SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

Life goes on as I steer Happyzine (via the laptop on wireless internet, so that I'm mobile). Maia the dog returns from a stroll through the garden.

Oh the numerous, numerous ways I have thus far attempted to grow the subscription base of my website.  I’ve tried radio interviews, TV interviews and of course print media (as in, I was interviewed for newspapers).  The TV one breakfast slot attracted around seventy new subscribers before the site crashed  (which was cool as someone emailed the TV station and told them).  The TV three interview attracted around thirty new subscribers.   The radio interview and all the radio shows I’ve done over the past few years – well that isn’t so easy to measure, nothing drastic seems to happen when I do my radio thang, the subscribers continue to trickled in.

I’ve run a few competitions, including the Golden Bay Getaway – which is on the brink of being concluded – this Monday I will announce the winner of the green getaway to Golden Bay in our weekly ezine.  I’ve just added up the amount of new subscribers that joined up to Happyzine during the time of that  comp – it came to around 250 new people.  So as of right now, the subscriber list is at 892 people (nearly 1000!!!).  I’ve used the ancient art of bribery – with eco-tankas and organic herbal tea.

What I’m coming to understand, is that it all needs to happen online.  You need to build community online, so that people can click through to your page, or click somewhere, then and there, and if they like the look of it, they’ll subscribe. The online world is its own community.  Paper magazines are another community.  Radio is another community.  TV is yet another. Sometimes they over lap, but mostly, they’re different worlds and require several steps to link from one to the other.

Facebook draws in a lot of traffic to Happyzine, the most actually, aside from organic and google traffic.  And I’m not yet really putting much effort

into the Happyzine Page, these referrals come via people’s personal profiles.  Twitter sends me traffic too, though the best thing that I find with twitter is the actual people I meet, rather than the traffic it sends me.

For dinner, Gurdard fish, lightly coated in organic buckwheat flour and salt, is fried in oil, with chunks of garlic and eaten in pita bread with parley and tamari.

I have these elaborate ideas, ah so many, and I explore them thoroughly and learn, learn oh so much from each experience. And some days, amazingly, something happens, some days the people arrive in their droves to check out something we’re running on Happyzine.  All of a sudden, often for a reason that have very little to do with my efforts, hundreds more people are cruisin’ through the Happyzine pages.  And it can happen so easily!  Those days make me laugh, because of all the effort I’ve made to attract in traffic that hasn’t worked.  They remind me of that law of attraction idea that when we relax and let go, good stuff happens.

So, I’m 118 days, not even a third of the way through my 365 days of chillaxation and fun as I grow my good news website to a subscription base of 100,000 people.  Right now I stand at the foot of the biggest online competition I’ve ever run on Happyzine.  It’s called Wild Energy, it’s a sustainable energy generation design competition and it will run for around three months.  We have Jeanette Fitzsimons on board.  We have three Kiwi politicians.  We have  a high calibre panel of judges.  We have the blessings and allegiance of the Wild Rivers campaign – which is made up of over 100,000 people.  It’s my greatest intent that this competition does major GOOD.  That it shows there are many ways to make power, other than damming ancient river valleys.

I also hope that more people will subscribe to Happyzine.

I had a wonderful day inside, today was perfect web-site work weather.  Cosy, relaxed, full of love.

Today’s rating 10/10

365 Days of Fun and Chillaxation (as I raise my gorgeous son and grow my good news website to a subscription base of 100,000 people).  The Low Down on this Blog.

Check out yesterday’s blog.

Tags: dreams, Food