Calling It Quits Folks

Calling It Quits Folks

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

After many years of blogging I’m calling it quits. I've done everything I know to build a following.

I follow a lot of blogs and they all have fans and readers that leave comments and participate and even buy things from them. I constantly promote the works of others, but there is no reciprocation.

After spending thousands of hours and taking thousands of photos the task has expanded to eat up large portions of my day. I have over 70 blogs, and 3 of them are daily blogs. I’m going to take all that time I used to spend blogging and use it on things like writing novels, sewing a new wardrobe, and making things to sell. I’m sure I can find something to do with all that time.

I’m leaving my blogs up, since I’m sure they’ll be useful to someone from time to time. And every now and then I may miss it and make a few new posts. I don’t think anyone will notice one way or the other if I blog or don’t blog. When all is said and done, I think it only mattered to me. 

Build a Better Blog

The thing about blogging is you can always get better at it. I've changed so many things since I started to blog. And yet there is so much more to learn. And then social networking happened, which helped us all to reach a much larger audience. Most visitors don't comment so it's hard to get a feel for how many eyes see my words. A lot more than I may realize I bet. My friends has a blog and she's cute as a button. She gets so many comments and has so many sponsors. I'm guessing a good part of her income comes straight from blogging and affiliate ads. Just when I pat myself on the back for getting good at this, other people come along and pass me like I'm standing still, and she's one of them. I think every post she makes gets at least a dozen comments. It helps that she's drop dead gorgeous, but I think it also helps that her blog looks so appealing. Great big splashy pictures, a font that is big and easy to read, and buttons at the top to all kinds of social networking sites so you can share her posts. I don't even know how to build a page like that. I'm guessing she hired a professional website builder.

In the meantime I'll keep doing the best I can with my humble blogs.

Kontera Vs Project Wonderful

I was quite content with my Kontera keywords existing hand in hand with my Project Wonderful ad squares. Until today when Project Wonderful deleted all my ads. Evidentally they take issue with having to compete with Kontera. I love the Project Wonderful format because I feel like I'm helping other small businesses have affordable advertising on blogs and websites. And it's definitely prettier and more creative in the way it displays on some of my blogs.

On the downside, I make more money (I think) from Kontera. I just got my first $100 check from Kontera a month ago. Right now my Project Wonderful account has about $20. in it. Granted half of that goes into the ads I run on other people's blogs. The advertising program pays for itself.

So my choice now is to take Kontera off some or all of my blogs and reapply to Project Wonderful. I'm still thinking about it. Eventually my Project Wonderful account will be empty as my paid ads will eat it up with no new revenue from people buying ads on my blog. What are the rest of you in this dilemma doing? I have a feeling PW just did a big sweep of blogs and a lot of people are in the same boat I am in.

My Sunday

I'm suddenly getting more followers to some of my blogs, which makes blogging even more fun. I tend to post more to certain blogs if I know someone is following them. Then I don't feel like I'm a voice crying out in the wilderness.

I have a goal of reading 100 books this year, so today I started with book one, Ender's Game, a Sci Fi novel my daughter recommended. And I like it so far. I got up to chapter 8 today and will try to read a bit more when I lay down. I fall asleep pretty quickly when I do that but at least it's an effort.

I was using an ATM machine to deposit a check and I accidentally hit the number one button on the keypad instead of the deposit button on the screen and $40 came out of the ATM machine and out of my checking account. Good thing I had $50 in there, but what a weird glitch.

It's almost 1 AM and my brain is turning to mush so I'm going to scoot off to read. Tomorrow is the day '9 to 5 ers' go to work after the holidays. I'm grateful that I work in my home office. No fighting the traffic to get to a cubicle. No timeclocks. But sadly, on many a day, no income. But I hang in there.

Zenchantress Today

Today someone invited me to a new blogging site where at least for the first 30 days they will pay me $1. a day to blog. http://zenchantress.today.com/ So I got approved in one day even though it says it will take much longer. And I've already made my first two posts. I think bloggers should be paid and I am gradually dropping the sites that don't pay anything so I don't spread myself too thin on the non-paying sites. For example I almost never blog on Yahoo360 anymore. I think I'm also going to start striving to make each blog post 100 words or more in length so that people coming to my site feel like they haven't wasted their time. That is about 10 lines with 10 words per line.

And by the way, Wondrous Winter Solstice everyone. I hope you got to make a snow angel or throw a snowball or at least light a green candle today.

I'm not sure what to think about Yousaytoo

I joined a site called YOUSAYTOO hoping to get more readers for my blogs and more revenue as well. But some of my blog posts are very short. They are short for 2 reasons. One is I only have so much time in the day. The other is that a daily blog is more or less a project report such as 'I am knitting a sweater' or 'I finally got that yarn I needed in the mail.' But I'm getting marked down in the ratings on yousaytoo. Maybe people have different views of what a blog post should be. People complain both when they are too long and when they are too short. Then I get a thumbs down. I'm not sure if I like yousaytoo enough to stay on it or not. If I keep getting negative ratings I'll probably leave, because who needs that? I only give negative ratings if the person either spells a lot of words wrong, or says something racist or demeaning in some way. I prefer giving positive ratings if its a particularly helpful blog post, or no rating if it's just a little blurb. Some people just get off on judging others I guess.

I've added this particular blog today because I tend to write longer posts here, though they are much more infrequent. Normally if I'm going to spill my guts its in long hand in a notebook style journal. And no one reads it but me.

The Wild Hunt

I ran across an interesting pagan blog called "The Wild Hunt'. It's a news blog of how paganism interfaces with the rest of the world including politics, health issues, and media icons. I will definitely go back to read more of that.

And Then Breakfast Got Weird

This morning I took my library book Blogging For Dummies to breakfast. I'm not new to blogging but I thought I could pick up some tips from his book. I was reading it at McDonald's and got up to refill my drink when the local seniors club evidently spotted the title and by the time I got back this blowhard was spouting off about how blogging and chatrooms were for people with too much time on their hands and a bunch of crap anyways. The whole group is discussing it loudly from the three tables around me, so finally I'd had enough and said "Do you mind? After that we had some witty banter where he basically told me what a loser I was, so I went back to reading. Then another man who was directly behind me apologized on his way out for his loud mouthed friend. I told him, "I can't believe you actually hang out with that guy.

Well soon, and not too soon for me, mr. loudmouth and his merry gang of opinionated bigots got up and left, but not before I heard the N word a few times about the N that was running for President. So chalk it up to a very interesting and weird breakfast.

Counters and all that jazz

Today I was looking up flower photos trying to figure out if the photos I just took were of poppies or persian buttercups. One link lead to a blog. The writer on that blog had actually written a few paragraphs about poppies. So I decided to add her to my favorites. Here she is: http://anythingofinterest.blogspot.com/
Anyway,
I scrolled down to her counter and she's had over 80,000 hits! 80,000
I about did a spit take. Earlier today I added a counter to this blog, which is on 1, (because I just added it). I have no clue how someone would get 80,000 viewers to a blog that wasn't x-rated or about getting rich quick. It just shows you what quality writing can do for a person.