Ideas for moving The Pisstakers – up

I started The Pisstakers from zero a few months ago, with no blogging experience. I have been gradually getting into the swing of it, and about 4 weeks ago, I made a conscious decision to shift gears (not direction!) and get this blog moving. Afterall, in 2 years time, I expect to be supporting my wife off the proceeds, (you may recall I have a wife!) so, traffic will be key. I like this shifting gears idea btw, as the stats have got quite exciting in my modest world!

Talk to the reader, not at them

Content is the real king and fortunately I have no trouble finding the funny or satirical side of serious tech or general news, but I think I have been a bit distant. What I mean is, a blog is a personal voice, not a corporation. Now I consciously write less like the Onion, and more like Ed! The posts are pitched “I” not “us” (which is still part of the final plan), and I added Ed’s personal blog spot. Now there is no excuse, visitors have every opportunity to know what I am like – even if they don’t like me or even listen.

Blogs need a hook

So I have personalized the blog a bit, and next, I wanted to develop some sort of hook. Funny observations will get you quite far in life online and offline, but having something useful to offer will get you even further! So, I have devised a few features.

MyBlogLog Sunday is a link love day on the quietest day of the week for me, at least. By going round to all the members of my MyBlogLog community and letting them know the crack, there have been noticeably more faces in my sidebar. And Polliwog is a happy camper as last week’s first prize winner, so that is cool.

Today I started Spring Widget Saturday for flat-out humor blogs. If you have a Feedburner RSS feed you have the means to generate the code for a nifty spring widget. Send it to me and I will display it on the Pisstakers. Highena are the first, but not the last to appear, I hope.

The blogging experts always bang on about being focussed and developing a niche, so last week I decided to beef up the Search section and offer something specialist within funny-ish tech. Eventually, The Pisstakers will be the place for webmasters and bloggers to find out about web search, search engines, paid-to-search options, blah blah. Sounds like a boring topic, but the content I am turning out, isn’t! At least, that is the aim.

The outcome of new features

It has taken about 1 month to put these things in place. Last week I reported traffic for march had risen by 30% over February. Since April 1 I have had 150 uniques per day, about 30% more than ever before, and stickiness has dropped (or under 30 second visits have risen!) by only about 3%. There have been no spikes, no stumbles, no diggs nor reddits. And the SEO work has got Google growing slowly but surely too.

So, that is my blog about my blog for this week. And whether these benefits are exponential, or long term or not for The Pisstakers, time will tellonly . However, I am still pretty sure Matt and Lee are going to make a go of BAYB with their latest Blog Doctor ideas, contests and ongoing solid foundation. Blog on, guys.

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