I've looked at the hits on my new site and found the post with the title "Building a Blog" getting the most hits. So, I've decided to offer some advice.
If you're building a blog, decide what you're trying to do. If it's just to journal your life, it's simple and you just write what's on your mind, post it, and go on.
If you're anticipating some money for your endeavor, you need a hook. The internet is huge and you have to suck enough people in to reading your blog, so you can attract advertisers, or sell something. That's not easy, and I personally feel you won't have much luck, unless you understand the nuts and bolts of your blog, have a talent for advertising, or have something to offer that will keep people coming back, which increases your hits; the necessary part of a successful blog.
How many hits? I don't know for sure, but from what I read, it's hundreds of thousands, if not millions every day. That's part of the reason for this blog. I have another, but it's where I expound on the things that run around inside my head. This blog is for exposure to my writings and the hope I can eventually have enough visitors to monetize the blog. Even if that should happen, I'm not expecting to make tons of money, or even live on the money I make; I only want some spare change.
No matter what you do, it takes time to build a blog. Nothing happens overnight, and you can become frustrated if you expect a huge amount of visitors in a short period of time.
I use Blogger for my blog. Why? It's free, and it serves my purpose. There are other free blog hosts. You just need to look around, but be aware you won't have full control of your blog unless you host it yourself. That's an entirely different endeavor, requiring paying for bandwidth, more than just a basic understanding of the internet, and an understanding you are the gatekeeper to your blog. While mine has very good protection from malicious hackers, a web site requires the best anti-virus software, and a better understanding of what's required to secure your website.
I'm no expert, so take what I've written with a grain of salt. Blogging is a great thing to me, since I don't depend on it for anything but a location to write what's on my mind. I like that part, and if that's you goal, I think you'll like it too.
This shall be a commercial blog. Why? Because the path to being a "real" author involves way too many steps, people that don't really care, somebody trying to make money on my ideas, painful waits for recognition, and the pretentious belief someone else is better at judging the merits of my writing than me, or those that happen to visit. If you are a visitor, I appreciate your time. The internet is a huge place, and my piece of it is tiny.
The main problem with garnering thousands of followers is that so many followers want you to read their own blogs and at least make the odd comment, they also want all their comments upon your blog answered, which is perfectly reasonable, apart from the fact that you only have so much time in the day, night, or the rest of your life to spend patiently doing all this. I'm going from my experience on Wordpress and the writers I know on there. Some do have thousands of followers, and they treat the blog as a full time job almost in order to keep them. They themselves (the authors) follow anything with a pulse in the hope they'll get an automatic follow back. They call themselves 'Power Bloggers' and I find them very hard work for the most part *laughs*. Not that I mean to be negative, just what I've noted.
ReplyDeleteHaving a blog on both Blogger and Wordpress I'd say the latter works best for writing and getting noticed. Firstly it has options for people to do things like 'like' a post without commenting, so you know that they did in fact like it, but may not have had time to say anything. Secondly people 're-blog' your writing upon their own blogs and share you around an awful lot, so many more folks get to see it and they may too share it, whence upon you gain more followers who genuinely do like to read your work. Not one of the people I follow, or who follow me re-blog, I'm not sure there's even a re-blog button actually, and as I say, that's fine for a personal blog (I don't actually want my personal posts sharing particularly), but it's useful for one that ultimately is there to get you read and make you money, or just get you read and get feedback that is useful to you. Blogger is great for personal blogs and I wouldn't change that to Wordpress in a million years, but Wordpress gets you 'out there' much, much faster. Its also free by the by. This is not to say you won't do just fine here, follow your instincts and Blogger is much more 'friendly and comfortable' feeling than WP. Without even trying I have gained over fifty followers on WP, many of which read my work regularly. That's in nine months. It's taken me over six years to end up with over twenty followers on Blogger. Having said that, I don't give a rat's arse about collecting followers on here, I just like sane people who are interesting, but even so, it's not such a busy place at all.
Well that was a big jibber heh, just my observations. Write on man, write on!
I kicked around the idea of starting a Wordpress blog; and I might still. For now, I'll probably stay on Blogger; especially since I've become a little fascinated with the most visited posts. It's obvious certain words trigger better searches, which lead to some of my posts. With a little experimentation, I'll find the right combinations, sit back, and laugh to myself as the post counts climb.
DeleteGood plan, and a variety of tags are a good idea, all pertaining to the text of course, as a way to help people find you.
DeleteI forgot to thank you for visiting and commenting. Comments are always welcome; whether good, bad, or constructive.
DeleteI used blogspot for a while, but was losing entire posts...poof...gone. When I figgered out google was running it, that eased my bailout. I just found this from your other blog, and I'll be checking in.
ReplyDeleteI do a little writing too, but have only a couple of stories 'out there'.
Keep up the good work. You've a gift.
Thanks for visiting. So far, I'm not getting a lot of visits daily, but the number is climbing.
Delete...and thanks for the kind words
Many Thanks for the shared this informative and interesting post with me.
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