Ask For A Guest Post From John Lockwood, and This Is What You Get!

13 months ago, John Lockwood dropped a post here on the Tomato that inspired 40 comments from our audience.  Now a year later, he’s looking for as many as 101 of you to help him reach a lofty, but attainable goal.  Read on.

101 Subscribers in 30 Days
by John Lockwood

My original title was "Strategic Blogging, Going Beyond Real Estate, and Getting 101 Subscribers to a Brand New Blog in 30 Days or One Long Title, Whichever Comes First."

I shortened it considerably out of respect for my host. Who am I to stand in the way of my own self-improvement? Jim Cronin was good enough to ask me to rematerialize here on the Real Estate Tomato. He mentioned that people enjoyed my earlier post, Seven Myths About Real Estate Blogging.

Egomaniac that I am, that praise would normally be enough to get me to start typing up a storm.  However, this time, the thing that finally got me to sit down at my keyboard was the fact that I was working very hard on a blogging project that is very different from the real estate fare that I normally churn out, and I thought that the Tomato would be a great opportunity to plug discuss it.

Of course, along the way to doing that, we're going to have to chop our way past the primeval jungle of that original long title, aren't we? Lapses in verbosity on my part are bound to be temporary.

Let's start with the easy stuff.

What Is Strategic Blogging?

Strategic blogging is a high-falutin' expression that boils down to the idea that you roughly apportion your blogging time so that you spend the most time on tasks that will make you the most money, and spend relatively little time on tasks that will make you less money.

Making money?   Oh, sorry if I killed your buzz.  I realize that writing is fun.  In fact, it's so fun that I've decided to put up a whole blog about it, which I'll plug mention in a minute.

Blogging is fun, no question.  Doing it professionally, however, means that occasionally you have to act and think like a ruthless mercenary strategic blogger.

Yeah, Fine, But WHAT Strategy -- Learning Outside of Real Estate

I've been fascinated by the blogging world outside of real estate lately, what you might call Everything-but-RE, .net.

In the real estate world, there's a sort of tension between the punditocracy, who are playing by rules appropriate to the broader blogosphere, and guys like me, who are often accused of doing "mere SEO".

So to see what I can bring to my blogging craft, I thought I'd try a foray into the broader blogging world.  (Proposed full time job -- you call this a foray?).  One of the side benefits of this project is that it's teaching me what I want to learn about blog writing and promotion from a non-real estate perspective.

OK, so what am I learning?

101 Subscribers to a Brand New Blog in 30 Days?  An Experiment.

In the real estate world, subscribers grow slowly, especially if you're focused on "mere SEO" like me.  So in the broader blogging world, I'm trying an experiment.  I have a brand new blog about making money writing online, and I am working feverishly this month to get 101 Subscribers in 30 days.  If you want to learn how to boost the subscriber count on your blog, please check out my article, Get 101 Subscribers To Your New Blog in 30 Days.

Just because subscribers grow slowly in the real estate world, can you steal parts of that article and apply it to your business!  Of course you can.  If you run a subscription drive, be sure to let me know about it so I can try to help you mention it in passing plug the heck out of it.

I'm not just preaching.  If this campaign works out in the larger non-real-estate world, I'll probably try out something similar on my real estate blog as well. 

If you're new to blogging, subscribers are arguably more important than when I started doing it.  Back then blogs were just the content management system that supplemented  the real show -- reciprocal link building.  Of course, this was quite a while ago as Internet dog-years go.  We used to skim the cream off the top of our milk back then, and we had to oil our buggy whips twice a day.

Help Jim Cronin Win a Six Month Ad (or more)!

As part of my whirlwind, 30-day drive to get 101 subscribers, I'm running a contest where the person who does the most to get me to that goal wins a six month, 125x125 pixel ad on my site.  (There's also a two year ad that will be awarded to the blogger who helps me reach a longer term goal). 

You can learn about the ad contest here if you want to participate.  Or if you just want to help Jim get a win a free six month ad on the home page of my new blog, just add this feed to your RSS reader.  You might also want to drop me an email at "JohnLockwood {AT} InkLit [DOT] com" and mention the Real Estate Tomato so I'll know you want Jim to get the credit!

We have half a tomato up there already.  Won't you help bring the rest of the tomato ad home?

—

Thanks John, we appreciate your contribution shameless self promotion.

For those of you whom are not familiar with John, he is one of the first dedicated real estate bloggers in the Greater Sacramento Area.  He’ll correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe he has had an active blog since 2005 2003.  He hard work has certainly paid off, for he enjoys the Top Ranking for dozens of highly sought after search results (Google), including Sacramento Real Estate.

More info on John Lockwood, Broker, Elite Properties
Website:  http://www.sacramento-home.com
Blog:  http://www.sacramento-home.com/real-estate-events/

Tags: John+Lockwood, Real+Estate+Blogging, 101+Subscribers

Comments

[Linda Slocum]

Great info from John, and very easy to implement. Be sure to read his 101 subscribers article!

[John Lockwood]

"The first" and 2003.

Catchy title!

[John Lockwood]

@Linda Thanks for the kind words! Appreciate the visit as well.

[Jaret Ghent]

John,

Lots of good stuff... as a pretty experienced net guy you have some good ideas and I will definitely sign up. In fact, I will probably just put you on a feed at my new blog.

[John Lockwood]

@Jaret, wow, holy incoming feed link love, Batman! Thanks. That's very kind of you -- but it would be unfair of me as a more experienced blogger not to let you know that your generosity means you're spending a lot of page rank. But again, that's totally kind, and I'll have to put you in my reader and start checking you out.

All, thanks to your support, Jim Cronin is definitely the front runner for this "valuable" :) ad-from-a-brand-new-blog, and we've gotten 20% closer to our goal of 100 subscribers already! Problogger.net's Darren Rowse hasn't called me for a guest post, so there's a good chance Jim is a shoe in, but I'm still plugging!

Thanks everyone! I'll try to keep writing things worthy of your confidence and the expectations of high-quality content that I'm sure you have as Tomato readers.

Thanks again, Jim. You da man. Word of honor: my next guest post will have the usual and customary single link and that's it, and I'll be less goofy.

Well, the single link part, anyway.

[John Lockwood]

@Jaret, wow, holy incoming feed link love, Batman! Thanks. That's very kind of you -- but it would be unfair of me as a more experienced blogger not to let you know that your generosity means you're spending a lot of page rank. But again, that's totally kind, and I'll have to put you in my reader and start checking you out.

All, thanks to your support, Jim Cronin is definitely the front runner for this "valuable" :) ad-from-a-brand-new-blog, and we've gotten 20% closer to our goal of 100 subscribers already! Problogger.net's Darren Rowse hasn't called me for a guest post, so there's a good chance Jim is a shoe in, but I'm still plugging!

Thanks everyone! I'll try to keep writing things worthy of your confidence and the expectations of high-quality content that I'm sure you have as Tomato readers.

Thanks again, Jim. You da man. Word of honor: my next guest post will have the usual and customary single link and that's it, and I'll be less goofy.

Well, the single link part, anyway.