I hit the half-million point mark on points last week. Actually, the AR guys were kind enough to give me a "new dad" gift by rounding my points a little bit so that I could hit exactly 500,000 (see screen shot at right). 
When I started on ActiveRain back in August 2007 (20+ months ago), I never would have conceived of having a point total in this range. I just knew that I enjoyed the interaction and the friendships that I was developing.
Then, along the way, something else happened.
I realized that I really love to write, and write I did. I have composed almost 800 posts on this blog to date. I have written posts for SEO purposes, posts about my family, silly posts, tutorials, market reports, posts that I was dared to write (seriously), and posts to help others.
I haven't had as much time to write lately, primarily because of our latest addition and my wife's pregnancy prior to that. My family needs me more than my blog needs me - it's that simple.
I am happy to report that I have closed a handful of deals this year already which came directly from ActiveRain. In fact, now that I have been doing this for over a year and a half, I am astounded by the number of direct consumer contacts that I receive now, many of whom claim to have been reading my blog for months.
Think about that for a second and let it sink in.
Since consumers rarely comment on my posts here, I really have no way to gauge how many of them are reading my stuff unless they call or email me. However, I have a far larger audience than my comments would indicate.
I got curious today to see which one of my posts has generated the most traffic overall. I wasn't really surprised to find that it is this one:
Austin Texas Relocation Package
In fact, that post (which only garnered 30 comments) has had 18,512 clicks as of today. Yes, you read that last line correctly. That means that over 18,000 people have come across this post, most likely because it holds the #1 or 2 position on Google AND Yahoo for this term and its variants.
I am currently working with some clients from New York who found the relocation package post first, and it served as the portal to the rest of my blog. They are looking to move this summer sometime, and they will probably spend $500,000 or thereabouts on a condo downtown.
I guess I just wanted to share this stuff with you in order to encourage you to continue writing. If you feel discouraged because you aren't getting leads, GIVE IT TIME. Keep cranking out good, original content and you WILL be found!
Thanks for reading!
My RSS feed is http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch/rss.
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