I started this blog somewhere in the summer of 2005. Therefore it has been quite some time now that i have been blogging. First starting out in a dutch / english blog, i quickly focussed on blogging in english.
Why? Because the English speaking world is a lot bigger than the Dutch one. So, right from the start I targeted a larger audience.
Then the big question arose about what i was going to blog about.
I started out with news as it happened across the world, then passed on to interesting stories i read somewhere, used the blog for some personal travel stories, and even wrote some stories about my personal (work related) life. From there on to photography and back again to news related stories.
So in all, quite a journey, but i don’t really think i have found the niche i’m looking for .
The blog has always been a personal blog, and i know i have had a few regular readers over the years. Some of them seem to have left the internet highway a bit (greetings to H.L. and Donna) and some are still reading a long (hi Evan).
Besides these great people, whom i feel i have come to know over the past years, there have been a few loose commenters on very specific subjects.
This means that the base is there, but i have not followed the blogging for success rules. Problogger has this article on why many blogs don’t make much money. Making money was not something i ever thought would happen on this blog, but some of the things he writes are definitely something my blog also has some problems with.
The most important:
1. Not enough time – keeping up a (any) blog filled with interesting articles, takes a lot of time. I do not have this time, it is more of a hobby.
3. Non commercial topic – there is no real centralised topic to the blog. I link to articles i find interesting and that may not be the same articles others like as well.
4. Lack of writing skills – i have noticed that writing in another language can be quite hard. Luckily Firefox has this great dictionary tool that lets me keep out most of the typo’s.
And most important:
10. Lack of focus – as i wrote earlier, I have had a great list of subjects i wrote about. This makes that this blog is not something people think of immediately if they think of a certain subject.
How it should be? Well while looking for a list of points to a succesfull blog, i immediately searched on problogger.net, that means that that blog is, for me at least, top pick when researching succesful blogs. That means that Darren has found a great niche and has gotten his idea’s out there. Even to the netherlands.
Back to the subject of this blog. The big question i am asking myself is how to go on from here. I’m looking forward to your comments. Let me know what you are looking for in this blog, and what it would take for you to come back more often.
Some idea’s about subjects i could write about:
- Photograpy
- Implementation of Linux by an old Windows user
- News around the world
- ?
Let me know what you would like to see.
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It seems that my own blogging experience has paralleled yours in several ways, Prof. I also began blogging during the summer of 2005 (August 4, to be exact). I too keep a personal blog (personal in that I am not attempting to make a living off it, not in the nature of the posts) with a small following. And like yourself, I am at a point where I am wondering what the future holds for my blog (as you already know, I am taking it slow right now while I focus on other, more important aspects of my life).
My recommendation regarding your blog is for you to simply write about whatever you enjoy. If you are wanting to draw more readers, you might try specializing in just one or two topics. That way, people will know what your blog is about, and they will more likely find you when looking for sites on those topics. Also, restricting your blog’s focus could also improve your search engine ranking for those keywords (photography, Linux, or whatever).
Personally, I have kept away from minimizing my weblog’s focus because there are so many topics that interest me, and I don’t want to restrict myself from writing about something in particular just because it doesn’t fit in with the rest of my blog’s subject matter. The eclectic nature of my blog’s content may keep me from attracting a large following, but I am fine with that because — like yourself — this is only a hobby.
Whatever you do choose to write about, be thoughtful and sincere, and readers will certainly be attracted to what you have to say.
You are indeed right about the way the blogging experience has run for the both of us. Your post about changing blogging time for more personal time is one of things that set me thinking.
I agree as to the fact that you have to be sincere in what you write and to write about things you enjoy.. I’ll probably be staying on the same track as i am now, maybe just a little less often.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.