I originally wrote this article in 2014. This was post #1,500 for I’m Just Sharing; it’s been an interesting ride. It’s more than 3,100 words, and was one of the most popular blog posts I’ve ever written. It had nearly 100 comments, so I decided not to kill them all like I’ve done other articles I’ve reposted. Instead, I’ve kept all the comments of active blogs; that seems to be the fair things to do… and maybe it’ll be popular again.
I started this blog in December 2007 with an idea that maybe I could make some money blogging. My other blog, Mitch’s Blog, is my business blog and has a different purpose.
Anyway, my other intention was to be able to write whatever I wanted to write, and to that end I was in immediate conflict. You see, though I didn’t necessarily see it as blogging, I started chronicling parts of my life and thoughts back in 1996 on a site called My Dear Diary. It allowed you to be anonymous and, well, it was a diary. 🙂 It was a diary that could be read by others if they so chose, and of course you could read other people’s diaries as well. It allowed for a stream of consciousness that I had started back in college when I used to buy all these spiral notebooks to chronicle what was going on in my life; strange stuff indeed…
What is it with some people that they like to write down what they’re thinking and what’s going on? For me, I saw it as a sense of history, people I wanted to remember, events that were special or maybe not so special that I’d like to look back on one day and say “wow, I didn’t remember that”. It can also remove bad things from your mind because once you’ve written them down, sometimes your mind feels free. That I chose to do it online was interesting because I was using a program back in the day called IBM Assistant on Windows 3.1, where I could save everything on my computer but only in small chunks; I’m betting some folks remember those days.
When I got my first Windows 95 computer it was for work, so someone else paid for it. I learned at that time that all my old programs no longer worked, which is why I found My Dear Diary. Then at some point it was giving up the ghost, so I downloaded all those files and moved onto something called Writing Up, where I first met my buddy Mitchell Allen. But that crashed and I moved onto another site whose name I can’t remember, and met some folks I’m actually connected to on Facebook now. Then that crashed and we moved to something called Blogger Party. We were still anonymous, but those days were ending.
It was at that point that I decided to start this blog. I had the business blog of course, but it had a specific purpose. This one would be different; and it was and is, but I had to resolve some things.
For one, I realized at some point that I had to decide whether I was going to try to remain anonymous or try to make some money. Money won out; doesn’t it always? LOL That meant that I was going to have to figure out how to drive traffic to the blog, and figure out what to sell. I learned one but not the other.
I learned how to drive traffic to the blog. I did two things back then.
One, I wrote a post almost every day, sometimes two posts a day. For the first 3 years of this blog I averaged more than 300 posts a year; truly, the more you write, the more traffic you get.
Two, I learned about commenting on other blogs. In other articles I’ve detailed ways that you can drive traffic to your blog and this is at the top of my list. It differs from writing lots of posts in that when you visit other people’s blogs enough they feel compelled to come check you out eventually. However, when you write lots of posts, you get lots of people but not as many return visitors because they can’t keep up with all that’s being written. If this was a niche blog maybe, but it wasn’t, and still isn’t.
Scott Beale via Compfight
What’s different now? Well, here’s what I’m going to do. Instead of what I usually do whenever I reach a milestone (like I did when I reached 1,400, I’m going to talk about 15 lessons I’ve learned over the course of 1,500 posts, some that I’ve taken and run with, some that have come to me that I haven’t done as often but need to. I’ve already given two lessons above but I’m not going to count those. I’m also giving you one more lesson, that being that list posts always do well, especially when people know they’re list posts because you put a number in the title.
So, you’ve got 15 more coming; let’s see what I have to say.
1. I learned that you make your blog more valuable if you can stick with either a certain number of categories or tags. I didn’t do that with this blog early on so I have lots of categories, although I did merge a few, and I have tags infinitum; maybe ad nauseam. If you’re looking to do real business via your blog you need to make it easily searchable; oh well…
2. Depending on what you’re writing, you often need time to market or advertise your posts in some way. When I was writing early on, Twitter was a new thing, and I hadn’t thought about posting links of all my blog posts, though I certainly could have. I don’t do that now all that often, but I certainly have enough so that I could get away with it. Still, I find that though I don’t get the type of traffic I used to get, I get more return visitors who write better comments; yay!
3. Spammers gonna spam. I know some folks who have shut down their blogs because of it; not me. What I did do was limit the amount of time folks get to comment on my blog posts. On this blog it’s 4 years, which is actually pretty good, as it used to be 125 days. I hate that spammers made me set that up.
I’ve also learned that if you don’t set up some kind of protection, spam is even worse than can be imagined. Two weeks ago I turned something off and went from 10 spam messages a day to 50 every hour; not again! Right now I’m using two different spam plugins. One is called Clean Talk, the other Stop Spammers (good name lol). In conjunction they work pretty well; luckily (or not, depending on what you’re hoping for), I only need both for this blog, as Clean Talk isn’t free, so I’m only paying for the one license.
4. What I’ve also realized is that there’s some fairly evergreen content on this blog, and I think everyone probably has some evergreen content somewhere in their writings. Something I’m doing is going back and looking at old posts in chunks, revisiting some of those topics and turning them into new articles (like what I’m doing with this article lol). I’m going to do that because people can’t comment on old stuff, and I know that if I can’t comment on something I’m less likely to consume it. I also end up with lots of articles written ahead of time so that I can do some other things; neat!
This is also a great idea for those of you who have at least 100 posts on your blog to think about doing. You can do a recap of your first 100 articles in one post, but you can also see what you’ve written previously that maybe you can find another way to write about. Not only is it new content but it helps solidify what your blog is about; SEO works!
5. When you write articles way in advance, it doesn’t mean that if you want to write something current that you can’t do so. All you have to do is change the dates of some other articles and you can always be timely. I usually recommend that people try to write 2 or 3 articles at one time to help alleviate time crunches, but it also helps in occasions like this.
kris krüg via Compfight
6. Internal linking is a big deal. I’ll admit that sometimes it’s hard remembering if I wrote on a topic 6 years ago but often I remember that I’ve written on something up to 2 years ago. Search engines love internal linking, and any way you can help your blog is a good thing. Of course, I also advocate linking to outside sources, although in this day and age you need to be secure in doing it because of those weasels who might show up and ask you to remove their links; sigh.
Also, many blogs die out, and major websites don’t keep all links around forever. Thus, you need to stay vigilant and remember to remove bad links so it doesn’t mess up your online presence. For that I use a plugin called Broken Link Checker. It will check both links within your articles and links from people who’ve commented on your blog that no longer exist. For instance, for this repurpose I’m starting out with 29 comments, which is a lot, but as I mentioned earlier I was close to 100 comments; that’s a whole lot of folks who’ve disappeared…
7. I’ve learned that putting an image in a post helps keep people interested in it, even if it’s only one image. I used to have some images that were ads back in the early days but rarely real images or pictures. Once I started adding them it seems that the blog regained some positive energy with visitors, and I’ve never looked back. It really works well with very long posts like this bad boy; that leads us to…
8. Length means nothing to the majority of people. It’s like going to a movie that’s captivated you and being mad when it’s over because you want more. Some posts I read are way too short, while some are too long because they keep hammering on a point over and over without adding anything new. I write as much or as little as needed to say what I have to say and that’s that; sometimes I say what needs to be said in less than 700 words; other times… you know… If it’s engaging enough people will read it; that works for me. If not, that’s their problem because at least the search engines will love you. 🙂
9. You really can write on one topic in many different ways. Out of all the topics, or categories on this blog, the one I’ve written about more often than not is blogging. Almost 800 of the articles here are on blogging; how about that? And I’ve written some posts that I thought were interesting, connecting blogging with poker, airports, chess and a bunch of other things. If I can come up with a lot of different ways to speak on this topic, think about what you can do with yours. The most important thing to do is just to keep writing.
10. At some point most of your audience is going to change for one reason or another. Think about your own forays online. Are there blogs you no longer visit that you used to stop by all the time? Life gets in the way, ideas change, tastes change, bloggers change… that’s just how it goes. Sometimes you as the writer has to change, while other times you just keep going your way and you find that there’s always someone who wants to consume your words, even if they just want to fuss at you for them.
11. Blogging takes courage, patience and dedication. There are a lot of dead blogs out there, as I alluded to earlier. At the same time, there are a lot of blogs where the writer refuses to take a side or offer an opinion because they’re afraid someone won’t agree with them. Like almost anything else, it takes a love of blogging to really do it justice. There are people who have blogged way longer than me, and even a few who have written more articles than me.
J. Money via Compfight
I’ve written a lot over the years. I estimate I’ve written more than 6,000 articles, though not only for me. Overall I’ve had 8 blogs that I owned, and now I’m down to 4. That’s allowed me to repurpose some content onto my other blogs, but not all of them because a lot of topics I wrote for others don’t mesh well with anything I have now. I presently write articles my accountant and that’s it for writing content for others at the moment.
There are articles I’ve written for other websites, for other people’s websites and blogs, for places like EzineArticles, Demand Studio, About… ugh! At least they paid me, but in my opinion, that kind of formulaic writing is stifling. There’s a wedding blog and a real estate blog that I got close to 800 articles in total (contracted with the same guy for both of them), and I wrote on lots of other topics that I’d care not to remember at the moment (though I wish I could get all those articles I wrote about epilators and turkey hunting out of my mind). Still, if you can get paid enough so you can pay your bills and possibly make a living from it… good for you! Writing, editing… if it’s fun and feels good, take a shot at it (like I’m doing).
Courage and dedication; remember those two words, live those two words, blogging and outside of blogging. No one ever becomes rich and famous by sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone else to give them anything.
12. Blogs don’t only have to be words. I remember a blog years ago called I’m Just Joe where every post was actually a video. These days that’s a more common thing and it’s smart because you can have a page on YouTube and a blog and have totally different audiences. There are also blogs that only have podcasts and blogs that mainly have pictures. All of them are compelling to someone, and if you can mix some of these things up and find your audience you make your blog more compelling.
13. Blogging can be fun if you want it to be. I’ve covered a lot of interesting topics over the years; at least I found them interesting. Some of those that I enjoyed greatly took me the most time to put together. These were posts that, if anyone else cared, people could learn a lot of things about me, my tastes, my background, etc, as well as a lot of things from me.
I’m kind of a history person. One of my majors in college was American History with a concentration in African-American Studies, though I graduated with a degree in music. I love reading biographies because you not only learn how people overcame some very interesting situations, but you also learn what to do and not do as it pertains to your life. History always repeat itself, and if we pay attention hopefully we’ll learn lessons so we have a better chance to get things right.
But it’s not about that either. If I may, here are 15 posts that I believe probably tells you more about me than you’d care to want to know. I do this in the spirit of a guy named Carmine Gallo, who was interviewed by Chris Brogan some years ago, who wrote a book teaching speakers how to break their presentations up as if they were giving a TED talk (I know 3 people who’ve done TED talks; I’m working on being able to do one myself). One of the premises is that no matter what you’re talking about, every once in a while you have to stop and give people a sense of you you are with a story or video or something that shows why you care, and why you do what you do. Here’s some of mine:
Hazel Beverly: 3-23-21 Through 8-25-11
An Epic Battle; There Will Be Songs…
5 Lessons On How Not To Let Others Try To Run Or Ruin Your Life
I Used To Be A Songwriter, Part Three
10 Things You Must Have For A Happy Life
My Top 20 Sports Movies Of All Time
My Top 10 Disco Favorites Plus One
14. There’s always the debate amongst bloggers as to who you should be writing for. I tend to believe you write for yourself first and then others, because if you don’t like what you’re writing then why should anyone else. The other side believes that everything you do should be for the readers and that if you write with them in mind you’ll be able to reach them better and they’ll be more open to allowing you to communicate with them.
No matter who’s correct on this particular debate, one thing is clear. Either you write or you don’t; plain and simple. Actually, if I get to use my inner Dumbledore I’d like to rephrase this to say that either you produce content or you don’t, since there are many people who are using guest posts to move things along, and there’s always a place for that (just not here lol).
One way of looking at blogging, if you call it that in this case, is that the most successful blogs over time use multiple writers to produce content for them. Huffington Post, Copyblogger, Basic Blog Tips, Problogger… I’m sure you know a lot more already. There’s a question as to whether the first two are really blogs (I say that about Medium), but most people call them blogs so I’m not going to argue the point.
There’s the proof that the more content one can produce, the more traffic they’ll get and the more opportunities to make money. For most of us that’s hard to do on a consistent basis over time. That’s why I’m kind of proud of reaching 1,500 articles with this post, though I’m presently at 1,851 here. I can’t touch the really big blogs, but I’ll put my output online against anyone else’s (well, maybe except Ramana lol). Along the way, I hope I’ve helped, entertained, informed, stuck to my principles, and offered in some way hope that blogging can be a “thing”, no matter how it manifests itself with you.
15. Thanking people is never bad to do; people love seeing their names in other places. This is the final list point, and I’m going to take the time to thank some people who have been here with me for years and people who’ve been with this blog a lot who are still here now. I’ve had to remove a few people from this repurposing because they’ve stopped blogging; that’s too bad.
I want to mention two guys in particular. Dennis Edell commented a lot over the first 3 years or so but passed away at some point. John Dilbeck not only commented often but wrote very long, detailed comments that I just loved, and he was one of the nicest and most positive guys I’ve ever known; unfortunately, he also passed away. I’m not a religious man so I’ll just say that I miss both of those guys and hope they’re in another dimension kicking down doors and having a lot of fun.
One of the biggest fears I have is that one day I’ll just disappear and that will be that because almost no one’s going to know I’m gone and even if they do, people who know me won’t see anything about me if posted by someone else. Stupid to worry about I suppose but I know this; the people I thank now won’t be forgotten anytime soon because I’ve mentioned them here; check out their sites if you’re predisposed to do so.
Here are some of the people I mentioned with links to their blogs:
Peter Pelliccia; Kelvin Ringold; Mitchell Allen; Arlee Bird; Holly Jahangiri; Marcie Hill; Ileane Smith; Donna Merrill; Marelisa Fabrega; and Scott Thomas.
I think I’ve said enough except to close with this. I thank those of you who have been consistent readers of this blog at one time or another. I also always put out that if you have questions or topics you’d like me to address on this blog or any of my other blogs to look at my contact information and send me an email. It’s much more fun if others participate. Thank you, and… whew, this is long! 😉
Mitch, what an absolute delight this post brings to the web!
I am actually going to add this to Evernote. I want to visit those links, reread those insights and, really, just have a reminder of what a wonderful friend you are.
Here’s to the next 1,500!
Cheers,
Mitch
p.s. Your move. LOL
Thanks Mitch; I appreciate your words, and of course you were a part of pre-IJS days. 🙂 And I know, I’ll be moving soon.
Congrats Mitch!
I just want to focus on a little but most important thing i.e. ‘Title’. The title is important because the potential visitor will be looking at it when you share it to social media, and when others share your post to social media. The average Joe that shows up on your site to share is more than likely not going to write any promotional content for you when they share. That’s why it’s very important to have the blog post title as perfected as you can get it make it legendary.
Interesting Mainak, how you took a more than 2,800 word article and totally ignored it to talk about titles. I’ve never tried that tactic; I wonder how someone else would respond to it…
In any case I tend to totally disagree with your assertion, mainly because of one statement you wrote, that being “not going to write any promotional content for you when they share”. Goodness, I’m trying to think if anyone has ever written any promotional content for anything they’ve shared of mine other than something like “I like this” or “this will make you think” or something like that. And that’s from people who actually like me, so I’m expecting that if any average Joe’s stop by (and I’m thinking that most of my visitors aren’t quite “average” people) that they’d not even bother to share at all.
Or they just might. I’m one of those people who tends to believe that, for the most part, titles aren’t as important to strain one’s mind over when content needs to be written. For instance, when I wrote a post about F. B. Purity, my title was F. B. Purity; that seemed to work for me. Kind of like the title for this post; I just couldn’t think of anything more creative to call it than “15 Lessons From 1,500 Blog Posts” that would convey what the post was about. I do know it wasn’t about titles though; heck, I’ve never written a blog post anywhere on titles so maybe that’s something I need to address one of these days.
I’m sorry nothing else on this post interested you though; I’ll work harder during the next 1,500 posts… maybe…
Hey Mitch,
Maybe I’m just reading Mainak’s words differently but, I think he means that if I were to retweet your tweet about this post, I would be more likely to do that if the title was amazing.
And I totally agree with that! LOL (Yes, even little old anti-social me.) That’s why I spend so much time on my titles. Think about what you see when folks leave CommentLuv links…
Cheers,
Mitch
I knew what he meant. Just feel the timing is misplaced, especially since it didn’t address the topic of the post or anything in the post, which had lots to comment on, or so I felt.
Mitch, sorry if you feel that I didn’t address anything relevant to the post. But this was just a piece of opinion.
It’s not just your titles aren’t good, in fact they are very good and that’s what made me click-through to your blog.
Knowingly or unknowingly, you write so good titles, so I thought maybe you just missed out this lesson or you can say an addition.
Mainak, my response was kind of snarky but I’m one of those folks who believes that one should at least acknowledge something in a post before mentioning other stuff, kind of like the comment I left on your blog.
You weren’t wrong on titles though, and I did go back and realize that I’ve never written out my opinion about titling, which will be the subject of my next post. So, you’ve inspired a topic in me; congratulate yourself on that one. lol
1500 blogs covering is almost impossible for us (maximum) but you have crossed it with patient, So my big salute to you! one of the best article on your blog ! I like it
Thanks Sameer. Hopefully I’ve just gotten started and will have more to come over the next couple of years.
Hi Mitch,
One thing is for sure, you certainly have a lot to say!
But somehow we never get bored listening to you. 🙂 Thanks so much for including in the list of thank yous. That’s a real honor.
I think my favorite point was #14 when you said “stuck to my principles”. That’s one of the things I count on when I think about you and your blogs and videos. I know that you won’t be a sell-out and in the long run that is extremely important. Even if you change your mind about something there’s always a compelling reason that you manage to make others see your point (even if they don’t agree).
I asked around about Dennis a few months back and I agree that he was a great guy who always had a unique perspective and left some awesome comments.
Congrats on 1500 and I’m looking forward to what comes next.
Thanks Ileane. I’m sure I’ll never surprise you with what comes out next, but in my own way I always hope to get people thinking and encourage others in showing that they also can be creative with their writing and how enjoyable it is. Course, we both have to figure out what trouble to cause next 🙂
Hi Mitch, I came over to your blog from Ileane’s basicblogtips. I watched an amazing video interview you did with her and I came to say thanks because that was really resourceful for me and having read your 15 lessons you learnt from blogging, I have understood that courage, dedication and determination are as important in blogging as it is for any other professional job if one wants to achieve something and it pays to stay focused no matter what!
Thanks for stopping by Oscar. I wouldn’t say that blogging is necessarily a heroic endeavor but it does take guts and determination, and you’re right in saying that it’s like any other job. However, it probably takes a bit more heart as well since, hopefully, it’s something each person is doing for themselves as much as for others.
Hey Mitch. what a mighty effort my friend and I am so glad that I have been around to witness a lot of those posts. Wassupblog falls short by 760 posts but I’m thrilled to say that if I add up all my posts from all my blogs I’ve written 4042 posts. Sorry mate I had to say that 😀 Still, I reckon if we were to count all the words in all those posts you will come out way in front.
Writing Up? Man, does that bring back memories. I used to love that place. There was a real camaraderie felling there with a lot of the bloggers. Too bad it went down hill.
Still, I reckon we’ve made a lot of friends with our blogs and I for one am so glad I’ve become a blogger.
Thanks for sharing that journey with me, for including me in the post and congratulations for achieving your milestone.
Thanks Sire. We’ve known each other a long time, before we started our own blogs; what a journey, eh? And I think at our current pace I’ll pull further ahead, as I wrote 7 articles Sunday night alone, but it’s not a competition… much anyway. 🙂
Hey, as long as I stay ahead of you in chess I’m a happy man 🙂
Then you’ve been really depressed lately haven’t you? lol
Nope, I reckon I’m in front there at least lol
Oh, how short the memory is when one’s on a losing streak, and is going to keep losing… lol
Congratulations, Mitch! 1500 posts… that’s some serious blogging! I don’t think I could claim that many if you combined all the blogs I’ve started and abandoned over 15 YEARS.
I’m so honored to be included, here. (My husband has contact info – I don’t know if he reads my blog, but he has email and phone contacts for some very dear online friends who would certainly spread the word if I died, so I think I’ve got that covered.) That said, there will always be some folks who get the news more slowly than others. I didn’t know about Dennis until just now.
I guess you really can live forever on the Internet unless someone clues you in. (And on that note, I have at least three deceased Facebook friends I haven’t the heart to “unfriend.” That can get a little creepy when birthday notifications roll around.)
WRT #3, I think there were an awful lot of folks who got spambots for Christmas or Chinese New Year. Even WITH more-than-adequate protections, I was getting 16,000 a DAY in my spam folder, and my hosting provider temporarily shut everything down. We ended up blocking three whole countries – something I deeply regret having to do, but frankly, no one from any of them was actually interacting with me, so it’s been no gut-wrenching loss. I threw in another, just for grins, because their citizens seem only ever to visit my blog with SQL injection attacks and hacking attempts. But there are always proxy servers, too… It never really ends. I have really good bouncers, though.
Your #9 made me smile. I wonder how many bloggers hated to write, while they were still in school? I wonder how much blogging has taught them about writing, and how many of them have gone from hating it to loving it, once it wasn’t an assignment, or for a grade? I do run across bloggers who profess to hate writing, still, and wonder why on earth they put themselves through it.
Can’t be for the money.
#12 – if nothing else, blogging teaches empathy and understanding. I finally realized, a few weeks ago, why I am not nearly as enamored of video as most people seem to be. My reading speed is about 700-900 words per minute (and I know I’m slower than I used to be!). The average is about 250-300. Video is faster for those folks – but slow as molasses for me. In searching for “average speaking speed” I ran across this: “I am a professional speaker and podcast host and I speak at approximately 145-160 words per minute (wpm), while many sources state that average American English speaker engaged in a friendly conversation speaks at a rate of approximately 110–150 wpm.” (http://www.quora.com/Public-Speaking/For-the-average-person-speaking-at-a-normal-pace-what-is-the-typical-number-of-words-they-can-say-in-one-minute) So if that’s half the rate of the average READER, imagine how much longer it takes me to get the same info from a video. It needs to be chock full of personality and entertainment to hold my interest at all! But for those who hate to read or had to do too much of it already in their day, watching a video is just easier.
On a related note, I could just listen to Ms. Ileane speak all day. I don’t know if I’d remember a thing she said, but her voice is so soothing. I think if anyone could hypnotize me successfully (as opposed to making me roll my eyes or fall asleep), it’d be her. And you – you have a way of putting a nervous interviewee at ease immediately, Mitch. That’s a talent.
You already know how I feel about #14. 😉 If it were for myself, alone, I’d just keep a diary or daydream (being somewhat lazy, most of my thoughts might never leave my head – why bother to write them if they’re not going to be shared?) If it were just for others, it might be a soulless and deadly dull exercise. It’s a symbiotic relationship writers and readers have. It’s about communication – a meeting of minds. To me, that’s what makes it fun and worth the effort.
Thanks for your comment Holly, and how could you not be a part of this after so long? Truthfully, I think you only have an opinion on part of #14 because the rest of it… well, producing content in many different forms opens up a world of options that frankly hurts my head whenever I think I want to put it all together. Then again, my next post has a video as well as a couple of pictures and all my words once again; three things in one! lol
As for reading fast, that was my gripe about video two years ago, and thus it explained why I was slow to video. Now, there are days when, while working, all I do is listen to videos, peeking in every once in a while to see what’s going on. The video we did with Cairn was a pleasure to hear later on and helped 90 minutes move by very fast. I’m begrudglingly coming along with some of the newer technologies which involves video and sound that’s nowhere close to what we used to get with records and speakers that cost $300 because they’re more convenient; I like convenience in my life. 🙂
So, let’s keep producing, sharing, reading, listening, watching, and whatever else is called for as time moves on…
It’s been a while since I said thanks 😉 to you for prodding me into blogging. So, I’m sending out a big HUGE Fuccillo THANKS MITCH!
I’ve learned a lot from you after blogging the last few years.
I do a pretty good job of spreading my blog to all the social media outlets.
For some reason, I can’t write in advance. My inspiration for the week comes on Saturday or that Sunday when I post. It’s working for me.
Now you’ve got me thinking about writing twice a week. DAMN YOU! 😉 Ugh. Writing is hard. Can I commit to writing two a week? Like you say it will be great for traffic. We’ll see.
Internal linking is something I do on a regular basis. Probably should do more.
I agree wholeheartedly on leveraging photos, videos, and podcasts to enhance a post. Other than podcasts, I do a good job with the other two.
In regards to length of articles, I try to keep it in the 500 word neighborhood. Sometimes I go over, other times under. Wherever it falls is perfect for me.
Courage. True that! I’ve learned it’s best to be vulnerable. Say what you want to say. Don’t hold anything back.
Dedication. Yup. When you convinced me to wade into the blogging waters, I made a personal contract with myself. Post something, anything, every Sunday. Regardless if the post was average, awful, or on occasion brilliant.
In the beginning, I wrote for the audience. That wasn’t working well for me. NOW, I write for me. Why? I want to give the reader and prospective clients an authentic look into who I am! My philosophy? I’ll attract the right people by just being me.
I’d like to see more comments though I’m no longer concerned. That’s an EGO thing. I do know this. People are reading. They tell me in emails. They’ll mention it on a phone call.
Mitch, you’re dedicated to writing. Almost 3,500 posts? Yowza!
Congrats on milestone 1,500 on http://www.imjustsharing.com
Major accomplishment!
Thanks Steve. You know, I keep getting surprised by how many people started blogging because I encouraged them to do so. Course, it’s way more people who never started because I couldn’t get them to come see the blog to see how much fun it could be. That’s okay; I was one of those kids who loved writing papers in school, although typing them was often an adventure, and I could type pretty fast.
Your blog is a good one and your writing has drastically improved as you started putting personality into it and that’s what I always try to stress. Being true to oneself is being true to the audience, and your blog proves that. Keep writing!
I read Stephen King’s book on writing called, well, “On Writing.” He says to be a better writer, you have to read a lot and write a lot.
I need to do more in both areas.
I buy lots of books. Go to the library often. For some reason, most books don’t hold my interest.
I’m searching for one’s that do.
Steve, though I still buy books, I listen to recorded books all the time. While I’m out of town it’s all I listen to when I’m in the car and it’s all I listen to at home also. When I’m on a plane I either listen to a book or a YouTube video I downloaded, often a documentary. I consume a lot, which probably helps my writing in some ways even though none of it is in the same genre as the writing I do.
I love Alan Alda’s audiobook “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.”
Wow! and congratulations, Mitch! 1500 blog post on this blog alone is an achievement without taking account of your other blogs. Now that is dedication!
I am glad to see that this blog, which I would class as a random blog is successful as I have chosen to write a random blog rather than a niche blog and I was worried that people wouldn’t be that interested in my ramblings. I decided on random writings so that I had freedom to write whatever was on my mind without having to worry that it didn’t fit in.
I have taken note that it is wise to keep categories to a minimum, but I am finding that easier said than done. What if posts don’t quite fit into a category? I end up adding another one, which is something I am going to have to address I think.
Hopefully, one day I will be writing a blog post about the 1,500 posts I’ve written!
Hi Debbie, and welcome. I think that if one doesn’t have a specific niche that it’s hard to keep one’s categories to a minimum. I have a SEO blog and I’ve kept the categories to only 8 specific topics, and I’m good with that. But it can be difficult when it’s not a business blog.
Good luck as you’re starting on your journey; I’m sure you’ll be at 1,500 posts in no time. 😉
These lessons are some of the coolest teachings of all time!
I give it my best shot. 🙂
Thats incredible to have a blog that has 1500 posts..not just that 1500 great posts. Keep up the great work and thanks for the tips
Thanks Ryan. Actually over 1,850 at this juncture… and still ready to write more. 🙂