David, you mention yet another reason why it’s good to pretend you have an audience – because a random web surfer may not realize that, and if you blog looks as if it has a large audience, they may just assume as much.

And your mention of a parakeet inspires me to add our cats to my readership; there’s two!

You don’t necessarily have to be great all the time, but you *do* need to avoid the telltale signs that you’re writing for your mother and your parakeet.

I don’t know if it was luck or good timing but writing like it matters even when my traffic was low, helped got the attention of a well-known blogger in my niche, which got me a link or two, and which got me a significant increase in traffic.

And the traffic then continue to compel me to write better all the time.

One common mistake I notice a lot of good bloggers make is including comments like ‘Nobody reads this anyway’ in their posts. If you write like you don’t deserve to be read, nobody will read you. If you write with the depth and earnestness of an A-list blogger, you have the potential to shape the way your audience perceives you, even if you’re really a total beginner.