What happens when you start listening to advice...

Sometimes, other people's advice leads you astray, for example: "You should study actuarial science."


Still, I decided to go out on a limb and ask some more successful bloggers about what they did to make their blog work. These are the tips I got (in no particular order.)

1. Make the text and background colours easy on the eye. (Which is why my background is now white and my text black, instead of vice versa)
2. Follow lots of blogs
3. Comment on lots of related blogs (something that I have to work on)
4. Put the follow widgets at the top.
5. Be yourself (can't help it). Use your own name for your blog address. (I decided against it due to known difficulties faced by people trying to spell my name and surname...)
6. Be honest, but don't rant. (I'm rather opinionated, so I have to make sure to keep my tendencies in check.)
7. ALWAYS think of your readers. Don't be self-serving or self-righteous, because then no one will like you. (Who me? *flutters innocent eyelashes* never...)
8. Try to give your readers what they want.
9. Keep things short and sweet. Apparently 300 words is a good cut off point. (Yipe! I'm always tempted to write books and books. But from now on I promise that I won't waffle. Or at least... I promise I'll try not to waffle.)
10. Make time to blog. Set a regular schedule. If you have to deviate, let your readers know. Once a week is good, daily is better.

So there you have it. The top ten tips I learned to get my blog to work. Thank you to everyone that responded so quickly to my questions. You are awesome.