Tuesday, November 22, 2011

How to Increase Blog Traffic Without Even Trying!

Many of you may be wondering how, after five years of blogging, I’ve built such a pathetically meager audience. Obviously, I’m filthy-mouthed, sarcastic, have an unusual preoccupation with llamas, and insult you all on a regular basis. If I haven’t offended you yet, stick around, it’s coming.

Wait, what am I trying to communicate here? How to drive the rest of you leeches away? No, this about how you maintain a core audience of degenerates while never, ever expanding. If you would like to have similar crews of sycophantic reader monkeys – such as yourself - as your audience, follow these, er, following steps:

1) Insult people in their own blog comments.

If you aren’t making enemies, you aren’t trying. Call someone a sycophantic monkey in their own blog comments. If they come by and insult you back, game on! And then let the blog hits follow. People love a good sissy name-calling fight. Donald Trump tries to do it all the time with Rosie O’Donnell and look how popular they are. I may have even done it once or twice myself.

2) Pretend to Know Things

Many of you already employ the ‘here’s more running advice’ technique. Hell, I do it myself all the time. It’s great because (a) it makes you seem smart (b) it makes you seem compassionate to share this valuable information (c) you aren’t a professional so no one can call you on it and (d) provides cover for the real purpose of your blog: to insult people and hurt peoples’ feelings. Reader monkeys will keep coming back if they think what you’re saying sounds intelligent. Try deploying a few “listen to your body” references - love those! -when discussing a training technique. No one knows what that means but it sure sounds like solid, unassailable, No Shit Sherlockian advice. Give me more of that!

3) Take a Contrarian Position

When the whole brouhaha over the BAA changing the Boston Marathon qualification standards occurred last Spring, every bloghole with a blog decided to give their opinion that, basically, they didn’t like it. No shit, Sherlock. Some tried to sound all understanding and created thousands of words that ultimately could have been said with a shoulder shrug and a “well, that’s what they want to do sooooo…whaddya going to do?” I even took Boston to task by basically saying eff you and your race.*

I like to take the opposite approach. Want to get a running coach? You’re an idiot. When have you ever seen softball guy with a softball coach? C’mon, get off your high horse, amateur. See? That right there pissed off four dozen of my reader monkeys. They are deciding right now whether to leave a comment or quietly fume and click elsewhere, to a safer spot, so that they can be reminded to wear bright clothing when running in the dark. Either way, they’ll come back to laugh, cry, fume, or click away in an angry huff. No matter the emotion, it all counts as one hit. Notice how often I like to stoke this fire? Remember: Use your blog for Good (i.e. to anger people).

4) Porn.

Dirty porn (obvs.) The more ponies, the better (obvs).

5) Tie Your Blog to Already Popular Movies, Images, or Skeevy Searches

You want to know the most popular reason folks come here, besides pure animal attraction, on days when I don’t have a new post? That would be this post. There are apparently a ton of folks trying to find this image on Google and I, apparently, am near the top of that search list (search for ‘Shitter is full’ and good ole F.M.S. is near the top of the results!) In fact, I have a few images that I’ve “borrowed” that create traffic all by themselves. They are

1 Shitter is Full
2 Inbreds
3 Hello Kitty nipples

The Eastern Europeans (and one particular household in Happy Valley, PA!) seem to really love their "Hello Kitty nipple" searches. I don’t want to know what that’s all about but, it got so bad, that I actually went back and removed the words and images from the original post just to prevent Interpol from knocking on my door one day. See? Of course, now that I’ve relinked the words “Hello Kitty “ and “nipples” (as well as “dirty porn”) to my site, I can safely say WELCOME BACK, EASTERN EUROPEANS!

But maybe, for some reason, you don’t wanna be like me. Maybe you like llamas, you want to dispense fairly obvious advice in an innocuous setting, and you have something against image stealing and dirty porn. Whatev….you do what’s best for you and your blog, reader monkeys, because, at the very least, you should always listen to your body.

Follow these 5 steps and I have no doubt that your blog will also barely register as existing on the internet! However, you may trap a few unfortunate folks in your net. Look, just by the title alone, I’ll no doubt bring a few people here thinking they are actually going to get good advice about How to Increase Blog Traffic. Instead, they got references to pony sex so maybe they should have just LISTENED TO THEIR BODIES and not come here at all.

Suckers.

Happy saddling...and LISTEN TO YOUR BODY.

*But since I totally want to run Boston again, I didn’t mean any of that. Hugs and kisses. Did I ever mention that your new qualifying standards go great with your eyes?

15 comments:

Sun Runner said...

"Recent keyword activity" is one of my favorite things to read on my Statcounter site. My favorite of all time was "nude man mowing lawn." Since I have never written about nude men nor lawn mowing, I have NO idea how that person found my blog!

Most people who stumble across my blog are looking for "french green lentil soup," because I posted the recipe once.

I get a lot of traffic from Singapore, of all places.

I've been faithfully reading you fro four years...you can't get rid of me! Do your worst! HAHAHAHAHA!

David said...

I'm so mad I'm going to stop commenting.

Well, after this one, of course.

At least that's probably true.

Nicely spelt, BTW.

Pam @ herbieontherun.com said...

Okay, I don't comment much (for fear of being insulted perhaps?), but this one deserves a comment. HILARIOUS. Just the "listen to your bodies" part was enough to make me laugh oit loud. That has to be the most obnoxious, over-used phrase on the running internets.

Trish said...

"No Shit Sherlockian" - Pretty much the best thing I've heard all day. But I've been hanging out with idiots most of the morning, so it might not actually be funny. I could just be really desperate to laugh so I don't throw myself out my window.

B. Kramer said...

I disagree with your assessment. And you're a jerk. See you over at my blog! Cheers!

Chicken said...

I got 2 new blog followers just reading your post! Great stuff! You really know how to make people laugh at themselves!

C said...

The only reason I keep reading is because I know one of these days you'll piss off someone so much they'll track you down and pull a Tonya Harding. And by that I of course mean whine to the judges about breaking a lace so they can get a do-over.

Now that's a post I want to read!

ShutUpandRun said...

These are all great suggestions and my new year's resolution is to incorporate more porn into my blog. I usually gain traffic by talking about shitting myself. Seems to work for me.

PS: you douche bag

Drea said...

Did you just call me a bloghole? Nitmos- you're sounding like a numbers guy. I know deep down, like 3 centimeters, you really care.

Randy Coffee said...

Dear Nitmos,

You saved me. After completing my first marathon, I started a blog. While preparing for my 2nd marathon, I started investigating becoming a running coach.

Then I read your blog, and it opened my eyes.

Now most blogs irritate the snot out of me offering trinkets for followers and "extra entries" if you'll just tell all your friends. I think this is the same system Life Insurance Agents use.

Anyway, now I'm just a sucky runner with a failed blog. I listened to my body about the blog, but it didn't say anything.

Oh I hated this blog post, and I'm never coming back.

That joke's already been used and I hate myself for doing it again. I suck.

I wish I had a humor coach.

Maybe I'll blog about this experience.

ELizabeth said...

Who knew that posting a picture of the "two weeks" lady from Total Recall would bring me so many visits on my site...who cares that they only stay for .25 seconds...it's all about the numbers. ...and I definitely visit your site for the porn. Rock on.

Ian said...

This is the worst blog post I've ever skimmed!

Running Through Phoenix said...

Dammit! I was going to use "sycophant" in an upcoming blog post. Nice variation. I'm now planning to use "atavistic" somehow. Please leave it for me, you clever shit.

Zogiest: That was the zogiest face-sitting I've ever experienced.

Beauty and the Palette said...

I blogrolled you. Just because I am a sucker! One who loves to run.

Danielle in Iowa in Ireland said...

Another blogger mentioned naked triathletes on my blog and the keywords that lead people to my blog have never been the same since.