2007 Milestones and Top 5 Posts

Writing Forward is only four months old. Sometimes I feel like I’ve had this blog for years. Other times, it feels like just yesterday I was developing the concept and trying to find a decent (and available) domain name. As I look back on these past four months, I’m happy to report that the blog is actually performing just a tad better than I would have expected at this point.

After learning as much as I could about blogging, I established a set of milestones, each marking one step toward a blog’s overall success. Though still in its infancy, Writing Forward has already reached two of those milestones. Also, a few posts have done extraordinarily well and I’m learning what readers prefer in terms of content.

Milestones

Writing Forward reached its first milestone when one post took off and soared above the rest. “The 22 Best Writing Tips Ever” became a StumbleUpon hit, and appeared on many other blogs (both in its entirety and excerpted or reviewed). In fact that single post has been viewed almost fifty times more than any other page on this blog. It also made a huge contribution to increasing my ad revenue, and that makes this blogger very happy!

Just last week, I crossed the second major milestone. I was flattered when I received an invitation to join the JCM Enterprises writing team. It is quite an honor to be asked to join the writing team of one of the top ten writing blogs on the Internet! It also tells me that this blog is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing — showcasing my writing ability and attracting job offers. I couldn’t be more pleased!

Top 5 Posts of 2007

Some posts get a lot of hits, a significant number of comments, or a large number of links. My top five posts for 2007 enjoyed a combination of these factors:

1. The 22 Best Writing Tips Ever - by far the most successful post on this blog, it helped me to reach one of my blogging goals, was republished, reviewed, and received a whole lot of attention from StumbleUpon users.
2. Is it Farther or Further? - The grammar category performs well as a whole, but this post definitely topped the lot. I guess a lot of folks out there want to know when to use farther vs. further because this one beat out all the others in the Google search results.
3. Stop! Thief! - Copyright infringement is not a good thing. In fact, it’s illegal. Since it’s common out here in the blogosphere, this post brought in traffic as well as comments.
4. Stumbling November - I was actually really unsure about this post, but I decided to brave it, and was relieved when people embraced the idea of Stumbling readers as a way to say thanks.
5. 11 Hot Tips for Writers with Blog - Most blog readers are bloggers themselves. I think that will change over time, but for now, readers seem to appreciate any advice on blogging, which is a form of writing after all.

Originally hosted at melissadonovan.com, and titled Writing for Writers, the site moved to its current domain at writingforward.com, was renamed Writing Forward, and received a design overhaul in mid-November.

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