My First Year Anniversary
By Mark on Aug 12, 2008 in Featured
Well today my blog is celebrating its first birthday on WordPress, it’s exactly one year ago today that I first set up this domain and blog on this address using independent hosting, and using WordPress as the blogging platform.And what a year it’s been despite the fact there were some low’s to start off with when I first started off, on WordPress mainly because I didn’t really know what I was doing at first.
And also due to the fact that I was in away starting from scratch although I was on blogger previously, I was literally starting from zero, so really one year ago I read in have a clue about how things would work out or where I would end up.
But it has turned out better than I have ever expected, I am still here, I am still blogging and I have to say I am glad I stuck it out even along the bumpy roads that have come along every once in a while, at one time earlier on this year my traffic levels seem to be quite low and I was quite concerned that something was really wrong, but really there was nothing to worry about because within a few weeks my traffic levels returned to normal.
This year has been the best so far as far as my blogging is concerned, things started to turn around I would say at the end of January, looking back over my stats over the year this is when things started to turn around, I started posting more posts and also did one or two tweaks on the blog.
Which seemed to make a huge difference, I also started to put into practice what I had learned from the blogging course I was doing namely Blog Mastermind, then about March time I think it was my posts started to appear on Reuters which bought me even more exposure, I have been a member of blog catalog, and my blog log for quite some time now, and started to join various neighbourhoods within those two blogging networks which are very big indeed.
I also make sure that I was getting exposure by leaving comments on a authoritative blog every so often, I think the combination of this and doing many other marketing activities, has really paid off I also concentrated on SEO for my blog which consisted of directly submissions.
But also this year there has been a lot of natural organic growth, I am finding now even more that a lot of people who are within the same area as may as far as blogging is concerned are finding me and also syndicating my content.
My blog is starting to pop up all over the place on the Internet which is a really good thing, sometimes when I am looking at my stats to see where people come from is quite amazing where they do come from, it does seem to pop up in the most strangest of places.
Sometimes there is no actual path as to where the visitor has come from so I’m assuming that people must be passing my site around like a bookmark, because also I noticed that some of the referrals are coming from e-mails, and people saving their pages to their hard drive perhaps somebody saves the page off line and then sends it to another person and so on.
This in itself all creates a natural organic growth which the search engines do like and also it gets me lots of free exposure, I haven’t had to spend any money whatsoever advertising my blog at all the only investment I have had to make is time.
When I initially set up this blog on WordPress one year ago I suppose you could say I had quite a. I don’t know what is going to happen, attitude as far as things are concerned and didn’t think too much about where I would be this time this year, or even if I would be still here, although I must say that I didn’t really think that at the time.
All in all though I have really been quite pleasantly surprised at how things have progressed, it may seem quite strange saying this but I never expected it to grow as much as it has.
When I used to think about seeing other people doing well with their blogs and wondered if I would be ever able to be as good or do as well as them, when I was on blogger initially first starting off I seem to be struggling all the time to get anywhere as far as traffic and anything else was concerned for that matter.
But looking back on that experience, I can actually see that the platform that I was on was very limiting, WordPress just changes the whole ballgame as a whole when it comes to blogging.
You have far more power at your hands than you ever could imagine I used to hear people talking about it all the time and raving about how good it is, but I must say I don’t think I really took much notice, and probably thought it was something I never would be using myself.
Over all as far as things go with my blog it does seem to be gaining a lot of traction over the Internet, I am getting more comments now than I used to, more people are subscribing to the RSS feed, and the e-mail service which is provided also.
So in conclusion one year on I can honesty say that is the probably, the best thing I’ve ever done for a very long time. Starting this blog has made me realise that I can stay at things when needed, and I would also say that it has made me grow as a person and made me become more confident as well. I never actually realised it before but I find writing now quite therapeutic.
So much so that I am now in the process of starting another blog I still need to add some more content to it and get the RSS feed setup and so forth, but it won’t be too long now before I will launch it. Funnily enough when I first started to think about this blog I ummmed and arrrred about it for ages but then just decided to get it up and see what happens with it.
That particular blog is about the way my life is going and life as a whole really and how I have got to where I am now, as I get nearer to where I want it I will announce on this blog when I am ready to launch it.
That’s all I want to say really does want to say thank you for everybody who take’s the time to leave comments, about my blog and posts, all the people who read my blog how many there are of you I don’t really know sometimes it is hard to judge because a lot of people do lurk and don’t say anything.
So one year on to this very day all I can say it’s been a very learning, exhilarating, and exciting experience for me as a whole I really am hoping now that blogging will open a lot of doors for me and hopefully get me some kind of recognition which I would truly love.
And on a ending note if there is anybody who is interested in any kind of sponsorship deals then please do get in contact with me as I would be very interested to talk business.
Or also if you have any questions about blogging in general or anything really doesn’t matter just drop me a line.
Tags: Blogging
