Wow! I wrote a few posts about stock picking last night. In just a few hours, someone found the postings by searching keywords like ’stock market’ , ‘etf’ and etc. Looks like writing blog is a good way to get the website known by other people. I feel like learning something about SEO (search engine optimization)
The following is a screenshot from my ’statcounter.com’ account 
My posting on Jan 27 this year about “how to promote my blog” is certainly interesting. Only a few days after it is posted, google found my page and ranked it very high (at the 4th position) when searching for “promote my blog”. It stayed high for about 2 weeks before it dropped to 21st position today. Imagine how exciting it is to be ranked number 4 among 5.8 million search results. One of the techniques that I used is to put the approprite tags in my posting in WordPress. I also checked another keyword “selling amazon products” on google, its ranking is 9th (out of 5.0 million search results). This technique seems to be very effective.
One thing I found is that if I don’t keep my blog updated, the ranking drops. This motiviates me to write more. Unlike some bloggers, I am true to my readers… I don’t pretend I am expert in promoting my blog. I am here to share my real experience (whether it is successful or not).
Statcounter.com provides free invisible counter to track visitors to websites.
I just follow the instruction from Luke’s Lot and installed StatCounter plug-in to my WordPress Blog in 10 minutes (while watching TV) 
Here is the screenshot. I am the first visitor to my blog.
I tried to submit my RSS to Feedster as suggested by a site. Looks like Feedster is down or gone? Shall I call it “Gonester”?
Let’s try the big name… Yahoo.
I found this link: Yahoo! Publisher’s Guide to RSS
So I copy the URL of my RSS feed and submitted it to Yahoo’s feed database.
As a novice in blogging, the first thing I do is to find out how to promote my blog. Typed ‘promote my blog’ on google. The first result leads me to “Boutell.com”. Over there, it suggests signing up for RSS registry , like Feedster and Syndi8. Well? What is RSS? I see the orange icon on my blog… maybe it is related.
On Wikipedia.org, RSS is :
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RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.
RSS content can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader” or an “aggregator“. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.
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Ok, I get it. Let me try to find some sites to index my blog…
I did some research last night and found that WordPress is a popular free blog software. It is really easy to install. Just download it and follow the instruction. I’ve got my blog up and running in less than an hour. This includes time to download, setting up MySQL database and selecting the theme. It took me more time to find a domain name to register than to install the blog software!
WordPress seems to be very powerful and fairly easy to use. Now that I have a blog, where am I going to get my audience? Of course I don’t want to spend a fortune. Since this blog is to test out some money making schemes, I should find some way to make some money to promote it. If I am successful (at least moderately), my blog should be in the top 100,000 sites based on Alexa ranking by end of this year. And rank above 10000 by end of 2009; 1000 by 2010 Stay tune…
