)

Good luck!  (American)

Wotcha!  (English)

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1/1/11

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Isn’t that a great date?  It’s like 2011 is saying, Yes, you had some interesting numbers in 2010; but let me show you what I’ve got…

2010 had the consecutive (8/9/10, 11:12:13), the repetitive (10/10/10) and the palindrome (01/11/10).  Of course, it all depends on your perspective: my American friends won’t have had the same first one because they put the month before the day; here in the UK 8/9/10 happened in September but in the States it was in August.  Then there’s the manipulation: if I had added or subtracted zeros then 8/9/10 would have been 08/09/10 and rather dull; 01/11/10 would not have been a palindrome at all as 1/11/10.

I love interesting numbers, hence my excitement last night: it wasn’t the 23,000 that got me squealing; it was the 999.  If it had been 23,941, for example, I wouldn’t have mentioned it; but that one-under-a-round-figure in twelve months was just too good not to be shared.

Numbers also show you something about people – here’s something I learned in 2010: people like to smile.  The post of mine to receive the most hits by far was Smile And The World Smiles With You; Dissect It And People Ask ‘Who’s That Freak?’ .  Okay, not one of my better titles but it received 6,831 hits in six months so it must be doing something right.  I’ve even learned the Turkish for ‘smile’ because 32 Turkish-speaking people found me using gülücük.

A total of 7,275 visitors found me using a variation of ‘smile/laugh/funny/cartoon’.  Contrast that with the lowly 8 who found me using ‘scowl’ or ‘scowling’.  There was also the one weirdo who found me using the search term ‘long nipples’, but the less said about them, the better.

Of course, it’s possible that people using negative terms in their blogs are receiving way more hits than I am; there’s a lot of ‘hate’, ‘spite’ and ‘misery’ out there.  But I like to think that most people want to be happy.  And if they do, I hope they’ll visit me: I like feeling happy.  Don’t you?

Wow!

Total visitors to The Laughing Housewife for 2010:

23,999

Christmas Has Come Early

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I know you’ve had a huge post to trawl through today but I have just noticed something and I wanted to share it with you: I have reached my Christmas target of 17,000 hits.  Now I don’t know what to aim for because I don’t want to big myself up, only to come crashing down because I bored you all.

Hmm.  The chart is up and down but I seem to be averaging 2000 hits a month so that leaves:

three months times 2000 factor in holidays that’s less 500 add in might as well try to stretch myself and aim high take away the number I first thought of thumb suck a few others and that equals a hope of 23,433 hits by December 31st. 

You all better help me achieve it or I’m coming after you with boring stories about my kids and my cleaning obsession.  Oh, wait…