Another off topic conversation.  This is a great article from the NYTimes that will give readers an understanding of how stressful blogging can be for bloggers, especially if you start to build a large audience and a small empire.  Blogging can be hazardous to your health and very addicting.  I have written many of my own opinions as to why blogging can be hazardous to help you understand what many bloggers in the industry face daily. 

The successful bloggers in the domain industry love writing and it shows thru in their blog posts.  They write effectively and in such a way as to get readers involved or feel involved.  Additionally, they work hard and long hours to deliver a post that will beneficial to at least 1 reader, if not thousands. 

Is it easy, absolutely not.  It does get a little easier once you have mastered your procedures to publishing a post.  However, if you publish good posts all the time, readers expect this all the time and it can take a toll on your health.  You can not sustain this expectation, even bloggers get writers block.  Talk about stress.  No content=no visitors or decline in visitors. 

Stress:  Plenty of it in the blogging word.  You have to really think things out before you post something, or it could have a negative impact on future growth or credibility.  The average blog post takes me a minimum of an hour to construct, with the more detailed conversations taking 2 hours and more.  Important topics sometimes take days to write.  Why does it take so long? Effective writing and delivering the right perspective are the main reasons.  You have to ensure you are using proper english grammar as much as possible and project a professional/knowledgeable individual thru your writing.   The whole world has the opportunity of reading what you publish and possibly using it in their lives.   

Interaction:  The best part of blogging, but can also lead to frustration.  I find it very exciting to interact with strangers with like minded goals and interests.  It is also very time consuming responding to posts timely, but still very enjoyable.  However, there are those who love to cause controversy, drama, and arguments on blogs.  These type of people bring stress.  Sometimes it is good, but it is all in how you present your disagreement that will determine how it is taken.  Many of these people speak on emotions at the moment, rather than think things thru.  This frustrates all bloggers.    

Fitness:  Most bloggers gain weight because everything they do is in front of the computer.  They eat, drink, watch tv, and even sleep at their computer.  Of course, this is the domainers lifestyle.  :)  It is important to excercise at least one time a day, preferrably in the A.M.  I have found it helps in finding new topics to blog about and gives me the energy to take on the days workload.  

Family:  They want all your time.  The computer deserves non of it.  If you are married, you know what I am talking about.  This can be very hazardous to your health and marriage.  You have to find a balance.

So after reading this post and the NYTimes article, you now have a great understanding on what it takes for successful bloggers to deliver content for your reading pleasure.  There are 3 things you can do that will help your favorite bloggers continue doing what they do:

1.  Advertise and Visit Sponsored Links.  Support your blogger for the time they take daily to deliver enjoyable reading content.  The benefit of this is common sense.  It gives a blogger the motivation to continue to deliver effective content and take on the health risks of blogging.  Time is money.  Pay your bloggers for their time.

2.  Think things thru before you write a comment.  Go back and read the post again to ensure you read it the way the blogger intended it to be perceived.  Too many readers react on emotion, and miss the main idea of the post.  Later some find themselves saying, sorry, I didn’t read it thouroughly.  Take the time to read all first objectively, before disagreeing publicly.  You will find most of the time that the blogger addresses concerns of his readers, not the concerns of those outside of the blog.  What I mean by this, is blog readers have a voice and bloggers listen.  Even if it is sometimes a controversial topic.  Think things thru.

3.  Interact.  Bloggers love this and it encourages them to provide more content.  It also makes them a blogging addict. So do it!  It will only benefit you and thousands of others.  Pretty easy thing to do, yet people want to consistently take, and not give.  Give a little, it goes along way. :)    

“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”

“This is not sustainable,” he said.

(via NYTimes.com)

Well, my fellow friends and blog readers, the time has come to share statistics with you all on the amount of readers the blog has attracted in 3 months time.  I will be using compete.com analytics data and graphs as visual aides.  Many sites like to keep this data secretive, or fail to publish it for whatever reasons.  I feel it is imperative to let my readers know how they have grown the blog in a short of amount of time.

After all, growth is a double edge sword in the blogging world.  A blogger delivers fresh content on a subject or niche and the readers expand on the topic by providing comments.  This content and comments get embedded into search engines on the internet for others to stumble upon.  No blogger can generate reader growth by themselves, they must invest time and energy into visitors for this growth to take place.  This investment of time and energy pays off when visitors interact and conduct word of mouth advertising for the blog.

SimplyGeo.com has never done any paid advertising with third parties and has grown only by word of mouth and search engine traffic. There are no domains pointed to the blog as well, although many of our network names will be pointed in the upcoming month until development is complete.  In an earlier post, I stated that the feedburner reader did not mean much.  The reason I said that was because it does not deliver any true figures of how many people actually read a blog.  It is nice to show off as a bragging tool as more visitors subscribe to the blog feed, but overall it really means nothing to the amount of readers who frequent the blog.  People like to see numbers of subscribers, so blogs insert this feedburner graphic onto their blogs.  It is very helpful to publishers though, as you learn how to use the functions feedburner.com offers. 

The blog launched on 1 December 07 and has grown at rapid pace(at least in my opinion).  The month of December delivered approximately 500 unique visitors.  January 08 delivered approximately 1,850 unique visitors.  February 08 delivered approximately 4,426 unique visitors.  That is a growth rate of 134% from Janaury to February.

The month of February delivered 11,441 returning visitors, with a growth rate of 131% from January.  This indicates that content delivered was enough to get each unique visitor to visit the blog at least 2.5 times in the month. 

The average stay on the blog has gone up and is now at 4 minutes on average per visitor.

These stats are all great indicators on the the growth rate of the Geo domain industry.  People are getting the word out, and people are searching on the internet about this emerging industry.  We have only begun to scratch the surface of the Geo domain industry.  You all took the SimplyGeo.com blog with zero traffic, into a site with over 4,400 unique visitors in 3 months times.  Fresh content and visitor interaction equates to unlimited growth for any website on the internet.

Soon, we will be publishing press releases for the industry to include; networks, strategic partnerships, acquisitions, and developments to all major media outlets. (Make sure to sign up)  This will increase awareness of the industry and importance of geo domains in the future of the internet.

Skip and I would like to thank all of you for your support and interaction.  At this growth rate, this blog may become the biggest blog in the domain industry.  Not to bad for an unknown guy with some vision, motivation, opportunity and courage to face an uncertain niche filled with many proven professionals.  All of this is made possible because of you. Thank you for growing the blog consistently!  Please make sure to sign up for the newsletter and press releases.  Additionally, sign up for the Geo forum and feel free to interact there as well. 

Thank you once again my friends and blog readers,
-Steve- & -Skip-

Today, I placed the new SimplyGeo.com logo on the blog after months of deliberation.  When I first launched the blog, I knew one of the top priorities was to develop an effective logo that would communicate the Geo domain industry as a whole.  The blogs purpose was to cover this niche, and it was imperative to make a wise decision on the right logo that would communicate this.  

We all understand the importance of a logo and the success an effective logo can deliver.  There are many people who rush to put a logo on their site and this can be costly if you plan on growing your site into a business.   

Anyway, I thought about all the types of logos available, flash, fancy, plain, and busy.  After 2 months of brainstorming on many different ideas for the blog logo (Very Frustrating), the right concept presented itself in my eyes.  It was a simple plain logo that said so much if you understand logos and this industry.

The logo is located on the left hand side of the header.  It does not include the buildings and has a blue backdrop.  Every logo has a story to tell, so here is SimplyGeo.com’s story.  

This is what the logo was developed to communicate:

-The circle signifies the World and it’s many destinations
-The bold GEO signifies the importance of geo domains as new media of the world
-The white signifies the purity of traffic geo domains deliver
-The blue signifies the unity of professionals in this industry throughout the world connected by oceans

So this is the new logo.  Please let me know your thoughts, The good, the bad and the ugly.  I do not take offense to constructive critisism.  A plain and simple logo is sometimes the most effective logo.       

Only a couple days left until the big announcement is made.  15 February is around the corner.  It will be great for the Geo domain industry and will help expedite the maturity of the industry.  I would really like to thank all of you for taking the time out of your busy days to read the blog.  SimplyGeo.com has become the number one source of information on the Geo domain industry on the internet in just 2 months because of your involvement.

I would like to remind you that you are welcomed to write a guest post on the blog.  The only criteria is that it must be related to the Geo domain industry.  I honestly feel that in order for anything to grow, you must give individuals a sense of ownership and pride in an organization, service, or product.  Blogging gives this sense of ownership, and this is why it is so popular on the internet.  This blog was launched with all of you in mind as I have stated many times before. Send me an email if you are interested. 

I have received an abundance of emails from many geopreneurs, domainers, and new startups offering domain services, different types of partnerships, and such as you can imagine.  Thank you for your emails and offers, as I am flattered.  If I come across services that will bring value to geopreneurs, I will blog about it.  However, I apologize if I do not blog about your business or link to you.  Please do not take offense.

This blog is highly targeted with “Quality” readers who are decision makers on serveral fronts, and I do not want to cover general domaining services they can find on other sites.  

This hopefully will encourage tech gurus to develop services specifically for the Geo domain industry.  GeoDomainTools.com will be developed in the future into a marketplace for such gurus to offer services and opensource products that will assist in defining this industry and geopreneurs with their goals. If you have products available that bring value to geopreneurs, please send me an email.

Once again, thank you for your support, and please keep those Service Members in harms way in your prayers for a safe return home.

There are a variety of tools I will be implementing into SimplyGeo.com to assist in promoting the Geo Domain Niche and to establish a Geo Domain Network.  These tools will give Geopreneurs the resources needed to become successful in this industry thru a stream of user-generated content and affiliated services made available.  The first tool to be released is the Geo forum.  It is still in the beta stage until users add content and make recommendations of Topics to add.  While it is not the first Geo Forum, my goal is to make it the “GO TO”  forum for the Geo Domain Niche. Everything posted on it will be 100% related to the Geo industry. I have added a Forum tab on top of the blog to make it easy for you to get your complete fix all in one place on the geo industry.   

Because of the work load of these projects and daily blogging, I may not be able to respond to comments and emails timely.  Please bare with me as I complete these projects and build an effective game plan.  Additionally, I would like to invite and encourage you to write an informative Guest post to share with readers of the blog.  Collectively we can learn an abundance of information from each other.   

Enjoy the SimplyGeo.Net Forum.  Recommendations are welcomed via the forum.

Thank you for your patience and interaction.

Steve

Wordpress is somewhat difficult at times for a non programming guy like me to put the nuts and bolts together.  I had to learn many, many, new things to get this blog to where it is today.  Many of things are not visible, such as rankings in search engines (moving up quickly #10 in google for Geo Domains and #1 on many other terms), site navigation, etc.  Still lots to learn to clean up the site! 

In the past couple of days, I have added the subscribe RSS Icon on the top right hand corner, which has a drop down menu for you to select how you wish to receive feeds from this blog.  

Additionally, I have added the “Share This” function on the bottom of each post.  This allows you to email blog articles seemlessly (registration is not needed), and subit blog content to a variety of websites(registration may be needed).  By submitting blog content to these websites, (such as digg, del.icio.us, google, etc.) you help the Geo Domain Niche grow and the SimplyGeo.com blog grow. 

Please use these added features and let me know what other things you would like added to assist with sharing and receiving information on the Geo Domain Niche. 

Thank you,
Steve