10 Things I've Learned By And About Blogging
August 12th 2009 23:28
Yes, yes I know this is one list post after another. Bear with me folks, I'm doing these in a bit of a hurry. Tomorrow's will be longer and more interesting and not a list.
So I've been blogging for two years now, officially. There have been gaps, times when I didn't have computer access or not enough computer access to blog regularly, times when I was under too much stress and pressure to even remember this place existed, and times when I was just too sleepy to blog for a few days when I got home.
Here are ten things I've learned over the last two years.
1. It's slow going Personally, I'm under eighteen. Being under eighteen means I don't earn any money from my blog. I can't because to open up an AdSense account, you need to be over eighteen. So I have no idea how much money I could be making.
But I still get reader stats. I know that the hit count I get with my nightly stats doesn't really matter, because they aren't all real readers. The realistic number of readers is somewhere between the 'individual readers' and 'link readers' statistics. That puts me between twenty and seventy readers daily, which isn't a bad number, but for two years-even with gaps-it's not much success for a lot of effort.
This number has greatly increased over the last month and a half, rising to numbers it's never been before. I'm happy to see that my blog is, indeed, making progress, but I still don't have over a hundred readers, so I'm not too ecstatic. It's slow, it's a lot of effort, but it's definitely worth it to me-by the time I'm eighteen and get an AdSense account in two years and a bit, I'm betting my readership will have gone up a fair bit. Just need to work at it.
2. Big Gaps Can Be Fatal I think the biggest reason why I don't have over a hundred readers yet is because I had periods of time when I just didn't have computer access, or not enough to do anything more than check Facebook and my email quickly. Thankfully, now that I'm back to living with my grandmother, I have consistent computer and internet access, at least an hour every night.
When I move out and get my place with my best friend, my blogging may become sparse again, but my goal is to never let it drop below 2 short posts a week. As long as I can make those two short posts a week, letting people know that I'm alive, what I'm working on and maybe posting a poem or two, readership won't go down to zero... I hope.
Gaps of more than two weeks can be fatal. Especially if they happen without warning because your computer got sat on. Then when you come back, you're going to be rebuilding from the ground up unless you're somebody like Darren Rowse.
3. Self-Promotion Since I started this blog I've learned that a lot of blogging, and getting readers, is about self promotion. It's about guest posting on other blogs (but nobody's asked me to do that yet, and I haven't really sought it out), attaching links to your blog and maybe a specific post or two to signatures on forums, commenting on other blogs with a link back to your own, if it's relevant (a lot of comment forms have a field for name and a field for website, so I just fill both in), et cetera. A lot of it is getting your name out there.
Writing articles and poems and short stories for various publications with a byline that has a link to your blog is also a great way to advertise your blog. I've noticed a bump in my traffic every time I've gotten a poem published.
4. Don't Give Up I've learned, thanks to great mentoring from the likes of Katyzzz, Kleonaptra and Jeanne Dininni, my three favourite Orble bloggers that are still around (sadly David is gone) never to give up. That even if I disappear for six months because of some tragedy, when I come back, I'll always be able to start over, I'll always have all these archives to link to, and the three I mentioned will always check it out when I come back.
The community here is really what keeps me coming back. Bloggers like the three I've mentioned convince me time and time again that this blog is worth it.
5. Write For Love A big thing about blogging is to love what you're writing about, or at least the process of your writing. You CAN write a blog without love, but it will show through and your writing will be dull and unimpressive. The readers will know if you don't love the work you're doing.
There's another good reason to blog about something you love. What is it? The fact that it takes so long to get really well known. Most blogs fold within a year. Discontinue entirely. It takes about a year for a blog to actually get noticed and start getting steady readership in most cases-some have extreme early on success, but most of us need to plod through about sixteen months of steady blogging before we get popular. Do you really want to spend sixteen months writing about something you don't enjoy?
6. Reach Out To Other Bloggers Read other blogs. There are a variety of reasons to do this. One is that you can find lots of great information about pretty much any topic you like on a variety of blogs. Another is that you can learn what kind of posts work, and what kind of posts don't. Another is that you can make some good friends by blogging.
Personally, I like to read blogs about a variety of things. I love the fact that Orble has a most popular list and a home page that I can just scroll through when I'm bored, and find a post on any number of topics. I like to find interesting posts on people who have commented on my blog and comment on theirs, but sometimes I'm just not interested, and I'm not going to leave a silly comment.
Another big reason is that it will make other bloggers more likely to link to you. And you can make some great friends through blogging. Really, you can. I have.
7. Change Things Up I don't mean change the focus of your blog entirely. But occasionally playing with layout-as I did, and I've settled on one-and playing with the formatting of your posts can bring curious readers. It can also mean a break from the monotony that one can easily fall into by writing a blog post every single day or every other day.
For example, sometime next week I'll be posting some writing exercises I've done, which will include pictures of the beach near the cottage.
8. Respond to Readers I don't get to do this very often as people rarely leave comments on my blog. I'm not sure quite why that is. Maybe they just don't have time to leave a properly thoughtful response. Maybe they're reading on their RSS feeds (which I know is crap 'cause my stats tell me I have three subscribers, love you guys, whoever you are) and don't feel like clicking through to visit the blog. There could be any number of reasons. It kind of makes me sad that I don't get comments, but I know people are reading, so I don't mind too much.
When I do get a comment, I make sure to respond. I answer questions, occasionally discuss philosophy with my visitors and make sure to thank them for dropping by. Make your readers welcome and respond to them and you'll build a relationship with them. They'll come back.
9. Write Your Best Not necessarily every post. You don't want to spend two hours every day just to write one long, in depth blog post. But you want to make sure that every post has your own personal touch and personal voice to it. You want to make sure your grammar isn't awful and your sentence structure doesn't smell like the freighters of dung they have down at Parliament and Lakeshore. (Local reference, guys. Toronto.)
You want to be conversational, friendly. To give clear, useful information. Put your heart into everything that you write and it'll be a lot better. And maybe one out of every seven posts, go all out and write a long in depth post. Or maybe one out of every ten or fifteen. Every once in a while, it's worth the effort.
10. Blogging can be painful or a lot of fun. This is really the most important thing that I've learned about blogging. Blogging can become a chore. This can happen if you get bored of your subject, started out with a boring subject, or just get burnt out. When this happens, either take a break, change up your posting format, just post links for a few days, or stop altogether if you've entirely used up your topic.
There. Those are the ten most important things I've learned about and from blogging.
So I've been blogging for two years now, officially. There have been gaps, times when I didn't have computer access or not enough computer access to blog regularly, times when I was under too much stress and pressure to even remember this place existed, and times when I was just too sleepy to blog for a few days when I got home.
Here are ten things I've learned over the last two years.
1. It's slow going Personally, I'm under eighteen. Being under eighteen means I don't earn any money from my blog. I can't because to open up an AdSense account, you need to be over eighteen. So I have no idea how much money I could be making.
But I still get reader stats. I know that the hit count I get with my nightly stats doesn't really matter, because they aren't all real readers. The realistic number of readers is somewhere between the 'individual readers' and 'link readers' statistics. That puts me between twenty and seventy readers daily, which isn't a bad number, but for two years-even with gaps-it's not much success for a lot of effort.
This number has greatly increased over the last month and a half, rising to numbers it's never been before. I'm happy to see that my blog is, indeed, making progress, but I still don't have over a hundred readers, so I'm not too ecstatic. It's slow, it's a lot of effort, but it's definitely worth it to me-by the time I'm eighteen and get an AdSense account in two years and a bit, I'm betting my readership will have gone up a fair bit. Just need to work at it.
2. Big Gaps Can Be Fatal I think the biggest reason why I don't have over a hundred readers yet is because I had periods of time when I just didn't have computer access, or not enough to do anything more than check Facebook and my email quickly. Thankfully, now that I'm back to living with my grandmother, I have consistent computer and internet access, at least an hour every night.
When I move out and get my place with my best friend, my blogging may become sparse again, but my goal is to never let it drop below 2 short posts a week. As long as I can make those two short posts a week, letting people know that I'm alive, what I'm working on and maybe posting a poem or two, readership won't go down to zero... I hope.
Gaps of more than two weeks can be fatal. Especially if they happen without warning because your computer got sat on. Then when you come back, you're going to be rebuilding from the ground up unless you're somebody like Darren Rowse.
3. Self-Promotion Since I started this blog I've learned that a lot of blogging, and getting readers, is about self promotion. It's about guest posting on other blogs (but nobody's asked me to do that yet, and I haven't really sought it out), attaching links to your blog and maybe a specific post or two to signatures on forums, commenting on other blogs with a link back to your own, if it's relevant (a lot of comment forms have a field for name and a field for website, so I just fill both in), et cetera. A lot of it is getting your name out there.
Writing articles and poems and short stories for various publications with a byline that has a link to your blog is also a great way to advertise your blog. I've noticed a bump in my traffic every time I've gotten a poem published.
4. Don't Give Up I've learned, thanks to great mentoring from the likes of Katyzzz, Kleonaptra and Jeanne Dininni, my three favourite Orble bloggers that are still around (sadly David is gone) never to give up. That even if I disappear for six months because of some tragedy, when I come back, I'll always be able to start over, I'll always have all these archives to link to, and the three I mentioned will always check it out when I come back.
The community here is really what keeps me coming back. Bloggers like the three I've mentioned convince me time and time again that this blog is worth it.
5. Write For Love A big thing about blogging is to love what you're writing about, or at least the process of your writing. You CAN write a blog without love, but it will show through and your writing will be dull and unimpressive. The readers will know if you don't love the work you're doing.
There's another good reason to blog about something you love. What is it? The fact that it takes so long to get really well known. Most blogs fold within a year. Discontinue entirely. It takes about a year for a blog to actually get noticed and start getting steady readership in most cases-some have extreme early on success, but most of us need to plod through about sixteen months of steady blogging before we get popular. Do you really want to spend sixteen months writing about something you don't enjoy?
6. Reach Out To Other Bloggers Read other blogs. There are a variety of reasons to do this. One is that you can find lots of great information about pretty much any topic you like on a variety of blogs. Another is that you can learn what kind of posts work, and what kind of posts don't. Another is that you can make some good friends by blogging.
Personally, I like to read blogs about a variety of things. I love the fact that Orble has a most popular list and a home page that I can just scroll through when I'm bored, and find a post on any number of topics. I like to find interesting posts on people who have commented on my blog and comment on theirs, but sometimes I'm just not interested, and I'm not going to leave a silly comment.
Another big reason is that it will make other bloggers more likely to link to you. And you can make some great friends through blogging. Really, you can. I have.
7. Change Things Up I don't mean change the focus of your blog entirely. But occasionally playing with layout-as I did, and I've settled on one-and playing with the formatting of your posts can bring curious readers. It can also mean a break from the monotony that one can easily fall into by writing a blog post every single day or every other day.
For example, sometime next week I'll be posting some writing exercises I've done, which will include pictures of the beach near the cottage.
8. Respond to Readers I don't get to do this very often as people rarely leave comments on my blog. I'm not sure quite why that is. Maybe they just don't have time to leave a properly thoughtful response. Maybe they're reading on their RSS feeds (which I know is crap 'cause my stats tell me I have three subscribers, love you guys, whoever you are) and don't feel like clicking through to visit the blog. There could be any number of reasons. It kind of makes me sad that I don't get comments, but I know people are reading, so I don't mind too much.
When I do get a comment, I make sure to respond. I answer questions, occasionally discuss philosophy with my visitors and make sure to thank them for dropping by. Make your readers welcome and respond to them and you'll build a relationship with them. They'll come back.
9. Write Your Best Not necessarily every post. You don't want to spend two hours every day just to write one long, in depth blog post. But you want to make sure that every post has your own personal touch and personal voice to it. You want to make sure your grammar isn't awful and your sentence structure doesn't smell like the freighters of dung they have down at Parliament and Lakeshore. (Local reference, guys. Toronto.)
You want to be conversational, friendly. To give clear, useful information. Put your heart into everything that you write and it'll be a lot better. And maybe one out of every seven posts, go all out and write a long in depth post. Or maybe one out of every ten or fifteen. Every once in a while, it's worth the effort.
10. Blogging can be painful or a lot of fun. This is really the most important thing that I've learned about blogging. Blogging can become a chore. This can happen if you get bored of your subject, started out with a boring subject, or just get burnt out. When this happens, either take a break, change up your posting format, just post links for a few days, or stop altogether if you've entirely used up your topic.
There. Those are the ten most important things I've learned about and from blogging.
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