Ask HN: Self promotion?
I can see a few problems.<p>I&#x27;m not an expert in SEO, so take this all with a grain of salt.<p>First, you have a number of websites hosted by blogger (*.blogspot.com). It is my impression that blogs with their own domain name get more traffic than those with blogspot as the domain name. If I am serious about my blog, I buy a domain name (a .com) and use it. You can still have blogger host the blog fwiw. Here&#x27;s advice from namecheap: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;knowledgebase&#x2F;article.aspx&#x2F;1243&#x2F;2208&#x2F;how-do-i-use-my-domain-with-my-blogger-account" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;knowledgebase&#x2F;article.aspx...</a><p>Even if there&#x27;s no login, I also host my blogs with an SSL certificate, because google&#x27;s search algorithm is biased towards &quot;https&quot; sites.<p>You also want the site to be mobile-friendly - I didn&#x27;t test your blogs, but they look good in that respect, so I don&#x27;t think this is a problem for you.<p>Also, have you got a google analytics account which you can use to see what search terms are leading people to your sites? You want to see what people are searching for, and write more content for those search terms to help build yourself up as an authority in them.<p>If you need more traffic, you need to write a lot of posts. I can&#x27;t tell you how many will do it, and there&#x27;s no guarantee that it will work, but if your site does not look like an authoritative resource to a search engine&#x27;s algorithms, you aren&#x27;t going to get much search traffic. I looked at some of your blogs. I see two blog posts on <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;1001histories.blogspot.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;1001histories.blogspot.com&#x2F;</a> - this will not get you a lot of traffic. There are 3 posts listed in <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cysticfibrosisrevolution.blogspot.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;archive.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cysticfibrosisrevolution.blogspot.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;archive.html</a> - again, unlikely to get you much organic search. So when you say you need more traffic for your websites, which one(s) do you expect or want to get more traffic?<p>Regarding patreon... Your patreon photo looks a little too much like a mugshot (sorry, I&#x27;m not trying to be rude or hurtful!). If you look at patreon photos, many successful ones look like they got a professional photog to take the picture. E.g.: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.patreon.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;writing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.patreon.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;writing</a> . That&#x27;s expensive and probably not worth doing until patreon income justifies it. My suggestion here is to take a lot of pictures of yourself in different sorts of lighting, and go for the best one, the one that looks most friendly and looks like it belongs on that top 20 list. It looks like you don&#x27;t have to use a photo of yourself, so you could also go with a photo of something else, or a logo. I don&#x27;t know if the photo matters much.<p>I saw one patreon post that mentioned a personal crisis. I would not mention this on patreon, if it were me. I&#x27;m not sure if it&#x27;s a negative, but I&#x27;d be afraid that it would turn off some people. I&#x27;m curious to hear what other HN people think. If I wanted to discuss personal problems on the web, I&#x27;d do it as anonymously as possible. Potential employers might get scared off by what they&#x27;d see as a lack of stability.<p>Speaking for myself, I&#x27;ve never supported anyone using patreon, but I could see myself doing so if the person provided content that I really like and consume frequently. If I used patreon as a creator, any patreon content that I&#x27;d add would mostly not be about myself, but about topics of interest for my supporters.<p>Some of your content seems tailored to an audience that can&#x27;t afford to give you patreon donations (the homeless). Personally, I&#x27;d focus on topics that have a more potentially lucrative audience.<p>Again, take all this with a grain of salt, but I hope some of it helps!