I have either hit (or am soon to hit) about 500 posts on my blog. So, reflecting back on this monumental achievement, I have some thoughts and words of advice.
1. The key to having more than your friends and family visit your blog is persistence: To write 500 posts, I had to do a lot of groundwork for this blog, both in the way of writing and networking through social media. A lot of that work was done back when the number of visitors that I have per day sometimes exceeds the number of visitors that I used to get per month. So, I had to keep blogging, even when I didn't get that many people reading my blog.
2. Twitter is an awesome source for traffic: 500 blog posts have taught me that Twitter (and more recently Facebook) are awesome sources for traffic that all bloggers should utilize. Probably 1/2 or so of my daily traffic on this blog is directly attributable to Twitter. It gives each of my blog entries a very long shelf life because I constantly retweet old posts.
3. Having a big blog is awesome: Not only do I have a big blog now (which the search engines love), but I have a sort of online diary. Even though most of my entries are videos or picture lists, I have a record of the types of things that made me smile, think, and grin (like all the pictures of pretty girls I have on here).
4. There is no money to be made in blogging unless you treat it like a part time job: 500 blog entries have taught me that, unless you're willing to work at it like a part time job, there is little money to be made in blogging. Sum total, I think that I have made about 200 dollars lifetime from blogging, including Adsense and paid blog entries revenue. I firmly believe that people can make money (as Doocebag Megan Armstrong has proven), but I don't think that very many people make money overall. And even then, they would probably make more money for the time spent by going down to UPS and throwing boxes at night.
5. Blogging can be rewarding: I feel a sense of accomplishment when I reflect on my blog entries. Even with the short entries I usually write on here, it's pretty good to get 500 of them.
