It’s over! This was the last day of the Getting Started Blogging 30-Day Challenge. I must admit I’m relieved. It got stressful from week 2 on because it was more like a goal which started to appear less and less reachable, so I started concentrating on marketing to bring more and more traffic, but that was really a mistake. I should have kept on writing good, in-depth articles. Anyway, I’ve learned so much, this was a VERY positive experience. I’ll write an in-depth wrap-up article about this challenge in the next couple of days.

I’m going to take a couples of days off this blog to relax a bit and finish up that other project I am also really excited about. I’ll make an announcement here when I launch it.

In the wrap up I’ll be talking about the experience as a whole, what I learned (in terms of content creation, but also in terms of technical stuff and internet marketing), I’ll review the different social media sites I’ve tried, the different ad networks I’ve played with, I’ll talk about the mistakes I’ve made, the stressful parts, and the best part will be talking about what’s next

See you soon!

2008-02-19

Unique Visitors : 66

RSS Subscribers : 7

Total Readers : 73

I don’t know if it’s Entrecard that is starting to kick in or if it’s just because the weekend is over, but traffic was better today.

I still didn’t get to design a 125×125 square ad so I’m just collecting views on Spottt. I’ll keep collecting those until I start a new challenge for the month of March. I don’t want to attract any more readers right now when I’m re-thinking my content creation strategy.

2008-02-18

Unique Visitors : 71

RSS Subscribers : 7

Total Readers : 78

We’re really getting close to the end of this challenge. I realized a mistake I made from the beginning: I didn’t take on the right challenge. Actually it wasn’t a challenge at all, more like a goal. A challenge would have been something like: “write one article every other day for 30 days”, and of course part of doing the challenge would have been to report daily on the challenge.

I’m thinking of doing exactly that in fact when this “challenge” is over. I still have 2 days to think this over.
2008-02-17

Unique Visitors : 22

RSS Subscribers : 8

Total Readers : 30

Today was a pretty slow day. I’m getting used to it during the weekend. I haven’t posted any interesting article in some time now, except for the daily updates.

I’m so busy and tired from my other projects that I can’t find the motivation to write an in-depth article on any deep topic. I really need to work on that otherwise it’s not gonna work. I’ll redo my schedule tomorrow to force myself to write some valuable content for this blog.

2008-02-16

Unique Visitors : 16

RSS Subscribers : 9

Total Readers : 25

So I’m still playing a bit with Entrecard getting a feel of how things work in this community-like advertising network. My ad queue is full because so many people “dropped their card” because the cost to advertise on my blog was only 1 credit per day. It is now updated and it now costs 12 credits. So I’ll definitely be earning some good credits soon so that I can in my turn advertise on popular blogs.

I still didn’t get to design a 125×125 square ad so I’m just collecting views on Spottt.

I’m thinking on starting advertising my blog throught these 2 networks after the weekend. I’ll see how much I have accumulated and if I have enough to do a consistent campaign.

2008-02-15

Unique Visitors : 29

RSS Subscribers : 7

Total Readers : 36

Someone recommended I try Entrecard over Spottt. So I checked it out today and I signed up. The setup was really easy. Not much more work than Spottt except for the creation of a 125×125 pixels ad on their site (only because I don’t have my own ad designed yet). It wasn’t long before people started “dropping their card” (placing ads) on my Entrecard spot. I guess it was because the cost to place an ad was only 1 credit. When I looked at placing my own ad on other people’s blogs the cost was up to 500 credits per day. The cost depends on the number of cards that were dropped over the last 5 days.  So all these cards that were dropped on my blog will jack up the cost to place an ad so I should be earning many more credits in the next following days. So I’ll be able to drop my card on more popular sites pretty soon.

I’m excited to try this out!

2008-02-14

Unique Visitors : 48

RSS Subscribers : 7

Total Readers : 55

Ok so today is Day 7 and I’m still doing ok. Tonight I’ll probably not respect my schedule and tomorrow I’ll certainly wake up later because my girlfriend planned a little getaway for Valentine’s Day. Now let’s just hope it won’t be too hard to get back on track after that!

Also, from now on I will only post weekly updates on this challenge.  Each update will then be more valuable in terms of content than the daily updates that I do right now. So next update will be February 21st.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone

Typing the title just made me realize this challenge is getting near the end. Even though I sort of changed direction during the challenge, I’m still very excited about this whole blogging thing. I’m learning so much it’s incredible, I love it!

The guys at Spottt, the free link exchange network, are really cool. Yesterday was the launch day and I signed up as soon as I heard about it. The whole idea seemed really fair (and the dog illustrations are cute :p ). Today, the founder sent all 500 or so persons that registered yesterday an email that was really a thank you note. But he also added a little bonus, 10000 free points. That’s the equivalent to 5000 ad impressions. Free advertising is always welcome! Now I need to design a nice little 125×125 ad to promote X-Day Challenge. So if you have suggestions as to what message I should put to grab attention, please let me know in the comments below.

2008-02-13

Unique Visitors : 35

RSS Subscribers : 9

Total Readers : 44

Yesterday I felt some fatigue mid-day. I don’t know if this is due to my sleeping only 6 or 6 1/2 hours per night or if it is due to too much work because of the extra time I have everyday. I’ll try and do less physically and mentally-demanding work during the extra time I have for the next couple of days to see if the fatigue is still there.

Tomorrow is Valentines Day so I’ll certainly take the evening slow with the girlfriend. Valentines Day will probably mess up my sleeping schedule a bit, but it’s only for a day. I can live with that.

You might have noticed the new 125×125 square ad in the right sidebar. It’s a new link exchange program called Spottt that I heard about today. Spottt is a free link exchange program. Basically you put a script on your website that will display ads. Everytime an ad is displayed, you get 1 point. You also setup an ad on Spottt and for every 2 points you have, your ad is displayed once on another website. I like this system since it is free and it’s extremely simple. No complicated campaign setup and tracking, no payments, etc … Sure, it’s not targetted, but it’s free and it’s maintenance-free. Just a one-time setup. Stay tuned for a more in-depth review of Spottt.

2008-02-12

Unique Visitors : 33

RSS Subscribers : 7

Total Readers : 40