Even Good Things Take Time to Grow

I’m out on my balcony, having opted for peace and quiet over watching cylons die – my husband’s been trying to hook me on Battlestar Galactica for awhile now, but I remain a sporadic watcher at best. Don’t get me wrong – I like the show, but I’d rather be reading a book or a blog, or watching my herbs and vegetables grow.

And they are growing indeed. Tiny little shoots, and then bigger ones, and then – oh, glorious! – white or yellow flowers, which mean teeny little strawberries, tomatoes, beans or peppers. The tomato flowers look promising, and with the basil plant, all we need now is a mozzarella tree.

The beans surprised me the most – they’re the only plants I started from seed this year, and I’m always amazed that covering seeds with dirt and throwing water in their general direction produces food.

When I was little, I’d always kill bean plants, because I’d get fed up with waiting for them to appear, and pull them out to check the roots. Acquiring readers is like that, except that it’s easier to see the results, thanks to Google Analytics or feedburner. Whether you’re building your subscriber list, creating your personal brand or assembling a team of bank robbers (to fund your world domination), it can take time.

Speaking of both analytics and growing your list, Darren Rouse’s recent post on ProBlogger offers advice on how to grow your blog’s seach engine traffic. In his post, Darren also shows a screenshot of analytics for 18 months of search engine traffic for his blog Digital Photography School. Do you know what part I find the most encouraging? The far left side of the chart compared to the far right side of the chart. There’s a steady upward trend. The point is, in order for a trend to exist, there had to be a low point to start from.

Another example of why you should let your beans be (i.e. be patient) is Google’s gmail. When it first came out in Februrary, 2007, I was annoyed by gmail invites from my friends. I said, you’re emailing the invitation to me. Doesn’t that indicate that I already have an email?

Skip ahead to a couple of months ago, when I decided to give up and give gmail a try. Skip ahead to now, when I have all my email accounts routed through gmail, hate my Outlook at work for not threading my conversations, and have jumped through the gmail gateway to google docs, google calendar and google reader.

Aside from my sneaking suspicion that despite their motto, Google is compiling secret, comprehensive dossiers on all of us, I have fully embraced the Google apps, and live in fear of the day they decide to start charging. Of course, my diabolically clever husband will just figure out a different set of apps to use, but what about people without diabolically clever technical skills or spouses? Anyway, it took a good long time (a year and a few months), but, game, set, match, Google, I’ve converted to your wicked ways.

With luck, good ideas and patience, hopefully people will start to convert to yours. You’ll reach your goal, and have lots of delicious green beans to eat. (Or whatever). Drop me a line, and let me know what you’re impatient about, and how you’re coping with the slow going.