Help For Stuck NooB

help

[lenwood]

Hi All, I've had a news commentary/blog going for the past several months, and its struggling. I think there's something that I'm not getting.

Background: I'm running AdSense, and its not doing anything for me. After three months my account has $14, but of course that means squat until I get another $86. I've applied for YPN, but haven't been approved for their beta program yet.

Here are my questions.
Traffic: other than SEO, what can I be doing to build traffic? I'm in a couple of blog networks, but they don't do much for me. I'm at ~100 hits/day now, though that is increasing ever so slowly. I definitely wouldn't say I have critical mass, or that I've cleared any hurdle. What am I missing?

Monetizing: I recognize that 100 hits/day isn't worth much to advertisers, but $4/mo is not cutting it. Other's I've heard clear $100-400 in their first month, and right now $100/mo sounds pretty good to me.

Thanks in advance for any tips,
Chris

[eljefe3]

Yeah it all comes down to traffic. Is 100 "hits" 100 visitors, or 100 files being pulled?

Does your site rank on the first couple of pages for your main topics?

[lenwood]

Thanks for your response eljefe.

Yep, that's 100 uniques / day. Google shows my bounce rate at about 75%, and the users that stay average 2 clicks per visit.

My site is currently very low in SERPs. I'm just now beginning SEO and linking.

I'm actually considering pulling all of the advertising from my site. Its not doing me any good right now, maybe it'll help.

I'm open to just about any suggestions. This is my first venture into for-profit blogging, and I'm most interested in learning.

Thanks,
Chris