Variety Friday: A Little Community Spirit

The readership of this blog has steadily grown since I started it in September of 2008. While I'd love to see it explode, I know that it takes awhile for people to find you and it takes a steady stream of regular and frequent posting to help ensure that Google will send interested parties your way.

That being said, I owe a great deal to two other bloggers who through their linking to my blog have helped build my readership. One of those bloggers is Bryan at Cheap Eats and Cheaplander. The other is the great and powerful Marvo at The Impulsive Buy. Every time I get a little link love from these fellows, my readership jumps and I really, really appreciate it.

Both of these fellows are "big guns" in the blogging review world. They're the sort who could easily choose to ignore the likes of a little start-up like me, but they were generous early and often. Some people with established blogs and a lot of readers will not link to smaller blogs because they don't like to direct their readers to blogs that may fade away quickly. They also don't want to add links on their main pages only to find that they edited their site to add a blogger who started strong, but dropped down to once a month posting or removed their blog entirely after a short stint. I can understand the reservations some people may have in this regard, and I don't blame them. However, it makes me appreciate the support other bloggers, both big and small, give me by linking to me all the more.

Because I'm still a small fry relatively speaking (about 400 readers per day, unless Marvo links to one of my posts then I get a big, happy surprise when I check my numbers), I know how others feel about trying to draw readers to their blogs. Because of this, I'm more than happy to link to other reviewers. If you'd like to be linked to, please e-mail me by following the information in the FYI section.

Additionally, if you have reviewed a product that I have reviewed in the past, I will go back to my archived review and link to your review at the end of mine if you leave a comment on the relevant review. I try to catch and add in reviews of the same products as I find them, but I don't always manage to add the other reviews because I have to add them when I have time to edit my archived post. Most of my blog writing is in the afternoon or early evening. The lion's share of my blog reading occurs in the bleary-eyed morning hours. The struggle to focus my eyes on the page helps wake me up. Since the reading and writing occur at different times, it's easy for me to intend to add the link, but to forget by the time I start work on the blog.

If you're not already reading Marvo's blog and Bryan's blogs, please do yourself a favor and subscribe to them. They deserve your love. And they already have mine.