The 1031 Like-Kind Exchange Blog Experiment

I stumbled upon something rather amazing the other day. While I was not posting on the blog as I was getting other things taken care of, I kept checking the blog’s stats and was floored by what I saw. It dawned on me that I hadn’t posted for a week at this time but was still getting tons of hits. Let me preference all of this with saying that my first blog post was on October 4, 2007, and for the first three weeks had 30 views on the blog. I’m sure (I at least hope :)) you all lived in similar obscurity at the onset.

This last week and a half while I didn’t post once, didn’t change a single thing about the blog’s widgets or anything else internal, never made a single comment on anyone’s blog, and only checked my blog stats. Taking all of this laziness on my part into account, in the last 11 days I have had a new ‘High Day’ for views twice, each with over 150% more views than the previous high day. Also, in the last 14 days I have had more hits than almost all days combined since I began blogging 2 months ago.

So, here are my thoughts as to why I have had such great results when I haven’t done a thing (in no particular order):

1. The more I have written, the more web crawlers have been hitting the blog. And from this, more Google hits! (A couple of days ago the blog was on the front page 3 different times under “1031 exchange blog”. Today just once on the front page and 3 times on the second page.)
2. The longer I’ve written, the more subscribed readers I’ve gotten. (An average of 2 new subscribers a day if I can properly read my Feedburner account.)
3. Technorati finally came and visited…I think. (Went from 8 million something to 4,562,194 as of posting, but still with no favorites or authority. L I actually favorited myself on accident and can’t undo it, so I look like a loser.)
4. There are tons of Real Estate Blogs readers and Blog Top List. (Over 50 hits from them alone.)

From this incomplete reasoning, the one thing I can say with some confidence is: I think I have officially tapped into the “pipeline” of Google Goodness. Either there’s recently been a huge influx of people looking for 1031 exchanges on blogs or I have started to show up on lots of different keywords that I didn’t show up on otherwise. I’m going to take the latter, but still hope for the former for future dealings’ sake. In fact, from WordPress I have taken stock of all the different tags people are finding me through and have tons of posting ideas. The information from those tags is worth its weight in gold!

My early theory that I have not been around long enough to have consistent readership and subscribed readers is taking a bit of a hit. For that, I am astonished and very grateful. I didn’t originally intend to not post for almost two weeks, but nonetheless, I have learned a great deal about the blog and where I want to focus. Most importantly though, I’ve gotten a renewed energy and desire to make this as great a value source as I can for each of you. You are coming to 1031 Like-Kind Exchange Blog for a reason and I want to give you each a reason to stay! Thank you to everyone that has taken an interest, however slight, in the little blog of 1031 exchanges that’s trying to establish itself as The 1031 Expert in blogging.

Let me know what you think as to why the blog did so well while I neglected it and what I can do to make it all the better.

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