The biggest question every writer asks when they start publishing online is, “How do I get people to read my stuff?” There are many answers to this question, and these answers are usually now referred to as “content marketing”. Proposed methods run the gamut of SEO and Marketing advice, from back-linking and infographic making to the perfect way to write headlines (“People love lists!”).

I’ve treaded close to these methods a few times in my darkest hours of need — the many times I’d vowed to just give up and stop writing because really, what’s the use. But somehow the love of the web and the blogging format kept me going. And over the years I’ve made some discoveries about what it takes to build an audience, and why I think it’s better to stay away from the easy ways and choose the difficult ways instead.

In this talk I’ll share some of that philosophy, and how a struggling blog with an insignificant number of readers has become not only a source of great joy and expression for me, but also a source of non-insignificant income.

This isn’t a talk about how to get to 1 million page views a month. It’s a talk about how to make *your* page views count.