I have no right to blog. In fact, there are many reasons why blogging is a particularly bad idea for me.
First of all, I’m a competitive soul so I obsess about the stats. There, the truth is out. I analyse (within myself, of course) what should be deemed an above average viewing per day, or per month. I still don’t know what the average stats are but I visited other blogs and saw 5,000 hits, 20,000 hits and even came across one that will probably hit a million views in the next few weeks. After 2 months of blogging, I started to panic. I didn’t have that many hits yet! ‘Oh, no, everyone hates my blog’, I heard myself thinking one day. But I suppose my disappointment at my seeming mediocre stats wasn’t enough to stop me from blogging.
It didn’t help that I was so sure I would run out of things to blog about after the first ten posts. This was my second worry. Between my business addiction and my family, I found limited resources to guide me on what people may find interesting. It complicated matters that I wanted to be me (hence, the Me-Brand was one of my first posts). I wanted to write about stuff I was interested in and disengage from the conflict between what is popular and what is honest and pure. I was relieved when many tips I came across encouraged honesty and the charm of being real. Still, every post I wrote felt like the very last drop of creativity in my bones. I believed I was real enough, honest, engaging and all that good stuff but I wondered: ‘Is there really a bottomless pit of ideas?’ This among other questions, kept me up at night.
Thirdly, I work in the oil and gas industry. Although, the industry is high-tech and risky, with hefty men drilling holes in the ground and putting stuff in them, the demographics is largely one of fairly low-tech folks who don’t warm up to technology as much as one would expect. In an industry where only an estimated 25% are on Facebook, 10% on Linked In and 1% are bloggers, I couldn’t help feeling like a square peg in a round hole. Am I the 1% that blogs? And if I am, who in the world is going to identify with me? To stop the avalanche of negative thoughts, I had to keep reminding myself (and still do) of why I started to blog in the first place:
Blogging is an opportunity to write about my passions. I’m passionate about my family, my friends, my job, God, love (yes, I believe in love AND love at first sight), business, the idea of being an entrepreneur, doing things properly, fashion, honesty, a fair and righteous world, and on and on. And I’m passionate about writing, which is something I’ve tried to ignore. So here I am still blogging after 3 months…with more than 1,000 hits I might add. It’s perhaps nothing in some worlds but more than I could have asked for in mine. I am always elated by that new reader that comments or likes any of my posts. In any event, I still want to get better at articulating my points and The Daily Post is a fantastic opportunity for frequent practice. But a word of caution is that I am committed to being real and writing about my passions and not anyone else’s. Hopefully, I will be charming along the way as I try to ignore all the strong reasons why I have no right to blog.
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forget the stats, enjoy to listen to yourself during writing.
be sure, I like to read your daily posts 🙂
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Thank you, Frizz! You are too kind :). K
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I am happy to do my part to increase your views by one.
If you write for yourself, that will be what will bring the readers back time and time again, to read what “you” have to say
Don’t feel worried, It took me nearly a year to get to a 1000.
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Thank you. I hope to continue being myself. Ciao, K.
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I’m really happy for you. I love your posts. Keep it up and very soon, you’ll hit 10,000!!
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THANKS, HUN. Baby steps:). K
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Keep going girlfriend. You are unique and interesting and obviously enjoying yourself. (in between looking at the stats of course!)
And I love my BB…never thought I’d say that, but they really are pretty cool now.
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Aww, thanks, WTM. I think you might be the finally “tipping over” for me! BB it is! 🙂 Ciao.
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At least you get comments! I hardly ever get comments. Thank you for checking out my blog. That was nice of you. And don’t you worry about the well going dry. Got a shirt that needs a button sewn? Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you have a growing pile of sewing repairs? Blog about it. It’ll wait. That was kinda random, huh? LOL
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Yes, the well doesn’t seem to run dry when you talk about it like that…. Thanks! K
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Congratulations on your three months!
I obsess about my stats as well. You have some very nice stats!
I find it quite fascinating that you and the other daily bloggers write about so many interesting topics.
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Thanks, 633. I hope the well never runs dry….!
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I find myself checking my stats nearly every hour lol I know exactly what you mean by this. But hey, we’ll get there in time, right?
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We sure will. ‘The race is not for the swift’, a dear friend use to say. Amen to that! LOL. Thanks for stopping by.
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Well actually, that site was my first foray into WordPress blogging. My newer site is http://thekstategeek.com. If you’d like to promote, that’d be fantastic 🙂
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Unluckily I’m obsessed with stats as well 😦
How did you get so many visitors?
Btw. It’s cute to see that there are still people out there who believe in love 🙂
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The visitors I have really just showed up. I tried SEO and effective tagging. Both seem to have helped a little but it’s all about having fun, girl! This is what I’m trying to do. And yes, I am cute:). Thanks for stopping by! K
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I related to this post very much. I started blogging at Blogger and eventually moved to WordPress. I didn’t need a stats screen in the beginning because I didn’t have any stats. I think 2 people read my blog and one of them may have been my mom (but I’m not completely sure about that).
In recent months, I’ve seen my hits and comments increase. I love looking at my stats page because that kind of stuff interests me, but what I think is more important than the quantity of hits and comments is the quality of them. In recent weeks, I have been meeting people who read and comment and are interested in an interactive exchange. So am I.
I’ve seen what happens when people are Freshly Pressed and they get thousands of hits and comments that all say “Great post.” Yawn. Many of those commenters are here today and gone tomorrow and most likely only stopped by in the hopes that someone would click on their link in return. But really, are you going to click a link for a person who doesn’t have much original to say?
So, don’t worry too much about your numbers. Have fun and make friends and the stats will take care of themselves.
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Wow- this is sound advice, Margaret. I appreciate you stopping by and I believe I have a great deal more to learn from your experiences. Thanks, K
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what I think is more important than the quantity of hits…
well said!
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