How the heck do you submit something? Other than posting something on your own site and asking for the almighty himself to find your post?

Duh...found the email on his site.

If you have the timing luck to have done something that goes off in a slightly different direction or provides extra detail on a subject he's just blogged, sending him a mail on it will often get you a link.

I've never had the nerve to submit a link to anyone, let alone Instapundit. My shy wallflower personality infects even my internet persona! :)

But such is life....

See Ith, I have told you not to be so shy about it.

Jay, that's like telling the rain not to fall down :)

If you truly are a high priest of the Axis of Naughty, I demand you send down Instalanches rto all your loyal followers.

Perhaps you are a fraud? This post has not been Instalanched, not even once! What type of weak magic are you trying to peddle here, Kevin?

Heh.

Indeed.

Uh oh. I don't read Instapundit. Does that make me a bad blogger?

Folks, he's giving good advice. I was blogging for less than a month when Glenn linked to one of my Frank J insults. From 50 a day to over 600, and it keeps up for awhile too.

Plain ol' unexpected and unlooked for luck.

Beware bandwidth limitations when you get linked by a high traffic blog. I had something of a photo essay (on my now defunct blog) that was linked to by Atrios one day. The hits blew past my 100Mb per day limit in no time. If all you deal in is text then you probably have no worries but if you have lots of graphics and/or photos then consider yourself forewarned.

But Jay, Hehs and Indeeds are few and far between on Mr Pundit's site these days. Hmm. Interesting.

Congrads on the an Instalanche. Without it the advice seemed so...

Yeti,
Glenn posted to this today, I guess Kevin know what he is talking about.

Kevin,
Sorry about the extra trackbacks. I didn't think they were working.

I've gotten a few Instalanches in my day -- I even got a flood (3,000+/day) from The Corner, once, but those users really aren't very sticky.

Recently, with the new job, I finally got around to sending Glenn a few bucks -- something I'd been meaning to do for a while -- and a day or so later, I sent along a link I thought he might be interested in and I figured since I'd just sent him some scratch, it might help... but no joy. So bribery (at least in two-digit amounts) doesn't seem to help.

I didn't know that was the place to be noticed. Or that I was suppose to try to be noticed by him. I think, I am alright being virtual unknown.

And never fail to mention your blog when you write to a "name" with a comment. I've already failed miserably after Lileks wrote me back once, Sullivan quoted me on his site, and the Weekly Standard site printed a couple letters. Each time I failed to note where I wrote.

Also, Carnival of the Vanities will work, too, as I received a three-day surge after rightweare.com hosted the event. Some stickiness seems apparent but it is too soon to tell.

But mostly, write for yourself. Been blogging on foreign affairs (mostly) for 14 months and the (I'm estimating here) average of maybe 200 hits per month are a bonus to the ability to just comment freely.

One warning, blogging has totally messed up my time for writing for dead trees and that has to stop! Or at least moderate a bit. I may need an intervention.

Did I mention that I write The Dignified Rant at www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRhome.html ?

Everything Kevin said is dead-on - and Kathy K's advice (be germane to something Glenn's just posted) may be the most important one of all.

I've had 14 Instalanches on my site - most of them from noticing Glenn was posting on something I was also writing about, and emailing and telling him I had a slightly different take on it. (Gratifyingly, I've also had three completely unprompted ones, which is pretty rewarding).

By the way - while Instalanches aren't in and of themselves sticky, every one gets you linked, and blogrolled, everywhere else. I built my traffic from 30 visitors a day last year to about ten times that now, most of it from links I've gotten from other sites that first noticed me via either Glenn or Lileks.

Patience!

It helps to be timely. I got my Instalanche when I read something Glenn had posted just 20 minutes prior, and I sent him a message to a blog entry I had written on the same subject the previous month. You can see the results at http://www.analogmouse.com/blog/archives/000203.html

A drop in his tip bucket doesn't guarantee you a link and may not even help but geez, he does so much for the blogosphere, drop something anyway. Now only do I like that he links to me but I appreciate all the sites I learn about because he's linked to them.

Kevin - Impressive. But that was an easy task for the lackey of the Puppy Blender.

For your next task, I demand you seen three nubile maidens to my apartment. Have them bring good wine and cheese.

And send their boyfriends to mine ;)

Thanks for the advice.

As for me, I'm happy in my anonymity (assuming I have any-- I never bother to check my traffic).

I blog for catharsis-- largely because I write better than I speak, and as a consequence I lose a lot of arguments that I wouldn't lose if I had the time to compose an essay about a given topic.

Oh puke! I'm sounding like one of those NEA artists that balks at doing anything that people will actually like to see. ("I do not paint for them! I paint for me! If the inbred troglodytes of this town cannot appreciate my art, then I what good are they?")

Oh well, at least I'm not asking for federal funding. (National Endowment for the Blogs?)

Now if you'll pardon me, I must go practice my affectations for tommorrow's opening. (pop)

Can't get an Instalanche? Okay, here's what you do. Link to my blog in your blogroll. Link to new posts on my blog every day. Send your traffic to my blog. And after my traffic builds to something approaching Instapundian levels, I'll start linking to your blog. It's a fair trade. ;=)

Buwaahhaaaahahahaaa!

Just write great content everyday and link to relevant information. Humans have an amazing ability to weed the information garden out there to allow those productive plants to shine.

AND choose a niche and go deep!

www.neurosociety.net

Bah! Instalanches are rewards from the devil. You can build up your traffic with no help from the blender of puppies.

I have been linked by Glenn, Kaus, Hit and Run, Virginia, NRO, etc. Sometime with massive effect sometimes less. I say this not to brag but to explain my perspective and expereience. If you want lots of traffic you will have to have either prior name recognition/area of expertise or you will have to do the following: regular posting, topics directly related to hot topics or topics the big blogs care about, and intelligent and/or novel things to say. If you don't have the first thing, the second list will require hard work and dedication. If you slack off or take time off the hits tend to go away. My expereince is that without volume the stickieness is minimal. I went from my lowest monthly total to my highest monthly total back to my lowest in the course of three months. In the political blogosphere if you stop talking about the subject de jure (the war, dem primary, civil liberties, etc.) the hits will fade. Just like a journalist, if you really want to get the major hits you will have to write what people want to read. If you want to write for your self forget about the hits (if you can).

I have a suggestion:

Pretend you're a soldier just resturned from Iraq who is sick and tired of the "negative war coverage" the biased media are giving us.

Call yourself "Sgt. Rock," or "Captain America."

You can insert which ever media whipping boy Glenn is exercised about at the monent [The BBC or CNN usually works. Not so much the New York Times now that Raines has left].

Then write a heart-warming post about all the soccer games you organized for local Iraqi children, etc.

If you thrown in something about how people are free to complain about electricity and water problems...when they'd have been imprisoned, or worse, for saying such things under saddam. All the better.

Basically, if you write a dead-on post that confirms his worldview, you are much more likely to get linked.

Good luck folks!

You mean I need more than the 40 hits a day I get now?
Glenn Reynolds posted an e-mail I wrote him, does that count?

After reading this post I sent Glenn an email asking for an instalanche of the China blog mother list available at one of our major blogs, noting that he regularly linked to African, Indian, and Korean blogs regularly but not nearly as much to that other Asian country. The result was this: http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011582.php.

Thanks for the advice. I wouldn't have even bothered trying if I hadn't read this. I've tried doing much the same months ago with my own blog but had no luck. It seems this time I was lucky because he found another blog that was posting from another "exotic" region. Luck of the draw I guess.

Try link-slutting with some photoshop work, too.

Like this.