June 2007 Update

Visible activity on Munny4Hunny has reduced somewhat, however 'off-page' activity has been a very different story. The aim for this month has been to raise the profile and I have been using Technorati 'Authority' as my measuring stick.
Here are the methods that I have used:

1. A paid-post (not paid by me...) kindly 'donated' by Greg Stratz - this scheme guaranteed a post including links would be posted on a specific number of different blogs
2. The viral tags scheme as devised by Jimmy at Founders Cafe, he adapted Andy Coates original viral matrix idea.
3. Commenting and reviewing a couple of blogs
4. Using a free submission program to get my blog listed on up to 250 directories

Of these methods, the runaway successes have been methods 1 & 2 - I used the viral method on another blog and can report that it gave me about 90 authority points. So far my authority on this blog has risen by 170, so if we assume that the scheme is as effective on one blog as the other, then another 80 points need to be accounted for. I think that scheme 1 probably gave me about 40 or 50 points leaving 30 or so unaccounted for. Some of these will be down to additional links in comments and natural accumulation of ranking points through normal activity.
I have already pointed out that the viral-scheme can hardly be regarded as an 'organic' method of accruing popularity, a view acknowledged by Jimmy himself. I can envisage a filter being devised by Google to counter the effect of this on PR, which is why I have used other methods which should stand me in good stead if such measures are introduced. I have employed one-way links where possible when submitting to directories and will probably not bother with directories that don't have any page-rank of their own. Commenting and reviewing is a more organic method and will gain you authority in the long-run, but can be painstaking as you can't get such rapid results as via the other methods. I don't advocate spam-commenting which I have seen done here and there, generally my commenting attempts to be intelligent(?), meaningful and on-topic...
I will report final results of the popularity pursuit at the end of the month. Suffice to say that once again, my results were far better than my target (I need to set higher goals obviously) - I had hoped to double my Technorati Authority from 23 to 46 - right now I am at 194 on Munny4Hunny so I might well exceed expectations by up to ten-fold by the end of the month.
Due to the activity off-line in this and other projects, the actual paid to post earnings for the blog will be very low for June, but the ultimate aim will be to gain Page-Rank and therefore to be picky about the paid posts I will do in the future.