Which countries have English-speaking or bilingual people reading my posts? Where can I learn their languages?

Why is my post on learning Spanish so popular? Spanish is one of the top five foreign languages learned. More people on Duolingo are learning Spanish than any other non-English language.

You can use your Spanish is Spain, Spanish speaking islands such as Majorca, Minorca, Tenerife, all over South America and central America, Mexico, and signs in the USA. What's more, Portuguese and Italian are very similar so Spanish. Latin is also helpful. So if you already know any of those languages it helps. And if you want to learn another language after Spanish, you will have a head start.

The readership of my travel blog posts.varies wildly. When the day ends an the new count begins I have 650 readers yesterday but only 6 today. But I have nearly 24 hours to build up the readers.

So I look at where are my readers and why? I check by week, day and now. I check by country of origin of readers, which is listed in descending order of numbers. Then I check which posts they are reading.

I would expect my readers to be in the English speaking countries of the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

What about the other countries? Presumably these countries either have lots of expats or if I travel there I shall meet lots of locals who are keen to speak to me to practise their English.

I look for keywords. Which posts mention the USA or Russia or Italy?

The same goes for China, Singapore, England, Scotland, Wales, Singapore, Portugal.


Flag of the USA.

Often the top of the list is the USA. They have the high population high literacy, the most English speaking readers. Also they want to learn Spanish.

In Europe I have many readers in Italy. Is that because I refer to the Roman alphabet, or pizza and Italian food, or learning Spanish?

I have lots of readers in Russia, sometimes more in Russia than in the USA? Why? Because I mention learning Cyrillic, a Russian keyboard, and a Russian chocolate festival.



To my amazement I find that over the course of a week, my post on learning Spanish attracts readers way beyond the other posts. I check under 'View' and find that nothing succeeds like success. When I go to view which is what the public sees, Google is promoting my post on learning Spanish first.

Do you want to visit these countries and practise your languages? Or practise your languages ready to visit these countries?

London is great for British English, Polish, Cantonese in the Chinese restaurants.


Welsh flag showing the distinctive red Welsh dragon contrasting with green and white horizontal bands.

Welsh
Drive along the M4 or take the train from Paddington to Wales. Cross the border into Wales the the signs on the stations are all bilingual. I enjoy the sing-song Welsh accent when they speak English. I like to hear them speak Welsh, especially the lovely Welsh songs sung to harp music.


The USA is great for American English and Spanish.

Canada, especially Ottawa, is great for English and French written like in France and spoken with a Canadian accent.


Flag of Bulgaria.

Russian and Bulgaria are great for picking up Cyrillic.

Greece is great for Greek.

Israel is great for Hebrew.

Belgium is great for both French and Dutch.


Singapore has leaflets and MRT train announcements and MRT station announcements in English, Chinese (Mandarin), Malay (similar to Indonesian) and Tamil.

China
Easy to pick up the signs with Chineasy.

Japan
Spoken Japanese is easier than Chinese. No tones. All monotone. The written language is pictures and simplified pictures (which is how our sound-based Hebrew-Greek-Roman alphabet started). Think of the sign for no smoking, a cigarette with a cross through it, or road signs, or washing labels on clothes, symbols common to several countries, although they would say the words differently.


Korean
To impress your friends, learn Korean.

Too difficult?

Try Esperanto.


Esperanto Flag
Can't cope with languages? Start with Esperanto. Only 16 rules. Esperanto means I hope. I hope you like it and find it easy.

Useful Websites
Travel
singaporeair.com
Comfortable and efficient, lots of films with subtitles, and free languages to learn online onboard. Member of Star Alliance if you are gathering miles or wondering where to spend them.

Languages
duolingo.com
Simple to use on your phone, multiple choice questions. Very good for languages where the andwer is more or less obvious, such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, German.

memrise.com
Enables you to save your personal memory aids, and see those created by others. Handy for the harder languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean.



About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts. 

Who Reads Your Blogs And My Blogs? How can we spend less time and get more money

US flag. Italian flag.

In this blog post I shall cover posting to attract readers from all over the world:

1 What is a blog?
2 Why are you writing?
3 Private Blogs
4 Limited Readership
5 High Traffic Blogs!
6a Why Boost Blogs? 6b Make Money!
7a Hot Subjects 7b Copying Successful Blogs, Layouts, Subjects,
8 Unexpected Readers from the USA
9 Readers From Italy
10 Readers From Russia and Ukraine
11 Readers From Pakistan
12 Guest bloggers and blog tours
13 My progress

1 What is a blog?
A blog is a web based log, like a daily ship's log or diary. The daily entries are called posts. You could blog as infrequently as once a month.

2 Why Are You Writing
For whom are you writing? A ship's log creates a record of who did what, and can be used as evidence in the case of an accident or court proceedings or to report to the owner or boss. It creates a record of details which could be forgotten later.

3 Private Blogs
I have created.private blogs of not yet finished books so that I have a record of them, easy to find, can't be lost like manuscripts left on a train. (D H Lawrence lost Seven Pillars of Wisdom when changing trains at Reading station in England).

4 Limited Readership Blogs
You might write an account of your holiday or your family birthday, with photos, which would not be of interest to anybody else, and struggle even to get your family to read it more than once.

5 High Traffic Blogs
You might get huge numbers of readers of a blog on your pet squirrel wearing funny hats, or dieting with vegetables, or saving money when shopping. Blog posts get more readers with a photo and more with a video. If you are taking the trouble to edit photos and videos, insert a photo after every three sentence paragraph, check spelling and grammar, especially the names of people and places, plus adding references and links, you could easily spend three hours writing one blog post.

This is fun for an evening, or before going to work, or in a lunch hour, or if you are bored at the weekend or evenings or are a student, housewife, babysitter, house-sitter, dog walker using Siri or dictation.

6a Why Boost Blogs?
Most blog writers want to gain readers, and many blog writers want to make money.

If you are working all day on blogs, and other poeple are making loads of money from blogs, even if you did not start out writing to make money, you might be wondering why you are not getting paid for your time and the service you are providing to others. So you have a new aim -

6b To make money!

If you create a niche blog such as a diet blog or a gardening blog you might have a good idea of the people who are reading it. But you could angle your blog with more focus, or include a specific blog post on a narrower subject, such as gardening in England, gardening in the USA, or gardening in Asia, or diets for babies (which would not be read by babies but by young mothers or even grandmothers, especially if you wrote diets for grandchildren.

I write about twenty blogs. If you want to pick up readers, there are two things you can do.
1) Write the post or title with words which get more clicks. (Check on Google search words.)
2) 'Advertise' each new post on social media.
3) Advertise with a paid advertisement in a place such as Facebook.
4) Join an affiliate programme. If you link through to Amazon for a product such as a book but the reader does not buy it, you would still earn commission if they bought a fridge instead.

Privacy
You can choose a privacy setting if you don't want strangers reading. For example, if you are writing for your own amusement, or your family, or want to include people who have not (yet) given permission for their picture to be used, or if you are including pictures of babies and children.



Marilyn Monroe photo from the movie Niagara. Public domain photo from Wikipedia.

7a Hot Subjects
My son, Anthony Sharot, runs Market Appeal, which does search engine optimisation, (maximising how easily readers can find your web page using search engines brand name Google (like a switchboards) while the programme on your computer is a web browser (which presents web pages), Safari or Chrome) which are like your home phone. If you mention hot subjects such as Marilyn Monroe, Meghan Markle or Kim Kardashian, you will get more readers.

7b Copying Successful Blogs, Layouts, Subjects
My son told me to look at the most successful websites and pick my favourite and model my layout on theirs.If they have about me on the top left and I like that, and their rival has the about me on top right, I can decide which is more effective or suits my attention-getting personality. Of course I will never be a copy of them, even if I wanted to, because I have different attitudes, experiences, destinations.


American Flag.

8 Attracting Americans
When I first started writing my travel blog, and I had written posts on England, I could not understand why I had so many American readers. My husband, who is a statistician, pointed out that the population of the USA is much larger than that of the UK. The Americans were into the internet and blogging before the Brits and in greater numbers.the Americans are very pro-British. At least some of them are, enough to provide me and you with readers.

Now that I know I have so many American readers, each time I write a post I look for an American connection. In the early days, if I wrote a post about somebody in the UK, such as singer Amy Winehouse, if I went onto Wikipedia and saw that she had photo showing her performing in America, or Europe, I would ignore it. Now, instead, I think, I must add that to interest potential readers from the USA or in Europe.

Americans are in a different time zone to the UK and Asia, and those on the east coast in the USA are in a diferent one to those in California. If it is gone midnight in London my British readers may be asleep, but the Americans are awake, so a post to interest them will be more successful.

But I also think of the advertisers. Who am I promoting at the end? How will my readers reach the destination I have described? I need a box at the end with travel details. If I want to interest the tourist board who might invite me for a free familiarisation trip, I would do well to mention them. If I want to collect credit from the orgnaizers of a travel show or a tour company, I should mention them. If I want to be impartial, I should mention both of two rival companies, or the one I know and can therefore recomment.

Are you likely to cause yourself trouble if you promote something without realizing that you stand to gain? Are you misleading treaders if you recomment something you have tnot tried? It's really simple. Just be honest. Say the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For example: I have not yet tried them but was attracted by xxx Or, I stayed at the five star x hotel, but if you are on a budget the y hostel is nearby.


Italian Flag.
9 Attracting readers from Italy
I wrote posts about the region of Umbria, capital Perugia (infamous becuase of Knox), then about an Italian restaurant in Pinner, North West London, which featured paintings by Modigliani.My Italian readership shot up and has not abated.

10 Readers From Russia & Ukrainians
I suddenly got a spike or readers in Russia. I could not work out why. I went back to my blog posts on the day I first attracted the russians and realised that I had written a post on languages in which I mentioned adpating your computer to type Russian and buying a transparent keyboard overlay showing the alternative keyboard letters in Russian.

When I wrote my next post on underground stations, I made a point of mentioning the Russian underground stations, especially those in the centres of high population.


Flag of Ukraine.

Why Ukrainians?
Many of them speak Russian.

11 Readers From Pakistan
Suddenly, out of the blue, I have hundreds of readers in Pakistan. Where have they come from? I look on the stats in blogger and find a link to the sources. I click on the link and find myself on a page selling army uniforms. I cannot see any mention of my blog post. Suddenly the penny drops in my mind. I wrote a blog post on where you can drive a tank, and your children can ride in a tank. I is in England.

12 Guest Bloggers & Blog Tours
Why be a guest blogger? Years ago somebody invited me to be a guest blogger but I never took them up on it. I could not see the point. It seemed to me that I was just saving them time and giving them my blog post for nothing. Now I have received many mailing shots from bloggers with text and podcasters with interview who recommend each other's books. It is a win-win siutation. If you had one hundred readers and your friend had 100, by writing on their blog you reach 200, and by recommending them on yours they reach 200. Win-win.

A blog tour is like a book tour. You take one blog post to several other bloggers.

I was inspired to write this after attending William Gallagher's two part workshop on Blogging For Authors at Writers' Summer School.

Photo taken by Christine Miller at Writers' Summer School. William Gallagher is on the left. Angela Lansbury is on the right.


My final tip.

For years I had trouble trying to load up photos directly to Facebook and blogs to Blogger from my phone.
Often it did not work. Sometimes websites refused photos with no text or only a brief line. They must have thought I had not finished the post, or copied the photo from elsewhere. If I copied my own post from blogger to wordpress, sometimes it was rejected because it appeared that I was copying somebody else's blog post. Alternatively, the search engine treated the first post as the original, and did not list the copy so the other website got no readers.

Two possible reasons. Instead you go into Facebook on your laptop and load up your photos onto your computer first. If I only want two or three photos, I find it quicker to share the photos from my phone with my phone and laptop by emailing them individually to myself with the subject matter giving the photo caption or even just the hotel or restaurant name.I move the photo onto my screen in my office later in the day. Then I just slide it across into my post on blogger.


Wordpress
Wordpress is more complicated. It allows you more options. I prefer Blogger. If you are not technically minded, it is simpler and quicker to use.

Finally, selling. If your purpose is to sell books, make sure your books are available.

You can take courses on selling on line. Everything is available for free on the internet. But if you struggle to fight against distractions at home, cannot focus, prefer to interact with people who show you what you are doing wrong, to make friends, then invest in a course. Instead of spending on a culutral holiday spend on a working holiday and learn something.

13 Are We Making Progress?
Look back on your old blog posts. If you are shocked by the fact that your earlier posts did not have pictures and links, instead update them. Link back to your old posts. Link forward to your newer posts. Rewrite the old content with a later post including new pictures, and congratulate yourself on how much you have learned.

Useful Websites
https://www.growthmachine.com/blog/wiki-strategy
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/need-country-flag-for-free.html

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and blogger, author of twenty books including:
Wedding Speeches & Toasts
Etiquette For Every Occasion
Quick Quotations
Who Said What When

How Many Readers Has My Blog Post? Where? Why? How Can I Increase The Number?

Problem
I don't know how many readers I have. I don't know why my monthly average is going up or down.

Answers
The statistics page on Blogger / blogspot and Wordpress will give you your readership. You can look at all time, monthly, weekly, daily or now.

Daily, Monthly, Yearly Numbers
If you had one reader a day, you would have about 30 a month and over 300 a year and after ten years 3.000.

Add a zero. If you had ten readers a day, you would have about 300 a month, more than 3.000 a year (which could be the same ten readers or 3,000 different readers).

If you had 15 a day,  that is
If you had 100 a day that is 700 a week, 3,000 a month, 30,000 a year.

150 a day would be about 1050 a week, about 6,000 a (30 day) month, (150x365) about 60,000 a year.

1000 a day would be 7,000 a week, about 28,000-30,000 a month,  about 365,000 a year.

10,000 a day would be 70,000 a week, 3,650,000 and so on. Three million six hundred and fifty thousand a year.

Your Target Number
You might compare your blog's readership with a magazine or newspaper in your chosen field.
Or compare it with the number of readers your advertisers or associate and affiliate programmes require as a minimum.

You also want to look at followers.

Comparisons
You can take two opposite types of headline and compare them. You might run two websites, one called dotty dogs, about the stupid and unhealthy things which animals eat, and healthy dogs, about how to feed your dogs healthy food. When you find which works best, you shut down the unpopular one and move those three readers onto the website attracting thousands or millions.

Names Of Products And Writers
In the old days before the internet, writers kept different pen-names for different genres. Tough Tom wrote for men and Rosie wrote romance.

Supposing you want to be anonymous, or to start in a new field. It used to be very common to have two names. You might need a second name because you are forbbidden to work in another field, or don't want your boss to know you have a side business. You might want to keep the writers anonymous so that when Annie stops writing Agony Aunt Annie, the column can be taken over by Betty. You might have a group, A, B and C, acting like one person, in shifts or alternating weeks.

Decide your target for the year and increase your daily average to meet it.

You may wish to take your own clicks out of the counting. If you were starting and wanted to look busy, you could click ten times an hour and count your own clicks.

Multiply Readers
1 Start with nearby - your family, friends, colleagues, people in earshot, anybody on the bus or in the room.
2 Social media
To multiply your readers, tell all your friends on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on.
3 Do mutual recommendation with other people. You recommend or mention their blog post with a link. They suggest yours.
4 Link each of your posts to other posts in your blog.
5 Mention popular subjects and famous people. If Marilyn Monroe filmed a famous film at Niagara Falls, called Niagara, mention it.

6 Offer advice. How to ... get cheaper, better, quicker.
7 Check which of your subjects attract more readers and where.
8 Notice which referring links bring in readers.
9 Link to other posts in your own blog.
10 Decide which type of readers you want and aim headlines and subjects at them.

11 Go back to your old posts and improve them with the light of your newer knowledge.
12 Recycle your old posts.
13 Tie in your posts to the headlines of the day.
14 Connect with famous people living now.
15 Mention famous people and places from the past.

16 Link to products which people can buy.
17 Decide the purpose of your blog - what do you want people to do next? Are you aiming at the reader or the advertisers, or the reader in order to get advertisers?
18 Add pictures at the start and end of your blog.
19 If you are selling something, add links at intervals so that anybody on a small screen can link.

20 Check if people are reading on small phone screens or laptops or desktops and adapt accordingly.
21 If you want more readers, write another post.
22 If you have two blogs, link the two blogs.
23 You already have a fortune and now you want fame? Money no object? For fast results, sign up to a service which puts your posts' links on all social media automatically.
24 When you mention somebody, tell them. When you mention a product, tell the PR.

25 Divide your day's time. No point in writing for nobody to read. For every hour writing a post or two, spend the next hour telling people.
26 Improve headlines by checking the headlines of the top most widely read newspapers, magazines and blog posts. Copy their style.
27 Don't mention the number of readers a day if you are starting, mention the monhtly or yearly figures.

If you are writing about your trips just for the record, and showing family photos of children, hide their faces or hide your posts.

I'd better do more of this!

End by asking others to recommend your posts, and to come back again.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_(film)
https://www.hubspot.com/blog-readers

Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker. See my other posts on how to pack, how learn a language, and destinations worldwide. Please bookmark or save links to your favourite posts so you can come back. Share links to my posts on Facebook. Also share links with your friends.

How to Get Readers, for Writers, bloggers and readers of travel articles and more

Problems
An internet source is subject to typos from the writer and changes made later by spell checker.

Readers have strong views on preferences for one company rather than another, one country rather than another, one website rather than another. I read on line that some people are boycotting certain sites because they believe not enough is being done to stop terrorism. Other would prefer the BBC to the Mail, or the Mail to the BBC, or an American source instead of a British one. Some people would visit or live in Greece rather than Turkey, turkey rather than Greece, and so on. Some want to know about bargains, others about luxury.

Story
When I first wrote about honeymoon destinations for the British magazine Brides, I was told that although the majority of readers wanted to read about luxury destinations, their budget was more modest. Therefore I had to feature places in 3 price ranges, 5 star, three star and one star. That way every reader would find practical information and every advertiser could be sure that the editorial would be supporting the readership at which they aimed.

Therefore, when I have time, I try to give three choices in the hopes of giving everybody something which suits them in every way. This means occasionally instead of starting a new blog, I add an extra website to an old one.

However, when it comes to the internet, I am told by SEO experts, that if you aim too widely, the reader does not identify you with any particular niche. If you want readers to come back, you must select either bargains, or luxury. This is the challenge for bloggers.

If you would like me to write articles on your blog, or to copy your articles, or to have permission to copy my articles on your blog with links back to mine, please get in touch.

Angela Lansbury travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. 

Travel blogs from a phone: advantages

After the collapse of my laptop I had to do my daily blog on a phone. The advantage is that when I view it on my phone I see what phone users see.

   The result is that I write shorter more succinct blogs, no side-tracking. Each paragraph is no more than three sentences long. I had already learned to do that for newspaper columns in tabloids when I trained as a journalist.

   Although Google shows me that most of my readers are on larger tablets, laptops or desk computers, it does make me see writing and reading a new way. I hope you enjoy my shorter, succinct posts.