Tuesday, November 17, 2015
My Blogging Journey
How it All Started
Began Blogging about a year ago, September 2013 to be precise. I can remember this vividly because that's my birth month. Decided to try something new since ASUU strike had sent us on compulsory holiday. Always wanted a website, but never created one before this time. Joblessness at home made me to finally put my thoughts into action. Didn't really know how to begin, just knew I wanted a place I could post stuff on either reasonable or crappy ones. As always, I went for my reliable search engine 'Google' and created a website which was on blogger platform. Before this time, I had no idea we had different platforms like blogger, word press, or personal website, or had any training in website design, an idea on what I wanted to post on the blog, talkless of the niche I wanted, and also that one could earn from blogging.
Also Read: Basic Tips For Blogging
The Blogging Experience
With the little experience I've gained from blogging, I can now pinpoint the mistakes I made on my first blog which was gracejoseph446.blogspot.com these were:
1. Looking at the URL, other than it's length which is too long, it's complicated with three numbers. This will be hard to recall by readers if in future they want to refer to my blog. You hardly see any professional blog using such URL.
2. No 'After the jump' Summaries: Had about 9 to 10 post on my homepage and each post had no 'read more' tag. You can already imagine how lengthy the home page was and really hard to view other post. Readers had no choice in choosing to which post to read. This will in turn reduce the page views since the content are out on display right from the first visit. It was Oluwaseun of Hallanaija who helped out with things like how to use jump breaks on blogger, reducing the number of post on the homepage to reduce the page load time, instead of a template with a dark background, a better one preferably with a bright background, also referred me to sources for my page content.
Also Read: How To Centralise Blogger Title And Description
3. Blog content: Since I had nothing in mind to blog about, I went for entertainment. It seemed easier blogging about that or copying it to paste if that counts as blogging. Now I realize having original content or even an appropriately edited form of 'copy and paste' can do your blog a lot of good. As at then, you could search for a topic on Google and my blog would fall among the ones on either the 15th or 17th pages, yes! it irritated me a lot.
4. Blogger gadgets: I had a lot of them which also contributed in increasing my blog's page load time. I spent more time trying to design my blog instead of writing relevant content. Most bloggers do this, the design of the blog is one in a million but the content of the blog isn't half as good compared to the design. Before I began blogging, I can recall I bookmarked or saved webpages that provided answers to my questions each time I searched for them on Google and this wasn't because the blog had beautiful designs but it's ability to provide relevant solutions. I returned to these blogs over and over again if I wanted to learn more. What's the use of a beautiful blog if it's empty? The only gadgets that really matter are the basic blogger gadgets.
5. Large Image size: The images were of various sizes, some too tiny while others were extra large. This was because I was blogging from phone and not even a smart phone. Couldn't upload images directly to a blogger post, So I resorted to free image hosting sites. Later, discovered I could post with images by sending them through email.
6. Inconsistency and impatience : So far I wasn't seeing any progress in my blog in terms of traffic and earning some cool cash as I've heard some bloggers testify of. I visited and posted less often and finally I deserted the blog. I'll give credit to some of my fellow bloggers like Larry Frank of Flowing Tech Blog and Johnny Ode of Readers lodge who encouraged and made me realize it wasn't also easy at first for those who finally made it at blogging. From them, I got to know the relevance of backlinks, keywords, joining high PR forums, and above all not giving up.
Within me, I still had the desire to blog, so I created this blog informationtutorial15 (the Tutor). Changed my niche from entertainment because I didn't feel contented posting other people's work on my blog, stalking the net to be the first to get the breaking news. Since my main traffic wasn't coming from Google but social networking sites, it meant less or no page views when the blog was not updated. If I was to continue blogging, I wanted to write what I know, and content that will always generate traffic for me even if it got to be years old. With the knowledge gained from my former blog, i'm now spending time on things that matter more to make my blog better. Even though the traffic isn't rollingIn in thousands now, looking at my blog I can see some significant progress which gives me the courage to blog and hope that someday i'll look back at this post and smile.
Began Blogging about a year ago, September 2013 to be precise. I can remember this vividly because that's my birth month. Decided to try something new since ASUU strike had sent us on compulsory holiday. Always wanted a website, but never created one before this time. Joblessness at home made me to finally put my thoughts into action. Didn't really know how to begin, just knew I wanted a place I could post stuff on either reasonable or crappy ones. As always, I went for my reliable search engine 'Google' and created a website which was on blogger platform. Before this time, I had no idea we had different platforms like blogger, word press, or personal website, or had any training in website design, an idea on what I wanted to post on the blog, talkless of the niche I wanted, and also that one could earn from blogging.
Also Read: Basic Tips For Blogging
The Blogging Experience
With the little experience I've gained from blogging, I can now pinpoint the mistakes I made on my first blog which was gracejoseph446.blogspot.com these were:
1. Looking at the URL, other than it's length which is too long, it's complicated with three numbers. This will be hard to recall by readers if in future they want to refer to my blog. You hardly see any professional blog using such URL.
2. No 'After the jump' Summaries: Had about 9 to 10 post on my homepage and each post had no 'read more' tag. You can already imagine how lengthy the home page was and really hard to view other post. Readers had no choice in choosing to which post to read. This will in turn reduce the page views since the content are out on display right from the first visit. It was Oluwaseun of Hallanaija who helped out with things like how to use jump breaks on blogger, reducing the number of post on the homepage to reduce the page load time, instead of a template with a dark background, a better one preferably with a bright background, also referred me to sources for my page content.
Also Read: How To Centralise Blogger Title And Description
3. Blog content: Since I had nothing in mind to blog about, I went for entertainment. It seemed easier blogging about that or copying it to paste if that counts as blogging. Now I realize having original content or even an appropriately edited form of 'copy and paste' can do your blog a lot of good. As at then, you could search for a topic on Google and my blog would fall among the ones on either the 15th or 17th pages, yes! it irritated me a lot.
4. Blogger gadgets: I had a lot of them which also contributed in increasing my blog's page load time. I spent more time trying to design my blog instead of writing relevant content. Most bloggers do this, the design of the blog is one in a million but the content of the blog isn't half as good compared to the design. Before I began blogging, I can recall I bookmarked or saved webpages that provided answers to my questions each time I searched for them on Google and this wasn't because the blog had beautiful designs but it's ability to provide relevant solutions. I returned to these blogs over and over again if I wanted to learn more. What's the use of a beautiful blog if it's empty? The only gadgets that really matter are the basic blogger gadgets.
5. Large Image size: The images were of various sizes, some too tiny while others were extra large. This was because I was blogging from phone and not even a smart phone. Couldn't upload images directly to a blogger post, So I resorted to free image hosting sites. Later, discovered I could post with images by sending them through email.
6. Inconsistency and impatience : So far I wasn't seeing any progress in my blog in terms of traffic and earning some cool cash as I've heard some bloggers testify of. I visited and posted less often and finally I deserted the blog. I'll give credit to some of my fellow bloggers like Larry Frank of Flowing Tech Blog and Johnny Ode of Readers lodge who encouraged and made me realize it wasn't also easy at first for those who finally made it at blogging. From them, I got to know the relevance of backlinks, keywords, joining high PR forums, and above all not giving up.
Within me, I still had the desire to blog, so I created this blog informationtutorial15 (the Tutor). Changed my niche from entertainment because I didn't feel contented posting other people's work on my blog, stalking the net to be the first to get the breaking news. Since my main traffic wasn't coming from Google but social networking sites, it meant less or no page views when the blog was not updated. If I was to continue blogging, I wanted to write what I know, and content that will always generate traffic for me even if it got to be years old. With the knowledge gained from my former blog, i'm now spending time on things that matter more to make my blog better. Even though the traffic isn't rollingIn in thousands now, looking at my blog I can see some significant progress which gives me the courage to blog and hope that someday i'll look back at this post and smile.
