Contests and Comments

Happy Monday!!

Today I waited for a blog to go up on Chip MacGregor's website before I posted my blog so I'm running a little late.

Today I want to share a little bit of information about contests for your writing and comments on your blog.

As I've told you before, it is important to track what is working and what isn't. I use google analytics to see where my traffic is coming from [whether links on other blogs, name searches, etc] as well as when it comes.

This is important because I've noticed an interesting trend-Comments have very little to do with traffic!!

It is amazing. If you are like me whenever I went to websites I assumed that the more comments there were, the more popular the blog. In fact, this has proven to be almost the exact opposite. As more and more of you become loyal readers I'm noticing less comments. It seems comments come in PRIMARILY by people who stumble upon my blog and have a question. Sometimes it's also something like "I was here".

My hit count has been consistently growing during the same time my comments have almost completely stagnated.

So be encouraged. If you don't see a gob of comments you're in a great group. We'd all like to have people comment on our blog but in reality there isn't any real correlation that I've seen between my traffic, subscription base and comments.

If any of you would like to share your views on this from your own blog I'd love to hear it.

Now, Contests.

As I said, I wanted to wait until Chip MacGregor posted earlier today. I had asked him a question about contests and he said he'd answer it on his blog. Please click this link and read his Feb. 18th post to find out what he had to say, from an agents perspective, about entering contests.

Also, if you know of great fiction and non-fiction contests tell us about them in the comment section. I'd love to hear from you.

Your coach for the journey, Tiffany Colter