Okay we’re up and running! Meet my new baby, Astro Dispatch!

Now I think it’s glorious but I am going to tell you everything I know (or think I know) about this: It will not replace the Top 10 Astrology News or the recent Astro News unless other people pitch in and here is why (especially for you newer astrology bloggers).

I set up the Top 10 Astrology News almost 2 years ago. Seeing astrology going more and more mainstream, I thought we (astrology bloggers) could get more attention if we pulled together. As many of you know, it is very hard to build an audience but I’d done it. I had an audience because I have been writing online daily since 2001, so I set up the Astrology News with feeds from all the astrology blogs (there were about 40 at the time) and it worked.

Slowly we grew. More astrologers started blogging and I had the ability to give them an instantaneous audience by adding their feed to the Astrology News which got them instant readership. This encouraged people so we grew some more, eventually getting picked up by google as a news source.

Now to further fuel the growth I was able to add content that did not come in on an rss feed which I did on a daily basis. I hunted down quality content and linked it being especially diligent about linking mainstream news sources who published stories with an astrological theme. I felt that sending them traffic would encourage more of the same and I imagine this has also worked.

So we were all good except for two things. One, the site was not stable. I heard from the gal who talked me into doing it that I might wake up one day to find the site gone which has now happened. The other problem is the site turned into a lot of work for me personally… I was spending 20-30 a week tending it and of course there was no pay. I had no stake in the thing at all other than a desire to give back and serve astrology but that was beginning to change for this simple reason: I am poor.

Now the site went down and we through up the Astro News and while it was ugly and lacked features, it was effective in driving traffic because it was hosted on my blog which guess what? I also have a page rank of 5 and am a source for google news. But the new site has no such advantage and there is nothing I can about that but call in some favors at this point.

I am asking people to link and promote the new site so that we can get some traction. Please help yourself, help your peers and help me by placing a link or the widget (it is totally customizable) that updates the headlines because if nobody does, google will not see us until God knows when.

If you have been around awhile then you know my original vision / statement was that I would do this so that ALL BOATS WOULD RISE and this has absolutely happened so please, please help me get this thing rolling so we can all recover our losses and prosper. I am very grateful for any and all support.

This site does it all (I can embed video again - hooray!) but the process to add feeds is somewhat cumbersome so please give me a few days to get everyone up and running.

If you like the look, I am sure HQ and his brother, “The Wrench” would be glad to know it and as always suggestions are always welcome.

Thanks - Astro Dispatch