writing

Some Things I’ve Discovered About My Blog

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I have run out of interesting pictures to post for Wordless Wednesday so I will instead bore you with some random things I’ve discovered in blogging and my stats.

  1. I never intended to write so much about myself, but the more personal posts are the ones that people actually read. When I post about news or what I’m reading and watching I have my lowest views.
  2. I get more views when I post in the morning. I generally post in the morning around 8am east coast America time. When I do that, I get the majority of my views for the day within the hour. Many of those are from India. When I post in the afternoon or evening it is much lighter and most of my views are from the US.
  3. Views are nice, but comments are more of an indication that people are reading. Even likes are suspect as some people who like my post don’t seem to actually click on the link before liking it.
  4. I need to be better about commenting on other blogs and replying to comments on my blog. If I want to actually grow my blog I need to be a bigger part of the blogging community.
  5. I’m never going to be one of those bloggers with thousands of readers unless I spend more time on it. I can’t spend more time on it while I have a job. I should quit my job.
  6. I will never make money blogging. I make less than a dollar a month on ads. I can post my link to my Kofi page as much as I want and only a couple of real life friends will ever click, Random strangers on the internet are not going to buy me a coffee because they like my blog post. Feel free to click above and prove me wrong.
  7. The only things that will change from these realization – I may write in the evening when I have more time, but I will schedule the post to publish the next morning and I will be more likely to keep it more personal as I move forward.

Maybe I will find a good picture for next Wednesday.

A Quick Update

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Just a quickie today to say three things:

I have decided to use NaNoWriMo to try to start a memoir about my time in jail. We will see how that goes. Maybe that is a good enough alternate plan to convince my wife I should quit my job. I’m sure it will be a bestseller and I will be famous and will need all my time to do interviews and such.

I have also changed my Support the Common Tater link. Instead of it linking to our PayPal account that has my wife’s name on it. I have signed up for Ko-Fi. So, click here if you would like to buy me a coffee or something.

Finally, today was one of those strange blip days where I had a weird amount of traffic and I can’t tell where it came from. I will take it.

Happy Thursday!

Happy Blogiversary to Me

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12 years now. Nothing new to say.

I didn’t get any official notification from WordPress that it is today, but my Facebook memories told me that last year was 10 years on WordPress. My math is good enough to theorize that today would now be 11 years. 11 years of babbling about nothing. Before that I babbled a lot on LiveJournal, but under the name Demoncatch. I’ve been boring people online for years. Yay me.

As I enter the next year of blogging, I think maybe I should consider again the point of the blog.

Do I continue what I do which is post whatever pops in my head whenever I have time to do it even though it is not exactly a successful formula?

Do I veer more towards pop culture and media and do more TV/movie/book/music reviews, recaps, etc with a little more general pop culture thoughts thrown in?

Do I go back to posting more thoughts on current events, but take more time on crafting an essay and not just vomiting my thoughts out for 10 minutes and posting?

Do I just stop thinking about it and do whatever makes me happy because no matter what only about 20 people are going to read it anyway?

You would think after 11 years I would have more of a sense of what I want to do here.

 

What to Write Right Now?

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I have not written anything new here since Sunday. It’s hard for me to think about doing a new post now. Anything I have to say seems petty and insignificant right now. I had a post written after this sentence and it seemed whiny and petty compared to what’s going on in the world right now.

So, assume that I am still whiny and depressed. Assume I still desperately wish I could “retire” for a bit until I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Assume I will be back Friday to post about my reading and viewing for the week.

Assume al of that and then go find posts by people who have the voice that needs to be heard right now.

 

 

Is There Anything Worth Writing?

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My day:

Wake up at 7.

Drink coffee and read the paper.

Shower.

Get dressed.

Work from home as best I can.

Take the dog for a walk.

Watch TV

Go to bed.

Same day. Every day. Some days I have video meetings that change my day up. One night I did my mystery book club virtually. The highlights of my week are the one day we decide to order takeout and watching Survivor on Wednesday night.

Pretty boring week and it makes for a pretty boring post. Why are you still here?

What do you write about right now? Do I try to remember funny stories from the past to tell? Do I finally try and fail at creative writing? Do I write another sad post about what I miss about normal life? Do I give up for now? Are you tired of my posts about giving up when you know I won’t?

Any thoughts from the people reading this? Any ideas for me? Requests? Suggestions? Complaints?

How/Why I Got Into Blogging

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Wow. This was over 10 years ago. I still haven’t found a following. I’m not good at that and my blog isn’t good enough to draw in readers based solely on content. I don’t think I’ve reached the goal of redeveloping my writing skills. I still stand by the final answer of writing what you know and what interests you. Also, I still think you shouldn’t stress about writing every day even though I do. I should take my own advice on stressing about readers.

 

I was tagged in the latest blog meme going around by baldgeekinmd.  So, here goes:

How/why did you get into blogging:

Many moons ago a friend of mine started posting his book reviews and other musings on LiveJournal.  I was interested in what he had to say, so I started reading and then set up an account so I could comment.  I decided since I had an account I should start posting.  Most of my posts there were rants about my personal life and family issues in general.  After a while, I got tired of having a whiny online journal and stopped posting.  My next blog I did for work and the 23 Things training and only posted what I had to for homework.  It was a very boring blog and I stopped it as soon as I could.  I started writing here because I still feel like I occasionally have something to say and want to have somewhere to say it.  I also used to be a decent writer and have ignored writing for so long, that I seem to have lost the skill. I’m hoping writing here will help me redevelop my writing skills.

How Did I Gain an Audience?

I haven’t.  I have my blog set up with FriendFeed and Twitter to announce a new post and I registered at BlogCatalog.  Until recently my most read post was read 14 times.   I recently posted thoughts on an issue in the religious community and it has been read 50 times.  That and my TV reviews seem to be what people are interested in on my blog. Most of my hits on those came from tags.  So, based on my experience, I would say tagging your blog posts will increase your readership quite a bit. It also helps to be writing about a topic of interest to the people reading blogs.

What advice would you give to new bloggers who want to make a name for themselves in the biblioblogosphere?

Being a new blogger myself, I’m not sure I can answer this one.   I would say write what you know and within your interest areas.  Don’t be afraid to go days without blogging if you have nothing to say.  Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get a wide readership right away.

I think anyone who will read this and blogs will have already been tagged, so I tag no one.

Nothing New to Say?

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When looking at TimeHop today I saw I had written a post about pet peeves during a writing challenge. I thought “Maybe I should revisit those and talk about how it has changed.” Turns out it hasn’t changed. I listed three: lateness, bad drivers and people who say they don’t have time to read. All still accurate. I’m sure there are more as well, but I had nothing new to say about any of the pet peeves.

There is now in the forecast for today. Not enough to close anything, but enough snow talk to bring snow days to mind. I had some thoughts about the difference between a planned day off and an unplanned snow day. Guess what? I’ve written about snow days and how special they feel. I think I’ve written about it a few times.

I’m in a stretch of time where I have nothing of note on my schedule. I will go to a Ravens playoff game Saturday night. I guess that is noteworthy. Otherwise, I have no trips planned. I have no days off planned outside of the random winter holidays and eventually my birthday leave day. I will likely spend those sitting at home watching TV. This stretch of nothing of note will continue to summer when we have our trip home to Kentucky. I don’t anticipate anything happening that will inspire a post.

I need to take the time tomorrow to plan out some writing ideas or just give up on expecting a new post from me every day. The planning part needs to start with a decision on what I want to write about.  This was easier back before I had written so much.

Post 1001

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After I published my last post(My Christmas Vacation) I received a notification from WordPress that I had reached 1000 posts on this blog. At one point not too long ago I realized I was close and thought that I should come up with something special for the 1000th post. I then completely forgot and had a boring recap of my Christmas trip for my milestone post.

I have no idea what I would have done differently if I had remembered that it was a milestone post. I have no idea what I plan to do now that I am starting my second thousand posts. All I know is that I want to get back to posting on a regular basis. I know I want to get back to more of my “Tater Takes” on news and pop culture. I know I want to spend less time writing about how much I dislike my real job and how desperately I wish I could retire early. I know I want to be better about not just reading but interacting with the other blogs I read. I know I want to figure out how to extend my reach and get more people reading what I write. I know I want to work on trying to write something more than a standard blog post. I don’t know what that would be, but I have a lot of time alone these days and I feel like I could use it for more than watching TV. Maybe I discover this is all I can do, but at least then I would know.

So, thanks for being here for my first 1000 posts. I hope you stay with me on my journey to discover where my next 1000 will take me.

If you would like to support my journey to the next 1000 you can click here.

The War on Christmas

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Setting: The North Pole, Santa’s Compound

It is going to be hard to infiltrate Santa’s bunker. His intelligence department is one of the best in the world. They see you when you’re sleeping. They know when you’re awake. Trying to take down Santa could be a big mistake. Luckily, the Happy Holiday Alliance had a man on the inside. A disgruntled elf has promised to provide inside information in exchange for asylum in the states and admittance to dental school. We thought we could turn a member of the Reindeer Force, but he was promoted to lead reindeer and guide, so that is no longer an option.

Another issue – their secret weapon – the Christmas Cheer. We’re not really sure what it is, but it seems to give them extra power. We’ve also hear that is spreads when people sing loud for all to hear. We have distributed noise canceling headphones to the troops to combat the issue. Our corporate sponsor Starbucks is lending a hand by distributing non-specific holiday cups and wishing people happy holidays as we’ve heard that saying Merry Christmas and putting non-religious, but Christmas specific symbols on the cup also increases the Christmas Cheer quotient.

With all of these precautions in place, we are ready to take the compound and finally win the war on Christmas. Hopefully, tomorrow I will check in during a victory dinner of grilled reindeer and Santa will be defeated.

 

How to Fail at Blogging(Like Me!)

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Not a lot of time nor energy to be original today, so I thought in honor of my blogiversary week I would reshare my advice on how to be a failed blogger like me. Enjoy!

The World's Common Tater

There are plenty of posts out there about being a successful blogger. This one will show you how to fail. Enjoy!

Start a Blog and then Ignore it For Years – I signed up for WordPress a long, long time ago. I posted a few times a year and never really thought about it. I started posting regularly a couple of years ago.

Once You Start Posting, Be Inconsistent – When I say I post regularly, what I really mean is that I post more often. There is noting regular about my posts. If you want to be sure no one will read your blog post at odd times, on different days and with no regularity at all. No one will ever know when to look for one of your posts.

Don’t Find a Niche – Be stubborn like me and post about random stuff with no consistency. One day…

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