The purported rewards were enticing: fame, fortune, and followers. And it was free, so I was willing to give it a whirl.
In some respects, my blog venture was a lot like my publishing experience. Nobody read what I'd written. So, I did some research on how to drive more traffic to my blog, and I did ALL THE THINGS.
I got my blog onto various lists, I guest blogged on bigger platforms, I contributed to blog carnivals. I tweeted.
There were only modest returns on ALL THE THINGS. Significant numbers of people still weren't reading my posts.
Then, I had an epiphany. Instead of keeping all my publishing information in separate files on my increasingly chaotic desktop, why not transfer all that information to my blog? The advantages were self-evident. I could organize all the paying markets on handy tables (with links!), so when I wanted to submit a story, all I had to do was look at my blog posts on that topic. Plus, whenever new markets sprang up, I could just add them.
This strategy turned out to be so convenient that I did the same thing for reviewers (I figured I would need them some day), and for agents (I hoped I would get one some day). The blog posts expanded to include calls for submissions, which I like to keep tabs on, and contests, even though I seriously doubted I would ever win one. (But, you never know!)
Then, I branched into publishers accepting unagented manuscripts, because after sending dozens of query letters, I was beginning to get discouraged. Once I started organizing those, I realized there were a surprising number of publishers with open doors, so I had devote a whole section of the blog to them.
Call me OCD, but being thorough has its advantages.
Lo, and behold! Not only were those posts and pages convenient for me, they were convenient for other people. I began sharing my posts. I shared them on Amazon, on Goodreads, and on LinkedIn. I re-posted them on Medium, and on Niume. (Even though I really don't understand Niume. What the #&!! is hype?) I posted links on forums (whose administrators promptly kicked me off). And, I discovered Google+. As it turned out, there were lots of writers on Google+ who appreciated my OCDness.
Bloggers and regular websites began to post links to my posts, and as a consequence some of those posts got tens of thousands of hits, which launched them into the top positions on Google searches. And that is currently where most of my traffic comes from - straight off the net.
I have every intention of continuing to answer that question, and of sharing all the information I accumulate along the way. And when my book finally does get published, I will tell all of you how I did it. In detail.
A big "Thank you!" to Everyone.