In one month in the early goings three of my blogs, PanAsianBiz, 
RisingSunOfNihon and TheBizOfKnowledge, combined for a page viewership of 360,000+ up 55% from the 230,000 the previous month.
I know more about what did not cause the growth than what did. Following are 6 steps I did NOT take.
1. It was NOT because of exceptional writing skill. At the time I was posting way too much – 150 blogs each month for each blog. I was not giving or more accurately did not give each post the quality attention I would have liked. (See there…three times I used ‘each’ in this short point.
2. It was NOT because of timeliness. For some reason posts I wrote in months previously were picked up on, recycled and reread.
Here are two examples.
20 Hilarious Ratings of Professors at RateMyProfessors.com
and
Bao Xishun, Sun MingMing, Yao Ming – China’s Giants
Old blogs get read,too despite the fact that I was reading the rankings at quite a few Japanese, Chinese and Education websites every morning, was subscribed to some popular news feeds and I checked the news tickers throughout the day to find the ‘editor’s picks’ to learn what was already being read, and trying to put my spin on it.
3. It was NOT because I am original. I learned, borrowed, stole an idea from another writer who’s topic was Bollywood. Bollywood…hmmm….with my wife’s help I tired devoting a post or so each day about show biz in China and Japan. I have been given credit for coining the word Chollywood.
4. It was NOT because I was the best in my niche at finding readers. Another Japan writer, who will remain anonymous because despite some very good content, will also stoop rather low on some topics to get traffic, allows his sitemeter to be viewed. Hmm…who is reading his blog, I wondered? I submitted a few of my posts to the same place he did and voila! some of my blogs began to appear. About a half dozen posts were picked up from all three of my sites.
Here is one of them:
University Student Gets $68K to Study “Head Banging”, “Moshing”, the Bogan Life Style
It was picked up and TBOK received more than 7,000 views.
5. It was NOT because I have the best ideas. Instapundit posts 20-30 times a day and gets close to 200,000 viewers EVERY DAY! Holy Moly…I thought. I was happy to get that many in a month! So, I created Chundits, Nippondits and Wisdumb….thinking that if readers will come once, maybe they will come two times or more. The ideas didn’t catch on or I didn’t stick with them long enough.
6. It is NOT because I get , netscaped, dugg, farked and zipped, though I have had this happen to me. Social media will bring short lived traffic. But, that’s not what it brought it this particular month.
Traffic was growing and I wish I could say I knew why. Then again, sometimes it’s the things we do NOT do that make a difference, no?
Are there other things I do NOT do that have caused growth? Perhaps there are. And if I remember them, I will post them here.
How about you? How are you getting traffic to your site? What are you NOT doing?
