Not enough people are reading my website, and I'm too impatient

First of all, I know I shouldn't be so impatient.
But I'm reading people's threads saying that they average 80-100 views a day and they've only had their blogs up and running for a few weeks.
I've had mine for two months now and I average about 4 views a day. It's a little frustrating, because I do spend time trying to advertise and promote my writing.
I've done press releases
Joined all sorts of websites that seem more than happy to promote blogs
I've posted on Craigslist (interesting results with that one)

I don't know. I feel like I'm running out of ideas. And the reason I started the website was to share stories with others. If I didn't want other people to read my articles, I obviously wouldn't have a website.

And that's another thing. I started up my website from scratch. I didn't sign up with Blogger or any similar websites. It's 100% me.

Any suggestions for a newbie such as myself?

[Nathan]

The type of blog you are trying to run will probably not get good search engine results. You'll have to rely on traffic from people who are actually interested in your stories.

Try joining forums such as this one, leaving quality comments on other related blogs, and telling all your real life friends and family members about your blog.

Much appreciated. I have noticed that search engines have not been too nice, and when someone does happen to find my website via Google or Yahoo, they are searching for some rather random things, and I don't know why or how my website popped up.

[youngminii]

Search engines haven't kicked in too much for me. I have some top rankings in google for the most random searches like "psychology take on black out drunk" or "what kind of amnesia if you have alzheimers disease" to name a few.
My blog's been up for little over a week and I'm getting 50-80 views a day mainly from twitter. It's great, just get a few hundred relevant followers and start tweeting! Although my bounce rate is extremely high (even higher from search engines)
None of my friends and family know I made a blog

[The Envoy]

Originally Posted by DinoDave

First of all, I know I shouldn't be so impatient.
But I'm reading people's threads saying that they average 80-100 views a day and they've only had their blogs up and running for a few weeks.
I've had mine for two months now and I average about 4 views a day. It's a little frustrating, because I do spend time trying to advertise and promote my writing.
I've done press releases
Joined all sorts of websites that seem more than happy to promote blogs
I've posted on Craigslist (interesting results with that one)

I don't know. I feel like I'm running out of ideas. And the reason I started the website was to share stories with others. If I didn't want other people to read my articles, I obviously wouldn't have a website.

And that's another thing. I started up my website from scratch. I didn't sign up with Blogger or any similar websites. It's 100% me.

Any suggestions for a newbie such as myself?

Try commenting on other blogs in your niche. Build up a community.

Thanks everyone for your feedback so far. It's good stuff. I suppose the moral of the story is: Keep plugging away and some day all of my dreams and wishes will come true. Keep the feedback coming! I appreciate it.

[Matt Wolfe]

The three biggest sources of traffic to my blog are (in order):
1) Comments in forums (useful posts that help people out). Make sure your URL is in the signature.

2) Commenting on other similar blogs. (Once again, it only really works if you post useful, relevant comments that add something to the conversation)

3) Social Networking - This is kind of broad but a lot of traffic for me comes from being active on Facebook and Twitter. I always broadcast my blog posts to both of those places. This gets traffic from friends and family coming through too.

Some more ideas would be to put your blog's link in the signature of your e-mails, write articles for article directories like ezinearticles.com and put your link in the resource box, and posting videos on YouTube and putting your link in the description.

If you actively do all of those things, you will see traffic.

Matt

[FutureConscience]

Another great tip, and one that has worked well for us, is to network in real life - not just online. If you live in a reasonable size city, then there will be meetups for almost every niche imaginable. Also keep an eye out for general blogger meetups - these are great to meet like minded people, plus by doing a writeup of the event you have an audience for the post already.

Other than that - social media is great if used properly. Regular updates are important for social media sites, otherwise you won't build up any interest over the long term. Make sure you have various social media buttons on your articles so that people can share them easily (but not too many!! Twitter, Facebook and maybe one or two more).

Get active on fiction forums if you aren't already. If your blog is mostly about your writing, there are so many writing forums that you should be a part of. Once you build up a reputation there you will have traffic flying over to see what you've written.

[~kev~]

From my personal experience, people that tell you they are getting hundreds of hits a day and their blog is only a few days/weeks old - their either lying, buying advertising, or buying traffic.

If you are waiting on only traffic from search engines, expect at least one year before your rankings stabilize and you start to get traffic.

Either go buy some advertising, make your own advertising or wait.

[ishan]

Personally, I feel that Guest Posting is best way to promote a blog. You should write high quality articles and ask bloggers in your niche to publish them.

This increase direct as well as search engine traffic(provided you post on a well ranked blog!)