Twas my Blog Birthday on the 29th of October and i totally forgot! Now i have to think of something deep and meaningful to encapsulate all that i have learnt in a year of blogging. I may be some time trying to sum it all up!
Hours later (actually weeks, yes really started this post weeks ago)..........................
Have you heard that saying before? It's better out than in?Well I have to agree with it. Every since starting my blog, I feel like I have somewhere to scoop out the jumbled up grey goo known as thoughts, ramblings, utterances, brain spillage and crap!Even the mad typing I did while at home or house sitting in that dark time known as Internet isolation, helps exorcise some brain pressure.So what have I learnt in a whole year of blogging?
1.Firstly that although I have used the Internet for years, it was only for shopping and email. This translates into I knew jack shit about computers. I still only have an amoeba like knowledge of HTML but now I can at least find my arse in the dark (was that a good metaphor?) and install things like the dreaded 'Mr Linky'. I have also learnt quite a few other things, but that's for another post I think.
2. Unless you have a really concrete idea about what you are going to blog about, your ideas and thoughts will change continually. Mine has and now its a totally different beast. I thought it would just be a base for my counselling homework, with the occasional personal thought thrown in here and there. Now its anything from photo's to paid posts. These are two posts from the beginning: Blog why do you do it? and A little bit more.
3. So what does work for me in regards to writing posts and getting visitors? The posts I enjoy writing the most are my counselling homework ones but they don't attract the most comments, they do however attract attention from Google searches. Those posts are for my own personal learning, so if people comment that's great but not the main reason for posting them.
Photographs have become a big part of my blog, ever since I got my digital camera and a Flickr account. I get to show off some of the beautiful parts of this country I see when I am out hiking and various shots of my family. They also come in handy for the photographic memes I participate in, which attract many a visitor.
I have at times become meme crazy, with Manic Monday, Wordless Wednesday, Thursday Thirteen, Saturday Photo Hunt and Green Thumb Sunday all being regulars here. Memes are great when you have the time to focus on them, but at times can feel like a burden, but if you want traffic do a weekly meme.
Get Social! Whether it is visiting other sites and commenting, doing memes or joining great blog directory like Blog Catalog. Blog Catalog has been a great learning place for me and it is great for newbies to learn all sorts of things. Yes I love Blog Catalog.
4. You can make some great friends! Now doesn't that sound all disgusting and cheesy, but yes I really have. Some of them are even American! I was at first resistant and sceptical to the fact that you can indeed be friends with folk that you have not met before. Now there is a whole heap of folks on my sidebar that I will be meeting up with in the future.
5. Be realistic about how much time you can and should spend blogging! I still haven't balanced this yet, so have been a bad blog friend. Your blog can turn into a monster so try to stick with stuff that you enjoy writing about and worry less about how many visitors you get. I regret that I don't thank my regular visitors as much as I did in the old days with my Happy 100 posts but I just don't have the time, click here to see the past winners Happy 100's. Also lurkers where punished in a fun way. Talk about being a big fat hairy hypocrite, now I am Queen Lurker thanks to Google Reader. So if you feel a strange presence whilst at your computer it is probably me lurking away. All visitors to this blog are appreciated by me and feel free to email anytime if you particularly want to get my attention.
6. I have to mention paid posts, although at the moment I don't want to, with all this Google smoogle goings on. Paid Posts have provided me quite a bit of spare cash and that money went to paying for my first year counselling diploma. The way things are going at the moment I am not sure how much I will make in the future, but I am glad that I at least got the chance to make some. Here is a post I did a while back on what paid post companies I have used Show me the money.
Here is the Formula for my blog so far:
Claire+Photos+Hikes+Cupboard Monster+Counselling Homework+Blog Catalog+ Visitors+Paid Posts+ Internet Issues+ Lack of time+Coffee+Drink = a mess! otherwise known as my blog :)
To sum things up after over 850 posts I got my 25'000 visitor, guess who it was?
Yep some perv looking for little panties:
Here is too another year of blogging! Chin chin :)
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