Kumiko's Cash Quest

One of the most important things that I consider when writing blog posts is the timing.

I'm not talking about whether you should post in the morning or the evening, but the timing of your subject matter. For a post to be successful, it is crucial that the post's topic be relevant and current to people's interests.

Why would a post written today related to "American Idol" be a thousand times more successful than a post related to "Elvis Presley"? Because "American Idol" is currently in a lot of people's minds and as it is a popular subject matter, it is more likely to be linked to. Lots of posts are currently being written about "American Idol" which makes it easier for a link to your post to sneak into posts on other sites!!

Add to that the fact that "American Idol" is currently quite a hot keyword in the search engines and you're more likely to get a nice traffic spike through search engine traffic!

So when AGLOCO started getting big, I wrote about AGLOCO. When Britney Spears was front page news, I wrote about Britney. When John Chow received an iPod vibrator, I started a campaign to get him to review it. The result? Lots of incoming love from other blogs who were also writing posts about these topics...and many more links from blogs who were just writing about current news!

But timing is not just being topical - it's about immediately seizing opportunities as they arise...and sometimes being a little evil about it!!

This month I seized some evilness - and was rewarded nicely! First, John Chow's popular blog celebrated it's seventh birthday and John Chow wrote how he didn't own all the domains for his site. Faster than you could say "Happy Birthday to URL", I had registered www.johnchow.info which has resulted in a large number of hits through type-in traffic and via his site after I commented on how I had bought the domain! Earnings from the traffic have greatly exceeded the $1 that I paid for the domain!!

Next, I was searching the internet this week when I clicked on a MyBlogLog avatar that looked interesting. I was directed to the users MyBlogLog page and noticed that the user was doing quite a lot of surfing and getting involved in communities. After clicking on the homepage for the user, I received a "Site does not exist" message....!! The site they listed as their homepage didn't exist!!

What would you do in this situation? Dismiss it as fake profile or a deleted site and forget about it?? No!!

I quickly registered the site (it was a Blogger homepage so it was free!) and added a forwarding link to Kumiko's Cash Quest! It took about 30 seconds and has resulted in some lovely traffic as the user continues to surf and send their fans to my site! Haha! Evilness!!

How do you utilize timing for your site's success?