So I started creating my blog in June of this year, but I’ve only been really blogging since August or so. Today being November 14th, that means I’ve been a blogger for about three months. My site, www.SanDiegOh.com, is now getting closer to where I want it to be, in terms of appearance and functionality, but it still needs work.

With 43 posts, I’m hardly near the 100 mark I aim to be at by the end of this year (especially since some of these blogs are just “Featured Listings” and others are from my lender). Still, I’m relatively happy with my progress. Six months ago, I had no clue how large the real estate blog world was, nor did I know that Geek Estate even existed!

Today, Sitemeter tells me that SanDiegOh averages 63 visitors and has 107 page views per day. This is considerably higher than the 2–5 visitors per week I was getting just a few months ago. What happened? What did I do to increase my viewership by over 6300%? The answer is pretty simple, but getting there isn’t.

As instructed by the people over at the Real Estate Tomato, I simply kept writing more and more articles that I thought people would want to read and focused on becoming an authorityon San Diego real estate (Downtown San Diego specifically), as well as writing about “breaking” news. In addition to this, I was introduced to the Carnival of Real Estate and have witnessed first hand, how much it can help my SEO and viewership.

After my 6 Reasons Why Downtown San Diego isn’t Over Built blog was selected as one of the 61st Carnival top blogs, my viewership took off. Since then, I’ve been included in several other Carnival selections and this has clearly been a huge success to my site. In the weeks that I’ve been selected for the Carnival, I’ve had as many as 178 visitors to my site in a single day – this might not be much compared to the Carnival itself, but compared to my 30 visits in the month of June, or 60 in July…this was a huge step for SanDiegOh. Other blog forums, such as Reddit, Real Estate Voices and Digg have also provided some traffic, but considerably less.

The other huge factor in my viewership, has been one, single article. My Craigslist Gold Digger…A Good Inestment? article has BY FAR, been the most successful blog I’ve written to date. This just goes to show that authority by default, can also lead help you become an authority by focus.

The best part of blogging, to me, is getting feedback from readers. It’s always exciting when I check out the back-end of my blog and see that there are new comments there. Sure, I first check to see if they’re more spam comments, but when they’re not, I get a little smile on my face and I quickly think about how I should respond to “Joe’s” comment. Even better is when I get an email from someone, who’s read my blog and wants to talk to me about purchasing property here in San Diego. Granted, this has only happened twice so far, but it’s a start.

The last thing I wanted to share, is a quick story about a recent appointment I had with one of my clients. I was Downtown with a client I’ve been working with for a while and we were about to check out a few units in a new development. As we were waiting in the lobby for the sales agent to meet us, a guy came up to me and asked if my name was “Denny.” I said yes and quickly began to run through my mind, trying to figure out how I knew this person. He then asked if my name was “Denny Oh” and again, I said yes.

Now I was a bit nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Hesitantly, I asked unfamiliar face if we knew each other and apologized that I couldn’t place his face. The gentleman smiled and said, “No. I’m XXXX from New Jersey and I came across your blog before coming out to San Diego. I recognized you and wanted to introduce myself.”

After a short lived sense of relief, I quickly panicked and asked if he liked what he read. Again, he smiled and said yes. We chatted for a few minutes and we exchanged cards and now, I have a new client. Plus, the client I was with got reassurance that I do know what I’m talking about and that I am an “expert” on the San Diego market. Yes, you’re right…ideally he would have contacted me from New Jersey, but it turns out he was just here on vacation and he’s not quite ready to buy. The point is, now that I am physically seeing the results of my blogging, I’m more motivated to write and more motivated to provide useful information. After all, isn’t blogging designed to over come objections and create a sense of “need” for you, the expert Realtor, from the readers?

So for those of you who are new to blogging, keep going – you will see results. And to those of you who are experienced, make sure you’re focusing on the right topics. Is your information actually useful? Has the topic been written about by everyone already? Take a step back and look at other people’s blogs. Be open to ideas, but make your site unique. And most importantly, interact with your readers. Respond to their comments and listen to what they have to say. Now…I have to go write another blog.