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How To Bring A Blog Back To Life

written by Mitchell Harper on May 28, 2007

Make Money!

Note: This post was guest blogged by me, Mitchell Harper of www.HarpzOn.com. After a brief break from blogging I’m back and will be updating my blog as per usual.

If you’re subscribed to my mailing list then you’ll know that I’ve started my blog back up again at www.harpzon.com. I love blogging and helping people and couldn’t keep away for too long – I just had some other projects I had to take care of, such as Big Response (a hosted email marketing solution that we’re launching here in Australia).

In today’s guest post I thought I’d tell you how I’m planning to resurrect my blog. Although the RSS subscribers has stayed the same (500 or so), traffic has dropped from over 1,000+ uniques a day to about 300 – which is still pretty good considering I just had HarpzOn.com redirected to Interspire.com.

There are a few things I’m going to do to get my blog back into the limelight:

1. Guest post like crazy. Since I started blogging I’ve become good friends with John and lots of other “big time” bloggers, so I’ve kindly asked them if I can guest post on their blogs and guess what, they all agreed :)

2. Post excellent content for link bait purposes. I’m in the process of writing a “top 100″ post for my blog. It will be absolutely massive and will be up within the week. I wont tell you what it’s about but I can tell you if you have a blog you wont want to miss it.

3. Just like I did before I’ll be contributing my thoughts as comments to a lot of the blogs I read. I haven’t had much time to do that lately but now that things have died down I have to time to really start reading blog posts again

4. I’m also putting out a press release. It costs $80 and drives an *insane* amount of traffic. The trick with a press release is to link your newsworthy item to a major even that’s going on, so I might tie my press release into the “emerging trend” of “professional blogging” or something like that. You just have to be creative.

5. Finally, I’ll visit my friends over at ReviewMe and order up some reviews of my blog. More specifically this will be my “I’m baaaaaack” campaign, which I’ll promote for a few weeks. If you’re on my mailing list you would’ve got an email from me about it this morning.

So there you have it, my plan to “make a come back” so to speak. I have lots of exciting topics to write about and taking a break from blogging has really helped me feel refreshed and rejuvenated. It’s also a nice reason to do some public relations and social marketing to get the word out there :)

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This is a cool post. It's a unique topic as far as I've seen - and that doesn't happen very often.

I gotta give him mad props for coming back. Well, at least it will be easier than before to bring traffic again to his blog since he has credibility.

my evil linkbait worked yesterday. traffic levels doubled.

always worth keeping an eye on Google Trends folks.

like Mitch, my blog is also going through an "i'm baaaaack" phase. i never really treated the blog seriously, as it was previously more of an online bookmarks folder for myself.

my link bait from yesterday sure seems to have worked, and i've posted the google analytics graphs in this linkbait update post.

obviously, its not a good idea to constantly linkbait with each and every post, as that would be really really evil, rather than being slightly evil. But i think i'll be frequenting Google Trends a lot more in future.

Very glad to have the master of practical advice back!

Now, how do I get my bloglog avatar to show when I comment??

That's what I started doing with my personal blog.

You can always just start up a new domain and post simultaneously.

I think I missed the part where he was thinking of selling the site. What happened there?

I'm plugging today's posting: I thought it might inspire Harpzon.com and other readers/bloggers who are getting started.

Good luck on (re)viving your blog! Do give regular posts on how the process is going!

Harpzon.com is dead! Long live Harpzon.com!!

speaking of link baiting, i've just posted some evil link bait on my blog

That Allison Stokke photo

:twisted: :twisted:

:twisted:
have a look at this Google Trends page - my link bait blogpost is mentioned in the blog post section.
:twisted:

Welcome back Mitch...it was evil how you left and came back...now everyone is going to be talking about it!...all part of your master plan!

off topic: I notice that I have to login for the nofollow to take effect.

Really! That's not good!... it shouldn't need logging in! Hope it's not true.

Kenneth

so is this post a reviewme?

or john is giving free publicity for friend?

It's not a ReviewMe because Mitch wrote the post himself.

Sigh of relief! It's great that you didn't sell your domain. Glad to have you back in the loop, Mitch!

Gene,

it is a sign of web success to get your domain so attractive to buyers. i would have congratulated him if his domain had been bought, particularly for a big sum.

Still glad he stuck around (if he had sold it for big bucks, I don't think I'd have a problem with that anyway).

Glad to see you back mitch :D

Welcome back, please stick with it now. You have some quality content on your site for sure!

What press release service do you use, Mitchell?

I was wondering the same thing. PRWeb is the only one I know about simply because I don't know much (read: anything) about making a press release.

I never even knew John had guest writers.

He has a few. Michael Kwan is one of his more active writers as of late.

John usually throws ReviewMe's my way, but I intend on doing some more non-ReviewMe posts in the future.

it is a common mistake. many readers are consumed by the content and do not bother to read the change of style and the byline.

I must admit, guest blogging to promote your own blog, its pure evil :twisted:

But all in all, still genius, welcome back Mitch

And don't forget to kick John's ass :smile:

Nice to see you back. Look forward to seeing more of your post. BTW, good post here. This is also good advice for starting a blog!

:arrow: Don

Its not good enough if you are new to blogging. It is only good if you 'connected' in the blogosphere.

A new blogger can certainly use many of those same techniques to boost traffic to a new blog as well as revitalizing an old one, especially 2, 3 and 4.

If you've got the $$$, then 5 would work as well.

:arrow: Don

ehhhh.... I don't know if I will read his blog. He just kind of left last time...

well, you have a good start by being a guest poster here. so.. because i like this post, to whom should i buy a beer? :)

Well i think you will stop after a while for sure.

Hopefully Mitch has learnt something from the experience though. I think instead of just quickly abandoning the project/blog, he should have just kept all the info online and made a post about how he needs to take a break. I would have been fine with that (more than how he just jumped ship so unexpectedly).

I personally think that personally branded blogs lose value if the author leaves.

Would you read this blog or Shoemoney's if they decide to leave?

So true, personally branded blogs have that danger of fading after the owner fazes out.

But these special bloggers pack a potency in their fingers that, anytime they resurface anywhere on the blogosphere, there trademark triggers fresh onslaught of traffic to the new platform.

A case in point is Jennifer Slegg, and recently too our Jane May.

Agreed... I don't think I'd read the blog after the personality left.. and yes Jane has done a fabulous job for herself!

Yeah, I noticed that your site had been redirected. I thought you had just given up. :)

Great blog post! Are you going to email blog posters about the press release? How is that going to work?

Welcome back. I'm sure traffic will be back in no time.

Hope you don't mind me asking, but did you not find a sale for the domain? Or did you just decide that it's better if you stick with it.

I ask because I would not understand why someone would want to buy harpzon.com for that amount. Other than the stats, you are IMO the only one who could really benefit from that domain name.

Nice to have decided to "make a come back"!
Looking forward to reading your new exciting topics :wink:

Mitch, I am so glad you'll be back! Please stay this time!!!