10k visitors in first 6 weeks, but where do I go from here?

I sent this message to a Stumbleupon friend.

“It’s my baby Been up for about 6 weeks I think, and doing well so far, but I’m still trying to find my groove. I want to target a niche, but just not sure which one to go after. I guess Hawaii related stuff would be the obvious choice, but I’m just not sure I could make interesting posts day in and day out with just Hawaii posts. Any suggestions? :P”

I guess it really wraps up how I feel about this site right now.  Anyone have suggestions on how to find a niche to target?

Dear Boss, Please pay me like this:

Letter to my manager

Dear Boss, Please pay me like this:

Base: $7.50 per hour

Then add to that:

.25c every time I have to answer any question of any kind.

$1 every time I have to answer the phone.

$1 every time I have to recommend a restaurant that doesn’t suck.

$2 every time I check a guest in or out.

$3 ever time someone asks me a retarded question, such as ” ‘So where are the elevators?’ ‘Uh, 10 feet behind you sir.’ ”

$3 every time I have to haul bags up to the room that are so heavy the plane on the way over was flying tilted to the side.

$5 every time someone complains about how long their flight was. IT’S HAWAII, EVERYONES flight is long, don’t you realize I hear this same drivel a thousand times every single day? Stop whining!

$10 every time any woman over 50 years old flirts with me.

$10 every time any woman over 200 pounds flirts with me.

$15 every time someone who speaks HORRIBLE english insists on trying to get their point across even thought they know damn well I don’t speak German / Japanese / Norwegian / or Slovenian. And yes, I have seen every one of these.

$25 every time a customer yells at me for absolutely nothing.

$50 every time a coworker yells at me for absolutely nothing.

$75 every time a man of any age or weight flirts with me.

$99 every time my manager even asks me to plunge a toilet.

$300 every time a child barfs in the lobby.

$10,000 every time someone takes a shit in the elevator.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jeremy G.

I’m love blogging, why do my friends not care?

I am excited as hell to have my own web page

For the last two months, my life consists 1. Going to work, 2. working on my website. I’m stoked about it, I feel productive, I have the feeling that it has real potential to reach a ton of people and some day soon make some good money, maybe enough to start enjoying more of life. It’s a pipe dream, I know, but infinitely better than getting addicted to World of Warcraft again, right?

Why don’t my friends give a shit?

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I’m honestly surprised at how little my close group of friends seems to care. I mean, I’m not saying they are assholes or anything, but it seems like almost none of them actually visit my site even though I’ve told everyone I know about it quite a few times. This strikes me as really odd. If one of my best friends told me today that they were really excited about something, and that it’s pretty much all that they’ve been doing lately, I would be all over it. People have access to computes 24/7 these days, so the only explanation for them not at least checking it out, say, once a week, is that they really don’t give a shit.

Let’s look at the possible reasons for this.

1. This site is crap.

My thoughts: Possible, but I really don’t think so. I’ve had damn near everyone who has seen it say something along the lines of “Pretty nice, way better than most blogs out there.” I’ve put a ton of time into it, and almost set my computer on fire after being so frustrated by it as seen in this post, but I’ve overcame every challenge so far and am happy with my results.

2. There isn’t enough good content

Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the reason. For a while there I was focusing on layout, plugins, site design, getting Stumble traffic…. yup, pretty much everything except writing good content. Most of my earliest posts are absolute rubbish, just check the first few to see what I mean. No proofreading of any kind, devoid of any interesting tidbits or humor… they just really suck.
If my close friends don’t care about this site which I put so much time into, it’s not their fault, it’s mine. It’s obviously not good enough to make people want to come back, and that’s my bad. It would be useful to know why, but oh well, no point in speculating. All there is to do now is make it the best I can, and be happy with the results. Like I said earlier, I’m not mad in any way, just surprised.

What I’m really trying to say is…

if you like a site, leave comments. Nothing makes a website owner more happy than to see comments, because then I know that people give a shit. Even if it is something as small as “cool post,” it feels great to know people are actually enjoying the site. When I get over 1,000 unique hits in one day, if I see that people looked at my site for 5 seconds and left, versus 100 people saw it but most of them looked around, read a few posts, and left a few comments, I feel much more satisfaction as a blogger from the second group. If you enjoy the site, comment away.

PS After doing all of this complaining, I feel obliged to check my stat program, and sure enough, it seems that my good friends M &/or M from Oceanside, California have have been coming here regularly, so a big shout out to them

Edit:

I wrote this two weeks ago, and some friends must have read my mind, because they have been visiting and commenting more since then. So even though the problem has (kind of) been solved since then, this was heartfelt, so I’m going to post it anyways.