That golden opportunity being the ProBlogger Group Writing Project - ‘How To…’. Golden opportunity, as it will surely bring in much-needed traffic for MacStansbury.com.

Right?

Right?

Or, maybe it won't. Actually, it most certainly will bring some hits my way, possible some subscribers. Really, the one of the things I can't fake are the numbers on the syndication page. I actually started paying attention to the numbers last week, since they, for no reason discernible to me, started going up.

Along those lines, I started thinking about increasing my Feedburner counts because I'm advertising my lack of readers. Not really a lack of readers, mind you, but no great numbers like TechCrunch, Boing Boing, or Instapundit. For an unknown tutorial writer, I think I'm doing pretty well with the 35+ right now.

As an aside, it's interesting, I think, that since I put in WordPress, back in April, I wasn't using a Feedburner feed, and I moved over to it after a couple of months. As I put in the Feedburner Feed Replacement a couple of days ago, I figured at least one or two new hits would register in the Feedburner stats, but there were none. It seems I've done well in educating my audience in the power of the feeds.

That, or nobody used them, anyways.

I find it interesting, that after trying to build an audience with forums and blogs the past few years, I've come to this: a website with almost no discernible interaction with the outside, and no plans to advertise or evangelize. I've created my island in the ocean, and I care little if the people in the airplanes see me lounging on the beach. While I'd greatly appreciate the attention, there's little reason for me do anything other than write for me.

Isn't that how it should be? A couple of years ago, I fell into the trap of trying to be what other people wanted me to be. To fulfill some purpose for them, to fill some void. While it felt good, and edifying, to fill some void, it took away from what I should've been doing in the first place: writing for me.

If you've ever wondered the rational to having no comments on this WordPress blog, it's because of these two things:
1. Comments rarely add anything. I update stories with user's email all the time.
2. This is not a blog. It looks like it is, but it isn't.

Comments definitely add to the feeling you're contributing to the conversation, but it's really more that I'm not interested in providing a forum for others to speak. That I've added the ability to easily trackback posts shows the only concession I've made. While that's slightly blog-like, it's not something I've made a habit here at MacStansbury.com. It isn't like you can't look up posts here on Technorati, either.

In reality, I'd love to send the ProBlogger yet another witty story about spam or hurricanes or cuddly puppies, but I'm not going to. For people looking to build an audience, there's nothing I could suggest that's better than sending your best writing in for people to click on through. You'd be surprised at the quality of the submissions, and just how hard people work to get a link from a bigger blog.

Just not me. I'm liking my island, right now. Plus, I have an appointment on the beach - those planes aren't going to watch themselves, you know.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-10-10T22:23:14.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
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