A week short of five years ago, I launched a blog called King’s Kid at Blogspot.com. It was a great experience, but I found – and still find – that Blogger/Blogspot is too limited in its capabilities. I moved on to a hosted site at WordPress with carefulthought.wordpress.com. That was a great experience as well; in fact, I liked it so much that I started this blog on my own servers and domain, but still using the WordPress framework. It’s time to move on to bigger and better, or at least other, things. I’ve received a couple offers to post on other sites, and I may take up those offers, but this is it for this venue.
Here’s what I’ve learned in five years, in no particular order:
- God is faithful, even when we fail Him
- Blogging is a great way to vent, but venting is no substitute for real content
- Your blog is unique, just like other the other 200 million blogs out there, so give people a reason to visit you
- Stay faithful. If you have a political blog, focus on that, if it’s a faith blog, focus on that. Readers seem to prefer blogs with a single topic or theme
- Don’t dwell on stats, but if your stat counter is stuck on zero, that’s a bad sign
- Post regularly
- Appreciate your readers
- Don’t be afraid to step on toes, but do with grace
- Trolls are a fact of blogging life. Deal with it.
- There’s a huge amount of information available on the internet. Some of it is even accurate.
- Give full credit for your content. If it ain’t yours, attribute it.
Thanks for reading!
Steve
November 27th, 2009 22:30 pm
Grumpy Old Men is waiting in the wings for ya. We’re all in the same boat. Every type of subject you post on here will be a welcome addition to our little blogging co-op. Hope to hear from you soon. If not, I’ll definitely follow you wherever you end up.
kingdavid´s last blog ..GOM Christmas gift ideas
November 27th, 2009 23:15 pm
kd: I appreciate and will continue to post at GOM.
November 29th, 2009 10:23 am
Steve,
I have enjoyed your blog tremendously. Thanks for a great run. Let me know what you decide to do in the future.
Best wishes.
November 29th, 2009 15:00 pm
Thanks, Bill. I’ll post a note when I decide where or if I’ll be blogging again.
November 30th, 2009 10:58 am
Something else you may not have learned: On the next blog, whenever it may surface, you will put FULL TEXT in your RSS feeds, not just summaries, in order to please your niece.
Maybe it’s guys who particularly appreciate the one-focus thing. I enjoy blogs from people who have a variety of facets to their blogging life. Maybe that’s just because I like people who are well-rounded. It’s worked for me, too. I’m closing in on 400K hits, and my blog has a number of personalities/focuses.
Hope you blog more soon.
Karen Joy´s last blog ..Thanksgiving and other stuff
November 30th, 2009 18:55 pm
On the next blog, whenever it may surface, you will put FULL TEXT in your RSS feeds, not just summaries, in order to please your niece.
So let it be written, so let it be done. Anything for family!!
December 8th, 2009 11:32 am
When you moved from Blogger to wordpress, did your archives come with you?
December 8th, 2009 18:06 pm
Palm Boy:
If I remember correctly, it did, or at least there was a WordPress app to import the old content. I think I might have lost the images that were attached to posts. All in all, it was very easy to migrate from Blogger to WP.