As huge as this is, it is now a fairly common accomplishment for anyone who consistently works his or her ActiveRain Blog.  I recently wrote my 500^th blog article and spent a lot of time analyzing much of my ActiveRain journey since I started in 2006.

Truth is anyone should be able to accomplish this in less than a year...let me break it down.

Active Rain awards 100 points a day, just for checking in and then 25 points for the first 10 blog comments you make on a daily basis.  So that is 350 points a day, just for showing up and tossing a few comments out there.  That is 127,750 points in just one year.

COMMENTS

Quick note on comments; there are many comments that we all see that say something as simple as "Good Info, thanks for the research" and believe it or not, but these comments earn the same 25 points as comments that are several paragraphs long.

To get the MOST from your blogging experience, read the blogs and add your own thoughts - it's not just a race to earn points.

CONFESSION:  There are times when I will use the same ‘meat and potatoes' in consecutive blog comments - but I always add something unique about a particular post.  For example, I have been working hard on my market reports for the last month or so and I frequent the ActiveRain Group dedicated to Market Reports.  It is not uncommon for me to quickly scroll through the most recent posts and add a comment that may include a phrase similar to:

"Great Information, your local community is lucky to have a knowledgeable professional such as yourself, and this just proves my point that  ‘ALL Real Estate is Local and Your REALTOR Should be Too!'"

Now the key is to make it unique with a comment about that particular blog post - usually I'll comment on the charts, if they are good ones or a trend I can spot in the report itself.

Remember, your comments are critical to building your on-line reputation and establishing yourself in our ActiveRain Community.  So please, act like a grown up and leave grown up comments.

BLOG POSTS

By now, we all know that we are capped at earning points for the first 10 blogs we post in a week.  If we post additional blogs, we will only earn points if they generate a minimal comment level.  Don't ask me, the AR algorithms are as much a mystery to me as Google.

However, if you comment your 10 comments every day then you only need 72,250 points, which can be earned with each blog post, starting at 225 points each.  This amounts to 321 blogs...which may sound monumental but it is less than one a day in the overall scheme of things.  This doesn't even take into account additional points that AR awards for the volume of comments your posts get, or your profile, any contests that you enter or any other various ways that points are handed out.

I have found that ActiveRain blogging really is a team sport.  Blog posts should be directed to multiple audiences and written for a specific niche audience.  There are times when I want to address fellow bloggers, like this post and then there are times when I want to address the entire real estate industry.  Heck, there are even times when I want to address the politicians in Sacramento and California.  More often than not, the money maker for me is to address the public - the consumer - the guys and gals who have real estate to sell or they want to buy...I know what side of my bread is buttered and who butters it.

CONSISTENCY

Just like everything else in real estate...or life for that matter...you have to remain consistent.  I know, I have paid the price for not staying on top of my blogging.  There were several spells of limited activity - all you have to do is check the archives listed on the right side of the blog to see when I took time off.  You'll notice over 6 months of zero activity - I didn't even come in and read blog posts.

What was reinforced, from my Graduate Studies at my alma mater - The School of Hard Knocks, is that consistency counts for everything.  Stop blogging and the phone stops ringing.  Blog and the phone rings again.

So without much fanfare, I have reached the 200,000 point plateau and looking to double this in the next year!