Self Promotion is the best awareness...

Here I was, 8 weeks into my blogging adventure, trying to figure out how to get more feedback and more readers for free.  Was I wasting my time?  Were my stories worthwhile?  Living in the unknown, getting little or no feedback was nagging me like a mosquito in a tent at night!  My wife must be the most patient and diplomatic person in the World, as she was forced to read and comment every single blog story I had written.

You really want to know whether you are on the right track or on the track towards a Siberian work camp, otherwise you might as well start painting pictures of the clouds again in therapy classes.

Anyway, what do you do?

Well, the best thing to do is self promotion.  If nobody wants to promote you, then do it yourself - DIY Marketing I guess.  It is absolutely free, as long as you have some friends you can spam.  You are only making a fool out of yourself towards your friends - they might already consider you a bit of a weirdo already, so no harm done, right?

So, I spammed a few of my friends, "persuading" them to read my blog.  Of course they would read my blog, wouldn't they?  But was I getting constructive feedback and were they just being nice to me because they wanted me to leave them alone?

Either way, I needed to know and spammed them - not once, but three times, making sure they got the mail.

Still, nobody became a follower.  Was I that bad?  Perhaps people didn't read my blog, because I didn't have any followers?  Easy, I registered my wife as a follower - without her consent of course :-)  That triggered something and the the second follower joined 2 weeks ago.  Amazing!  Yahoo, 2 people were reading my blog.

The flood gates had opened and before I knew I had whopping 5 followers.  Soon, this might become 6.  I'm must be on to something big :-)  I must soldier on to keep my followers happy.

As Bon Jovi sang on the "Keep the Faith" album ('92-93):

No, you know it's never too late
Right now we got to keep the faith
Faith: don't let your love turn to hate
Oh-oh you got to
Keep the faith