Thanks.

But that may be the nature of the gaming industry about which I blog. I still prefer building a community over everything else. Believe it or not, if you respond to comments and make the reader feel like a part of your site, it is better than 1,000 visitors. I’ve tried this recently and with a handful community of ~ 25 gamers, Ive noticed my site go up 300% in Alexa rankings. Im not making it up, check my Alexa rank.

However, when I stopped caring about readers (I made that mistake in early 2009), my blog dropped from the top 100,000 to 1,000,000. One downside is that regular readers rarely click on Adsense ads, or that might be because most of my readers are tech-savvy.

And if you don’t get comments, don’t lose heart. People rarely leave a comment, unless you’ve pissed them off or have developed a sense of relationship with the reader - the reason for this comment :). Instead average time on site and page views are my most important factor - and yes the monthly paychecks.