Yesterday was, I suppose, a bit of a red-letter day in that I posted 50th article for the month of April to triond, and saw it published an hour or so later. Hip Hip Hooray, but none of us can afford to rest on our laurels. I was reading, in their forums, that the way to maybe get more views to the posts you write would be to create a web site of your own, which google will happily provide you with for nothing. What ho, thought I, why not make an attempt at this?

My level of computer, web site and Internet competence is somewhere between that of a five-year old child and a chimpanzee, so the comforting words user-friendly brought a grateful lump to my throat, but my optimism was very short-lived. I have spawned something – as you can see if you visit  

https://sites.google.com/site/tonyleatherwritings/  - but not with as much success as I would have hoped for, so if anyone out there with a little knowledge in this area wants to offer some lead-you-through-it- one -step – at -a- time advice, I would be eternally grateful. Another thing I am confused about is Ad,fly, which I signed up to on the recommendation of Revan, but I must be pretty thick, because I fail utterly to see how it works, Do I have to put my referal link onto facebook, twitter, digg, stunmbleupon etc to get traffic to my Ad.fly page, where I presume the shortened URLs are displayed.

There is no clear indication on this website what actually happens to the shortened URLs, and how on earth you are supposed to benefit from membership, so again, if anyone out there can help me see the Ad,fly light, I would like to hear from you. There has, too, been a great deal of speculation about the google panda search engine thingy affecting triond views? Firstly, I have no idea at all what is being talked about here, and secondly, I have repeated, often, my dismay at the relatively few views that most triond contributors, including me, usually achieve.

For some, it may not seem that way, but those of us who have experienced 20,000+ views on articles posted elsewhere MUST be hugely suspicious of the reasons for triond showing so poorly in comparison. If the writings are good enough to attract such numbers elsewhere, why do similar posts by the same authors fare much worse at triond? A question that many want answered, but which is never likely to be by those that know. I sent a message to one of the founders of the site, asking that very thing, but never got a reply. Surprise, surprise.

There are so many sites offering help and advice for getting more traffic to your posts, but it seems to me that most of them depend upon you having a website of your own, something that is fine and dandy if you have a clue what to do with it?  I also have a writing blog, which I do try to improve upon all the time, and my triond page is linked to it, though it needs far more members, so please do visit  http://writertonyleather.blogspot.com         

 and become followers, an act I will naturally reciprocate if you have blogs of your own. It seems obvious that the best, and possibly only way for us trionders to progress is to help one another as much as we can, something I am, as I have always stated, more than happy to do. I am closing in now on the 40,000 views mark, which to some may seem quite a lot in three months, but to me is a little disappointing, given the time and effort I have put in to promoting myself.

Mutual advice and genuine helpfulness are the keys to moving forward positively on this site, so anybody who can help with the things I mentioned will be, to some extent, a life-saver. It may take a crash computer course at the local adult learning center to cure my computer malaise, but that is a last resort. I would much prefer to be able to get through with the help of my peers, the feeling of familial ties being especially strong among the triond fellowship. Perhaps I will have made it to 50,000 views by the end of the month. It will not be for want of trying, if I should not.