• More frequent posts
  This is the most important change that needs to take place; I really do need to start posting more often. Before this, my last update was May 2009, that's almost a year ago! I also need to make it easier for myself, I'm too obsessive and compulsive to just write a quick post and hit publish, I need to create a header image and make it look sexy. Maybe that should stop.
• A completely new design
  I need to redesign this blog so that it's actually a pleasure to read, and I definitely need to move away from these magazine-style themes. I need a personal theme for a personal blog.
• Something special
  Something to sweeten the deal. I need to start offering something or writing something frequently that will encourage people to comment and come back. Maybe some Photoshop tutorials or the likes? I'm not quite sure what, but I need to give something, as at the moment I'm just expecting people to read my posts simply because they're there. I'll have to give this a bit more thought.
• Project updates
  Not only had I neglected the blog, but I also completely forgot about all the WordPress project I was once working on, and they've gone into total meltdown. New versions of WordPress were released and the once-working plug-ins decided that they didn't want to work at all. I need to update them all and re-release them.
• Naming
  Something that I never really gave much thought to was the name of this blog. My name all over the Internet is Bull3t and this is my blog, so "Bull3t's Blog" seemed like a good choice. How wrong I was. It doesn't really tell you anything about what to expect. I wouldn't click a link to a blog named "Bull3t's Blog", and I don't expect you to either. It needs some sort of flare to it. This does mean that I'd have to register a new domain name though, so this might have to sit on the back-burner for a while.

Basically, anything to get the ball rolling again. Hopefully you'll begin to see some changes around here very soon, so keep your eyes peeled and your bookmarks in place, this blog isn't ready to die just yet.

I think that the main problem with visitors stumbling across your website through StumbleUpon is that most of them will not be on your site for anything more than a few minutes. They will read through the article they land on (if the title or first few lines interests them) and then hit the like/dislike button and re-stumble. This means that they actually won't see much of the rest of your website and are most certainly not going to subscribe to your feed. So my question to you is:

Do you think StumbleUpon is a good source of reliable traffic?

For me, StumbleUpon is a source of visitors to my blog who are browsing the internet in search of nothing in particular. Most of the time the visitors I receive from StumbleUpon do not contribute to my blog in any way nor do they subscribe to my feed. Consequently, they will not return to my blog again.

Whereas when you receive a visitor referred from a search engine, you know that they have searched something specific and your blog just happened to be the one result – of the many thousands returned – that the visitor selected. Visitors from search engines are, on average, going to stay on your blog for longer because if they took the trouble to search for something through a search engine and end up on your blog then they will most probably read whatever it is they are on.

A visitor referred from StumbleUpon will automatically have a lower chance of reading whatever they land on. This is because they were not looking for something specific and so landing on a tutorial regarding WordPress will not necessarily interest someone who doesn't even own a WordPress-powered blog.

StumbleUpon is a great way (if not one of the best) for new bloggers to get noticed – but when you are no longer a 'new blogger' what do you turn to?

I really appreciate it when a reader of this blog takes the time to leave a comment on a post. However, I reserve the right to remove any link or comment from this blog at my own discretion, without an explanation (although, normally I will give an explanation; unless it is obviously spam). I also reserve the right to republish your words in any form.

I actively encourage you to start and continue discussions on this blog, no matter how old or new the post is. I will not remove or edit any comment if it disagrees with what I have written or starts a debate – this is normal, and it gets a discussion going as opposed to a "hello, thanks for this post" type of comment – be my guest to start a comment war, so long as it doesn't get out of hand and turn into a war-with-flames.

You should be aware that as this blog is part of the "I Follow Movement", comments that are left purely for the link value and not to contribute to the discussion may be removed. My blog does remove the 'nofollow' relative from every link that you post inside of your comment (including your websites link on your name) and complies with the "I Follow Movement", this means that whenever you post a comment on my blog, any search engine bot that indexes my blog will follow the link from my blog to yours.

This blog is protected by Akismet, the anti-spam tool for WordPress. All of your comments will be scanned for known spam-like features, prior to being shown on the post. This will take a mere few seconds, but I cannot guarentee that all spam is caught with Akisment and, in some rare cases, a legitimate comment may end up in the spam filter. If you think this has happened to you, feel free to contact me and let me know. Any spam that is not automatically caught by Akismet will be manually removed by me.

Let me round this up a little:

• I appreciate comments.
• I reserve the right to remove any link or comment.
• I reserve the right to republish your words in any form.
• This blog is part of the "I Follow Movement".
• I actively encourage you to start and continue discussions.
• Start a comment war if you wish (but not with flames).
• This blog is protected by Akismet and comment spam will be deleted.

This is not to say that leaving comments on my blog should now be a hard-ship due to you having to watch what you write – go ahead and write whatever, if I really think that it isn't valuable I can contact you and/or remove it – most of the time I will just leave it be, though.

You can read more about this matter on the Comment Policy page.

The readers have the choice of leaving a comment or not, but the bloggers are the ones who should be convincing them to do so. You cannot force them to leave a comment – actually, you can force them, through some sort of JavaScript coding, but that wouldn't be very user-friendly and most readers who are forced to leave a comment will more than likely never return to your blog, here is a list outlining the things that I think encourage readers to leave comments:

• Make it easy to comment: One of the best things you can do to encourage comments is to make it easy for readers to do so; remove barriers and make the comment form easy to use. When I say barriers, I mean anything that will force a commenter to do something extra before their post can be shown on the blog. This includes making a user register before they can leave comments, it really annoys me to see "you must register to comment on this post", when I am trying to leave a comment, just makes me less likely to leave it.

  Think about it this way: a reader has just written a lengthy reply – of which he/she is quite proud – they hit the submit button and a message pops up saying: "you must register to comment on this blog", the reader screams, vows never to return to the blog, closes their web browser and runs off to watch some television. Why would anyone in their right mind want to register to a blog anyway? It makes your blog more like a forum.

• Reward your readers: Using a simple reward system to reward your readers for leaving a comment is extremely effective. This is the easiest way to increase the number of comments on your blog. The first way you can reward your readers for leaving comments is by downloading and installing the Show Top Commentators plugin, for WordPress (see below for more information).

  The second way is by joining the "You Comment, I Follow" movement. This movement was created in favour of removing the 'nofollow' place upon all links and author websites from comments. This 'nofollow' is automatically placed in every single WordPress comment to stop Search Engines from following the link. This was originally supposed to surpress spam, but doesn't work. The movement encourages people to install a single-line piece of PHP code (available as a WordPress plugin) that removes this now redundant link relative.

  If you then add the "I Follow" image to your blog with a link to the location of the website that you found out about the movement (or to an explanation page inside of your blog), readers will know what it is about and will also know that they will get link love to their websites just by leaving a comment.

• Invite readers to post comments: It is always a good idea to invite your readers to post comments by asking questions or just adding "comments are welcome" or "let me know what you think" at the end of a few posts. This invites the readers to leave a comment and they then have a question to answer. It can help, even if it is just a single line telling them that comments are appreciated.
• Respond to comments to keep the discussion going: Everytime I receive a comment on my blog I reply to it. This keeps the discussion going and they are more likely to post a few more comments, because they know that they will be read. If you are not prepared to use your own blog's commenting system, why should others? It also encourages readers to subscribe to your RSS feed as a response to their comment – whether that be by email or by replying to their comment – should keep them on your website longer (or make them come back and visit).
• Give your users the option to subscribe to new comments on each post: There is a nifty little WordPress plugin, called Subscribe To Comments, which allows your readers to subscribe to a mailing list which will notify them, through their email address of new comments posted on that particular article. This is very helpful if they have asked a question as it lets them know when they get a reply. They can easily unsubscribe simply by re-visiting the post and clicking the link underneath the post text area.
• Set a commenting policy: Many bloggers are writing their very own commenting policy for their blogs, this helps readers know what is and isn't appreciated in comments – it also makes them aware of the commenting system and how your blog is protected from certain things (such as spam), so they will more likely leave a comment, knowing that it will get read and will not get lost in a cloud of spam. I would advise you to set your blog it's own comment policy, don't make it too harsh and make sure you state that your really appreciate comments on your blog.

I have recently installed a few new plugins to my blog, which also help to increase the number of comments on your blog, these include:

• What Would Seth Godin Do
• Show Top Commentators
• Comment Relish

After you have gotten over the name of the first plugin, I will explain them a little. The 'What Would Seth Godin Do' plugin is a very helpful plugin which enables you to show a welcome message to your readers, which is displayed to the reader if it is his/her first time on the blog. The idea is to encourage your new visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed and post a comment. I have currently set my message to the following:

Welcome, guest! If you are new here and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. This is the homepage of Bull3t's Blog, if none of the following posts appeal to you personally, you could always view a random article.

The meaning of this message is to encourage people, such as yourself to leave a comment or two on some of my posts. I would also like to bring your attention to the underused 5-star rating system above each post's content, please do click on one of the stars on a few posts, it doesn't cost anything.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by!
~Bull3t

Admittedly, it is a little long, but it gets the message through without being to formal. I have set it to appear to my visitors for the first 3 times they visit any page or post on my blog. This gives them 3 chances to read it before it disappears and is never shown again until they delete their browser cookies (or the cookie used by the plugin expires), so enjoy it while you can.

The second plugin, Show Top Commentators, enables me to create a sidebar widget containing a list of commenters and their website links. This acts as an incentive to post more than just one comment, it is designed to be used as a little reward system for being in the top 5 commenters list. You get link love and I get comment love, so we are all happy!

The final plugin, Comment Relish does not actually function properly from the original download location and repeatedly kills your blog with an unwelcoming message of "The e-mail could not be sent. Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function…", when actually it has nothing to do with your host at all. It is just a simple coding mistake. Not a big issue though, all you have to do is comment out the line of code which does this, but first I will explain a little.

The Comment Relish plugin is supposed to send an email to a first-time commenter on your blog, encouraging them to come back and leave more comments, at a later date and subscribe to your RSS feed. It works, except that when a trackback is left on your blog it tries to send an email to the owner of the trackback, but of course trackbacks do not have emails attached to them (unlike comments) so the plugin returns the PHP mail function as false (because it failed). When the mail function returns false, the plugin is told to do the following:

die('

' . __('The e-mail could not be sent.') . "
\n" . __('Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function...') . '

');


The PHP die function will terminate the current script and output a message, in this case the script terminated is the whole WordPress blog (because the plugin sends the emails through the WordPress init hook which is used to load anything and everything on your blog). As you can imagine the output is pretty painful, and your blog will not be shown to anyone until this is cleared up.

There is a hitch, however; the only way you can clear the message is by deleting the latest trackback (or deactivating the plugin), but of course you cannot access the WordPress administration panel, due to the PHP die function being in action.

Technorati Rank: Around 300 000.
Technorati Authority: Around 100.
Technorati Links: 200 or more.
Alexa Rank: Around 500 000.
Traffic: 250 or more unique visits a day.
Posts: At least 100.
Comments: At least 200.
Subscribers: 100 or more.
Google PageRank: 6 or higher.

I am making a good start though, as I have recently submitted my blog to over 100 feed directories as well as follow a few tutorials to help boost my feed subscribers and unique visitors; it took me the good part of 2-3 hours. I have been assured that it should help boost my visitor count, if nothing else.

I will keep you informed on how well I am doing and see whether I can actually complete these before my hosting subscription (of 2 years – which started March of this year) runs out in 2009. Tibi Piui has also written 5 little pointers on how to seek and accomplish your blog's goals, I will try to follow these and see how it goes. I would have thought that in the time span of 2 years I could make these milestones easily, but I doubt it.