Housing Chronicles celebrates 6-month anniversary

Today The Housing Chronicles Blog celebrates its 6-month anniversary!

When I launched the blog back on November 12, 2007, I had a simple mission: (1) to cover the news stories about housing and economics that I was reading already in print and online; (2) to provide balanced coverage from the perspective of a building industry insider; (3) to interact with other bloggers and reporters covering the real estate beat; and (4) to (hopefully) promote what we do at MetroIntelligence Real Estate Advisors.

First, the metrics: while traffic to the HousingChronicles.com site itself isn't huge by Internet standards, it does continue to grow and should hit 3,000 unique visitors this month, giving the site an Alexa rating -- which ranks the tens of millions of sites on the Internet by visitors -- of 632,132 over the past week and 978,750 over the last three months (generally a rating under 100,000 certifies a site for bragging rights, but I'm happy with anything under 1 million). Over the past 3 months, that Alexa rating has risen by over 3.3 million slots, so thank you to all the visitors who are continuing the discover the blog.

A few months ago I decided to syndicate the blog to services such as BlogBurst, Sphere, and NewsTex, which means that other viewers find my postings on other sites such as Reuters, Fox Business News, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and many others. Although this certainly impacts traffic to the blog site itself, the 5.3 million headline views Housing Chronicles has received from BlogBurst alone makes it a tremendous promotional vehicle.

But blogs also receive traffic from other blogs as well -- and so I must thank Patrick.net, Calculated Risk, Lansner on Real Estate, Dr. Housing Bubble, FinancialWebRing.org, among others, for providing links to my site which have brought me a lot of new visitors.

Housing Chronicles has also been cited twice by the Carnival of Real Estate for two different postings submitted for their weekly contest, which has brought more exposure and traffic.

In addition, I need to thank Nick Slevin, who runs Peninsula Publishing, edits the bi-weekly BuilderBytes newsletter and has also given me my own column at his flagship publication, Builder & Developer.

Secondly, the new contacts I've made: I've met some very smart and interesting people via the blogosphere -- like Peter Viles, who runs the L.A.Land blog for the Los Angeles Times and allowed me a guest blog spot a few weeks ago. Or Jonathan Lansner, who runs the Lansner on Real Estate blog for the Orange County Register. These two guys run excellent blogs that focus not just on their local markets, but also national trends that impact Southern California.

Or Jonathan Smoke, who founded HousingIntelligence.com and BlueSmoke and became an alliance partner with MetroIntelligence and runs the Housing Intelligence blog. Or Sean O'Toole, who founded ForeclosureRadar.com and runs the ForeclosureTruth blog.

Or real estate agent Judy Graff, who runs the San Fernando Valley Real Estate blog and Alice Cook, a self-described "angry renter" from the United Kingdom, who runs the UK Bubble blog.

And of course Luke Mullins, an Associate Editor for U.S. News & World Report who blogs at The Home Front.

The next six months should be even better for Housing Chronicles, including moving to a multi-author platform so you'll be hearing from more voices than just my own, and the syndication of selective blog postings to the website for Builder magazine, Builderonline.com (hopefully any day now!).

I've learned that maintaining a regular blog is much more than a hobby -- it's a commitment that forces me to keep up on real estate news and trends, which also makes me a much better (and informed) consultant. Most bloggers don't just blog -- those who do so for newspapers and magazines wear the blogging hat in addition to many others -- so I've developed great respect for those men and women who get up early -- or stay up late -- to add their unique voices to the blogosphere. It just wouldn't be the same without them.

Thanks for visiting!