Susannah Breslin on Blog Marketing and Hustle

At Forbes (via Instapundit):

These days, it’s not enough to be a good writer online. You have to be a smart marketer, your own content factory, your own publicist. If you can do it all, you are golden. If you cannot, you are screwed.

Breslin's using her own experience moving from True/Slant to Forbes as a case study, but the quote cited is applicable to anyone who's writing online nowadays. When I was away at the Horowitz West Coast Retreat last weekend I didn't bother with my blog. I think I put up just one post on Saturday, and maybe three on Sunday. And of course there was no promotion, through cross-posting, Facebook, Twitter, etc. My traffic numbers were already down for March but I think I had just over 1300 hits last Saturday, which is way down. I've been writing less frequently all around, in any case. Partly because of burnout, but not entirely. I've been reading, spending time with my wife and sons, going to the movies and bookstores, and out to eat! And then of course there's my work, which has been pretty interesting of late, especially with the panel on Egypt the other day, which had me preparing in advance for most of the week.

Anyway, this reminds me that Doug Ross had my blog ranked 100 out of the top 150 conservative websites --- which was surprising, since I don't do that well on the Alexa rankings. And besides that, my Wikio numbers have been eroding over the last year. I thought I was going to be bumped from the top 100 at Wikio but I've dropped down to 93 for the March rankings. I'd by lying if I said I didn't care. When you blog full-time --- as a second but very low-paying job --- the rankings provide a little recognition. That's why William Jacobson's always joking about how he doesn't pay attention to his top blog ranking for both legal and political blogs, precisely while he's writing another post on his top blog rankings for both legal and political blogs! William cites Technorati's rankings, and checking over there my blog is currently #65 for political blogs and #61 for U.S. political blogs --- so I guess that's not too bad. I'm surprised it's that good, since as noted I've been worrying a lot less about promotion. It's time consuming and takes a helluva lot of work. But I keep plugging away -- at blogging, promotion, and original reporting --- since this seems to be what gives me the most intellectual enrichment right now, and that's to say nothing of my addiction!

More later ...