Blog developments

I've not really posted much these last few days, apart from my Blog Action Day post, and a few little bits and pieces. This isn't me being lazy. I've been working away behind the scenes. I've been doing a lot of research for Strange Days, as it seems to be slowly but surely building up traffic. I had a massive leap in traffic in the middle of last week, because I had the sheer luck to pick up on a story that captured the public's imagination, at the very same time that Google decided to make my article its top-ranking page for anyone searching the term "Rougham Mirage".

I'm not really sure which direction to take this current blog in. Although the memes are lots of fun for me, and I've met some new people and built up a bit of traffic, the blog is lacking theme and focus. I've stopped posting personal stuff for a variety of reasons. I don't visit Gower very often these days, as the nerve damage in my neck, caused by cervical spondylosis, is causing me to have severe bouts of motion sickness. I have medication to take for that, but it unfortunately renders me a semi-zombie. So the original theme of this blog, involving my regular jaunts around Swansea Bay and Gower, has become somewhat redundant. Do I even need this blog any more? Maybe I should focus all effort on Strange Days.

Research isn't the only thing I've been doing. I've also signed up to the Amazon Associates program, both with Amazon UK and Amazon.com. To date, I've sold nothing, so I've been working hard on some new marketing strategies. I don't want to plaster my blogs in advertising. I know from personal experience that a blog full of ads is a huge turn-off. So I've been busy building up two separate stores, one for this blog, and one for Strange Days. Rather than just randomly bombarding visitors with ads for unrelated products, I'm compiling stores with relevant products which visitors may find useful. Neither store is complete yet.

The store for this blog will mostly focus on books about Swansea and Gower. The Strange Days store contains a large collection of books on paranormal subjects. It will also have an Amazon.com version, as I get a lot of visitors from the US. The good thing about these stores is that Amazon handles everything, so no-one need worry about the security of their personal information - I will never know it.

Anyway, it's time I went back to building my dot com empire, and planning some decent posts for both blogs. Have fun!