Hoping for a Little Help From My Friends

I just happened to be on the Yakezie forums on Sunday morning and joined a team that is looking to help each other with generating traffic and commenting on one another's blogs.  There are 15 members so it will definitely be noticeable in my statistics since my traffic isn't all that great to begin with.  We just started this yesterday and should the numbers remain consistent through the end of the year, I think this will help me succeed in the Yakezie Challenge of getting the Alexa Rank for Cash Flow Mantra below the 200,000 by the New Year.

I would hate to think that publishing 3 times per week and spending lots of time working on commenting would not produce some results over the next month and a half.  I know the process can be slow at times, but I would like to see some steady growth.  This is why I am optimistic.  I think that I will be able to see progress and am looking forward to it.

I must say that it is encouraging to have a group that is looking out for one another and offering to assist each other.  It certainly is a big motivator to know that someone has your back.  Blogging can be quite the lonely venture with many hours sitting in front of a blank screen.  I was wanting to write a post for CFM tonight but just couldn't come up with any decent ideas.  Wouldn't you know that when I have a little extra time, I have nothing percolating in my head.  I will have some time over the next few days so I will probably be lacking for any good material.  Arrgh!  Isn't that just my luck.

Maybe after a good night's sleep an idea will pop into my head.  I did get one post written today to schedule for this Friday so I am good for the rest of the week.  I am hoping to stay one week ahead so would need to get 3 posts together by the weekend.  Wait, I just had an idea.  I need to wrap this up so I can go write it down.  Will catch you all later.  Wish me luck.

Completing the Yakezie Challenge

I am excited to report that I completed the Yakezie Challenge with my blog, Cash Flow Mantra this week.  What that means is that I was able to get my Alexa ranking under 200,000 within six months of starting the challenge.  I actually started on July 1st, 2011 so I had until the end of the year to complete the task.  As of this moment, my actual Alexa ranking is 198,607.

That being said, I certainly don't plan on quitting.  I will discuss a little bit more about that in a moment, but first I would like to explain how I was able to decrease my ranking so quickly.

No Secret, Just Writing and Interaction

There really isn't any big secret that I used to decrease my Alexa ranking so quickly.  I simply posted some content about 2-3 times per week and began interacting with the Yakezie community of personal financial bloggers.  Actually, that was probably the most important aspect of getting traffic and growing the site.

Through commenting on other individual blogs, I was able to find some readers who took an interest in what I had to write.  Occasionally, these bloggers would enjoy a post and link back to my content.  This was probably the biggest factor in any success that I have enjoyed thus far.

Now, I am starting to generate a little bit of search engine traffic as well.  Hopefully, both social traffic and search engine traffic will slowly increase over time such that I am able to grow the blog little by little.  Up til now, the traffic growth has been fairly quick.  Of course that is because I am growing off a small base.  But I suspect that it will become more and more difficult over time.

Future Plans

I certainly don't plan to stop working hard at this point.  I would like to see my blog grow as much as possible by the end of the year maybe to the point of getting 100 visitors per day.  That seems like a stretch at this point, but I do believe that it is possible.  I will probably continue doing what I have been doing and reassess my progress and plans at the beginning of 2012.

I want to thank each and every one of you readers here who have been reading my other blogs and following my progress.  It is really exciting to see something develop from scratch.  The other part that really excites me is that I was able to develop this using Wordpress and get something done that one year ago was really frightening to me in concept.  The bottom line is that you just have to step out and get it done.

In the Top 1 Million!!

I am so excited. I logged on to Alexa this morning and checked my Traffic Rank. I was in the top 1 million websites in the world! I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it into the top million by the end of the year, but I made it.

I want to thank each and every one of you who has come to read my blog. I especially want to thank those of you who stop by on a regular basis and comment. I really appreciate it and owe the impressive Traffic Rank to you all. Thanks so much.

I am in the process of looking back at where I have been this year and considering what I would like to accomplish in the upcoming year. I will be putting all of this information together in a post later this week.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday season. This post is short since I don't want to take too much time away from my family. Needless to say, others feel the same since traffic has been pitiful the last several days. I am not too concerned, however, since I expected it to be this way. Earnings are suffering too. But, it doesn't bother me near as much now as it did in August and September. I have come to expect that traffic and AdSense will ebb and flow.

Anyway, enjoy the day and relaxation. I will be posting 2010 goals soon.