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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The "Successful" Blog

People talk about having a successful blog. Most of those people are the money making, SEO, business bloggers. That's fine for them to measure success in terms of number, scores, ranks and ads (sometimes even revenue). It's not for me.

I don't blog for those reasons so my success isn't measured that way. I blog for personal reasons and success isn't really what I'm looking for from this blog. Often I write to hear myself think. I draw to keep myself working on understanding how to draw, learning by doing. I wished I could draw for a long time and suddenly, once I actually started doing it, I realized I could. A personal achievement. That's a successful blog for me.

I love exploring, decorating, and meeting people through my blog. Posting my photos of flowers, abandoned farm houses. Making changes to my template, taking a risk on them totally bombing and then fixing them again. Having new people comment on what I have done here and visiting them in return for more ideas of what I can do and in some cases making a personal connection that I want to keep and grow. Those are things that make a successful blog for me.

Success isn't really the right word though.

I joined up Entrecard as an experiment, something new to try. I like joining new sites and networks and learning a bit about how they work. Seeing if there is something that will interest me about it. Entrecard has become partnered with SezWho. I don't think it is a site I would have joined if it wasn't for the partnership with Entrecard. I really don't like the idea of rating/ scoring comments given to my blog posts. That seems very arrogant. I don't want to do it. If I can automatically set it to score every comment at 100% I will do that. I moderate my comments and filter out any junk. Every other comment I fully appreciate and don't feel I have the right to sit and judge them. A comment is freely given and should not be something that falls to the "successful" blogging scheme.

I've set up SezWho for those who want to score big with this. It seems like a get points quick scheme and little of real value to me. But, I am giving it a try, for now.

4 comments:

MYM said...

I agree with your definition of a successful blog :) If you're not having fun what's the point? And numbers and ratings ... I'm just not into that stuff either.

I saw that entrecard was doing that, but to be honest, I didn't really know what it was all about. I probably won't do it ... I just have it on my photoblog ... I find a lot of that extra stuff takes away from what I like about blogging, which is "blogging", lol! And visiting lots of fun blogs :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Laura,
I don't think that, if used, properly comments and scoring is arrogant. You must get comments from time to time that you see that the person gave no thought to the work you put into your post. Those I would accept but rate low. Everything else I rate high. I think SezWho and Entrecard's partnership will be very interesting and helpful to bloggers in the long run.

Diana said...

Hi there,

I just stumbled across your blog and I completely agree with your thoughts on what a 'successful' blog is. I started a blog not long ago for almost the same reasons.

I love what you're doing and your artwork is looking great. =)

Unknown said...

This has been high in my mind recently. People blog for radically different reasons. I came across an article recently that tried to assert that all blogs try to achieve something - they might be trying to get the audience to buy a product, click on a link, consider an idea, or just look at a topic differently - and as such, all blogposts should be written as a marketing document. I agreed in theory, but then thought about my own blog. What do I want my readers to do? In the case of my fiction, I want them to read it and be entertained. In the case of my blogposts, I want them to ... what? And then I realised. I don't want them to do anything. The thing that my blog achieves is to give me an outlet for my own thoughts. It gets me to think deeper about a topic that has been buzzing around my head, sort out the ideas from the facts and the opinions, and set them down on (metaphorical) paper. What does this mean in the context of the article I read? It means I have a successful blog. Even if not a single person reads it.