It’s Been Awhile
Posted by Moses on Jan 28, 2008
It’s been a little while since I’ve written. A lot has changed in the last few months. I got married. I moved. I’ve experienced some of the happiest times in my life. It’s been fantastic. There has also been some sadness and tragedy. In this same period, I’ve have 1 friend and 1 family member die.
What does all of this mean for Three Sticks? First, it means that I’m back. I apologize for being out of the loop. I hope my explanation above is sufficient. Second, it means that the site will go through some changes. You can already see some of that with the redesign. I hope you all like it. I would love to get feedback. It should be faster than the previous version of the site. Lastly, it means that there will be more articles that focus on hope as I’ve found more of myself in these past few months.
All in all, I’m excited and I’m looking forward to a new year of writing and sharing.
— Moses
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Taking Your Blog to the Next Level
Posted by Moses on Jul 8, 2007
I know that I have been conspicuously absent this weekend especially for those looking for a post that focuses on personal development and Christianity. I have a good excuse. 
I’ve spent most of the weekend marketing Three Sticks. My regular readers know that I’ve changed the title of this blog over the past week going from Three Sticks — Empowering, Teaching, Healing to Three Sticks — Personal Development for Christians. Although, I’m not entirely satisfied by the title, because I don’t want to push away non-Christians, I am going to leave it for the foreseeable future until I come up with a title that makes the Christian and Personal Development themes of this blog readily evident.
Approximately, 1 week ago, I wrote an article entitled, Overcoming a Performance Plateau, which focused on my feeling like my performance had leveled off and how I planned to address it. When I spent more time examining my feelings, I realized that part of the reason I felt that way was due to the consistent stats I saw from Three Sticks. Unfortunately, those number are not where I want them to be and like any other blogger I need to increase the readership of my blog. The central issue has been marketing. Although, I have made some efforts to make Three Sticks popular see my article 20 Steps to Increase the Ranking of Your Blog 10X, I knew it was time to kick it up a level and really increase my reach.
I have come up with the following plan to take Three Sticks to the next level. The plan is broken into goals which are supported by objectives that in turn are supported by activities. The goals are measurable and provide a direction for the objectives and activities. The objectives are concrete requirements that increase the likelihood of meeting a specific goal, but also translate into specific activities. The activities are the actions that I will undertake to meet the objectives.
Goals:
- Increase the revenue generated by Three Sticks
Increase the traffic to Three Sticks
Increase the number of people that I help
Objectives:
- Increase the number of links to Three Sticks
- Increase the number of RSS subscriptions to Three Sticks
- Increase the relevance of Three Sticks for Personal Development and Christianity in such engines
Activities
- Increase the number of articles I publish in a month — I need to give readers a reason to come and visit the site every day
- Increase the number of search engines, RSS feed aggregators and directories that include Three Sticks
- Make the title more relevant
- Submit articles to blog carnivals every week
- Review the SEO for Three Sticks to make sure that I am using the appropriate HTML in the appropriate places
- Increase the number of high-quality comments and trackbacks I leave on other sites
Over the past 2 weeks, I have tackled each of these activities. I spent this past weekend submitting Three Sticks to the search engines, directories and RSS feed aggregators listed at the following sites:
- Ari Paparo Dot Com’s Big List of Blog Search Engines
- Fagan Finder Blogs and RSS Search Engines
- Blog Search Engine’s Where To Submit Your RSS
- Add URL.nu A Great List of Free SEO Friendly Directories
I have made it through the first 3 links and 100 of 985 directories listed at Add URL for a total of approximately 250 directories. Over the next month I will complete the Add Url.nu list.
I believe that consistent attention to these activities over the next several months will make my goals into reality. I have included the links to the directory listings for others to use.
Tags: blog directories, blog search engines, blogging, directories, feed aggregator, performance, RSS, RSS feed, search engines, SEO, site news, Three Sticks
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