A week off for Thanksgiving break while being employed only very-part-time means a lot of free time on my hands. I could have gone home, and maybe should have, but it's a 14-hour drive one way, and all of that driving makes for an un-relaxing vacation.
All of this free time has translated to basically one thing for me: boredom. I was so bored by 8:00 last night that I almost wrote a blog in the evening, after I'd already written one yesterday afternoon. Basicaly, you all can expect at least a blog a day for the next week. I hope that's okay with you, and if it isn't, too blad.
I've been considering writing this particular blog for quite some time, but always seemed to find events to write about instead. Today, though, you get a blog about feelings, because there really is nothing exciting going on in my life right now.
When I started blogging, it was purely for you all, my audience. I wanted a means of communicating my new life in Boulder without having to write personal emails to each of you. I mean, seriously, people, I have tons of friends, and to write emails to each of you would be exhausting (that was a joke...mostly). I wanted to be able to tell you about the interesting things that come from living in one of the most liberal cities in America (read this, this, and this), daily happenings (read this, this, and this), life as a music student (read this, this, this, and this), and anything else that struck me as interesting.
All in all, I'd say that I've done a pretty good job of it. I post 3 or 4 times a week, with good content and length. I'm more happy with some than others, and sometimes just don't have time to post as frequently or eloquently as I'd like, but I'm a busy student. And I have quite a few regular readers and commenters (although I wouldn't mind a few more comments here and there... *hint hint*). I've gotten into the habit of advertising my postings on facebook so that more people can be aware of a new posting and check out the blog. On days when I do that, readership is way higher, especially if it's an interesting topic.
A lot of people start blogs and post a few times, then get sick of it or too busy and stop writing, but that wasn't the case for me. Once I started, I couldn't stop. For me, it's therapeutic to write, and it's easy to write this blog because it's my life; it's what I know about, there's no pressure to make it incredibly informative or entertaining or exciting: it's just the story of my life. And if you don't like it, then you don't like my life. It's fine. (ha ha). I make time to write, and I have a whole list of subjects to write about if for some reason I can't come up with a new one on the days I have time to write. If I had time, I would write a blog every day. It's awesome to get my thoughts down on paper and to have to organize them in a cohesive format so that others will understand them.
When I write, I don't just write and post. I write, read, edit, post, edit, repost, edit, repost, etc. I'm downright anal about the format of the posts. I still make mistakes, but I really enjoy the process. And I love it when people comment about the posts that I have made.
Shortly after starting the blog, I signed up for an account with sitemeter, a website that tracks visits to your website. It's really basic stuff, and it's free, but it's addicting. It tells me almost everything I could possibly want about each visitor's visit to my blog. It tells me your IP address, location, duration of visit, referring website, page views, exiting webpage, etc., etc. I call it my "stalker stalker." I keep track of frequent visitors, locations, and especially page views. On days when I advertise my postings on facebook, I get a ton more visitors to the page. If I haven't advertised a posting in a while, I get way more page views, which I assume is people who visit whenever I advertise the posting notice that I've made other posts and they catch up on the ones they missed. It's quite interesting.
Another aspect of my blog that's good for me is the ads that one can see throughout the page. I have ads by google and through linkshare. Google crawls my blog for topics and posts ads based on my blogs. Every time someone clicks on one and buys stuff, I get paid commissions. This, as of yet, has not been a significant source of income for me. I don't get paid until I make $100. Let's say I'm 14% of the way there. (But if you all clicked and bought stuff, things would be different...)
Now, I blog as much for myself as I do for all of you. I really enjoy the process and the topics and hearing feedback from you, and I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy reading it. I hope that I continue to have time to keep it up. For now, I'm doing fine. And for this week, more than fine. Any thoughts are more than welcome!!
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