Let us face it ! Every one enters the blogosphere with a goal of sorts in mind. Some to make more friends, some to reach out to old pals, some to make up for lost grounds, some to kill time, some for the ad dollars..but it really boils down to two things: people and money!

What we choose to do with these two assets is a different issue altogether. I, personally, cherish the friendships that I have made after entering the blog world and I do admit making some money for my charity causes too! But it was not an easy start though! For days and days, I kept writing and wondering why no body visited my blog while every one had their own comment clouds and pal pools!

That was when I stumbled on some high impact blogs..the sort that attract 50,000 visitors a day, and observed what they do. Here is what Dr. watson found out ..

• Think narrow and win broad: This is something I donot do myself because I really wanted to give my friends like sridharan and taggy the ability to post occasionally here but narrowing down your blog’s category is pivotal: is it a gardening blog? a photo blog? … a personal blog? If so, what is that you do very well (your core skill set) in your real life and people recognize you for? Play to your strengths. I would be half as excited about Agassi’s scuba diving blog, although he may be very good at it, as I would be about his tennis blog. That does not mean you have to stop writing about other topics and tags but just make sure you have atleast 1 post every week on your core topic (photos, fun-n-humor, travel, music, movies are some universally compatible categories to get started).
• Get the basics right: Here is a wonderful 101 on blogging basics to improve visitors to your blog. It is amazing how all my successful blogger friends that I met online got only some of them right and still attract so much attention! Needless to say, this helps you get a very good basic foot print but stopping here would only mean 40-50 visitors per day.
• Think money? think blogshares: I am still checking this out myself but was amazed by the traffic that it drives to my blog. Consider portals like blogshares where blogs are traded for virtual money. In real life though, these portals are goliathic hubs that help people surf through blog lists.
• Fill the lists!: Blog listing portals like ricebowljournals.com sound silly but are effective. A lot of bloggers looking out for people with similar interests or for people from similar backgrounds end up on these list blogs and trust me, it works!
• Technorati ranking: This is no traffic driving unit but it tells how many people link to us and how often they themselves refer to our blogs. Great tool!
• Be unique enough for search engines: Make sure all the search engines crawl you. They do so automatically if you are on blogpost or other blog syndicates but the key part is to make sure you have something on your blog that search engines would love to give you the top spot for! Again, this typically would be your core tag that you blog about atleast once in a week.
• Go RSS!: Let us face it. You are not the only blog that your friends visit and vice versa. So, it really makes things mutually convenient to have RSS on your site so that friends can use tools like Google reader or my yahoo to pick your rant up. Thanks to Komal for introducing me to google reader. It is very handy!
• Tone it down: It is 200% important to be funny, creative and out of the box but ‘condom free’ talk is going to limit your audience and that is for sure. All the funny stuff can be comfortably said so without crossing civil limits. zoonie is a good example! Though he looms close to the boundaries, he makes sure he does not step over.
• People or money (not both): This is a bit of a bold thing to say but in my honest opinion, frequent returning visitors donot click on ads. Reason is very simple. Ad programs have their limitations as well and display content within your context unless you drastically change it every time (or customize your ad category). So, the probability that a returning visitor comes to your site and finds some real cool ad to click on reduces over time. So, if you want ad money, make sure you improve your search engine and blog list visibility to attract new visitors every day (a healthy weightage is to have atleast 40% new visitors daily , on an average) ! But return visitors are very important! They keep the conversation and the blog alive and make it worth reading with their inputs and comments. They are the ones that tell you how worth reading your blog is even to the first timer! So keep them coming and keep visiting them as well!
• Consider new ad channels: The ad market is not just gooogle adsense. New players like chitika e-minimalls are sprouting up all the time. Have an eye on this segment even if you are not here for the penny money. You can always donate them at the end of the year if you like but the penny rewards would simply double your motivation to blog everyday.
• Treat your friends with respect: I donot mean things like “Donot go unloading a bunch of bull when commenting on people’s blogs” and definitely donot mean things like “donot write comments like ‘nice post’, ‘good read’ and ‘thanks for sharing wid us’“! They go without saying but it is important to eliminate that inner disregard for a fellow blogger, if you visit him regularly.
  Most blogs are very personal entities and contain tender personal feelings. Learn to respect them. It is great if you can be funny or leave intelligent comments but your lack of interest or respect for a blogger really shows up very quickly. You are being stupid if you think they cannot sense the irony in your comments or that you can back bitch about your pal’s blog elsewhere and get away with it but lack of appreciation would make you a lackadaisical visitor soon enough.
  After all, It is your blog friends that link up your blog, tip you on how to improve your blog, patiently read through your random amblings and care to comment. So, they deserve that little bit of respect, dont you think?