Monday, May 15, 2006

About Blogging

At the very end of June 2005, six months after my start here, I went ahead and added a site meter to this blog. Ever since then, my blogging experience has included regular checks of the meter.

I’m writing this now because, nearly a year later, I’ve just passed 5,000 visits and 10,000 page views. Those were milestones for me.

I know, some blogs generate that much traffic in a week, even a day. Not to mention that if it weren’t for me and a small circle of family and friends who show up here at least once a week, my numbers would be much, much lower. I’m thankful for my regular visitors. And I especially appreciate it when someone thinks this blog is worth adding to his or her own list. “Referrals,” visits to this blog by way of another one, account for a good number of my visits.

In addition to regular commenters here, I’ve been intrigued by the significant number of lurkers. If you regularly stop by but don’t ever comment, that’s fine with me. I hope you’ll keep coming. I’d also be happy to hear from you sometime.

Speaking of comments, you have to wait a little while for yours to appear on this blog. That’s because, sometime back, spammers plus a certain person who didn’t have good intentions made comment moderation a practical necessity. Barring those exceptions, I post all comments as soon as I see them, usually within the day.

I’ve been interested to see which days are busiest here. Evidently, most bloggers take the weekends off. That perception probably has something to do with the religious routines of most of my readers.

It’s also fun to try to figure out which kinds of posts generate the most interest and response. Most of the time, if it’s closely related to the Churches of Christ, my religious family, then it gets at least a few responses.

Like my early experiences with email, I’m still figuring out what blogs are best for. What compares to a blog? What are its best uses? What is blogging all about? Any thoughts?
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3 comments:

Steve said...

Frank I am glad you are in the blogging community.

I think the reason people don't visit as much on the weekend is that most of us have better & faster connections at work. We also spend much more time in front of our computers at work and blog breaks are very easy to fit in during lunch or other times.

I started blogging as a kind of personal journal and a way of getting thoughts out. When I am using that way, I find I enjoy it more. When I try to write because I think people will like it or it will generate comments, it usually doesn't and I get frustrated.

10:34 PM
Frank Bellizzi said...

Dee and Steve,

Thanks, again, for stopping by and speaking up. I really treasure our connection(s).

Yes, Dee. I put this post up on Sunday night. No hallucination this time. But when I went to change a word or two--I always see something I want to change AFTER the post is up--the edited version had a 3-inch space between the title and the first line of text.

It looked terrible and I just couldn't stand it, but couldn't fix it. And since I'm all about appearances, the post got deleted and transcribed on Monday morning.

The same thing happened yesterday (to a post that appeared for about 5 minutes. Ooh, what was it?). I notice that if I edit a post, it sometimes switches to a different font, and then I know the big space has been added too. What's up with that?

Steve, the faster-connection theory makes a lot of sense. And I agree that there's no iron-clad connection between trying hard and public interest. However, I do have to work in order to be coherent. Even then I don't always succeed. Just ask Michele.

8:56 AM
Frank Bellizzi said...

Linda,

You've hit on several items at the top of a writer's list.

That question, "Who is my audience?" is so important. I find that my writing is much better when I have a solid answer to that one. It doesn't even have to be the right answer, just an answer.

Obviously, with a blog your audience can be anywhere from just you to the whole world, and it changes all the time. That leads to other questions like, "Who's going to see this? And what might they make of it?" That can be inhibiting if there are some competing principles in play (e.g., job security, your relationships). When I've blogged even playfully about some of my family members, I found that they didn't always like how others might see them in my posts.

I hope you have a lot of success with your writing projects. From experience, I can tell you that the non-paying or "pays only in copies" part of the market is easy to break into. From there, the low-paying gigs are significantly harder to get and keep.

When I was in my 20s, I wrote devotional pieces for a mid-sized publication whose pay was also mediocre. Shortly after I got started with them, I missed a deadline by one day. That was it. They were done with me, which was far from the end of the world. But I learned an important lesson: especially in the publishing world, promptness counts. So if you get a gig you really like, always turn in clean work on time.

When you start shooting for big game, you feel like a small fry and any sort of publishing success is much harder to achieve. You might go through a time when you get replies from editors that say, "Keep trying." That means you were close. If you truly want to score big, then at that point you'll have to dig in a keep trying. But you might be a little weary by then.

Best wishes.

9:12 AM

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