I have often pondered what a successful blog was. Is it how many people read it? Maybe. Is it how many comments you get per post? More than likely not, because then you would have to read them all and may need/want to respond to them. For me, it has always been writing just as many or more than the previous year. Of course, there has to be a limit. I could not find myself writing each day, that would be too crazy. Last year, I wrote and published about one hundred and twenty times, a decent amount. It's ten times a month average. At the beginning of this year, I was thinking close to one fifty, but then thought better of it and just decided to aim for above last years total. So if it was one more or twenty more, I would be satisfied with my efforts.
I have never really written in the hopes of tons of people reading this. I started because...well....I can't remember. Probably because it was the 'cool' thing to do. Just like now it's trendy to tweet. Thinking about that makes my stomach churn a little, but that's how it goes. Now, I write for me. I enjoy the fact that I write down what I feel and what I think. It's a twenty first century journal, granted I still have one that I write in occasionally, but it is not as frequently as this is.
I once asked a friend of ours, Spacefem, her thoughts on it because she too blogs. To paraphrase her answer, just write what you feel is a good amount. In retrospect that doesn't seem like the best answer, but at the time it made sense. IF you feel that a 'successful' blog has two hundred posts a year, go crazy and IF you feel that it would be a 'success' to write once a month, so be it.
That is what I have been going with. If this year or next I come up a little short in the amount of times I write, that'll happen. As long as I know that I didn't let anything slip back into my mind and it all ended up on here, I will be happy. With that said, I'm going to bust my ass and my mind to try to top last year's total. I have ten left after this post in twenty two days to equal last year's output.
I guess I'd give success points based one:
ReplyDelete1) Comments and readers, duh. Can't have too many.
2) Longevity. Writing every day for a month is not as impressive as writing every month for three years, even if it's the same amount of entries.
3) Regularity. Writing every day for a solid week every six months is just... weird.
(I try to write at least once a week minimum, 3-4 times is better. Every day is best.)
Points get taken away if your blog has memes or quiz results nobody cares about. Or celeb news! No love for celeb news.