-After 15+ Years of Blogging: Here’s What I’ve learned

After over 15 years on the internet blogging and publishing religious websites I have learned a lot and I have observed many different trends and changes. I have also seen many good blogs and bloggers come and go.

Many started blogging in 2005 and 2006 because their friends did and it became the popular thing to do. It was a golden time when 1000’s of new blogs came into existence every hour of everyday. Some of my favorites and even some of the best blogs of that era no longer exist.

 

Now cultural popularity has shifted towards social networking and micro-blogging like Facebook and TwitterX. Regular blogging is still growing but not at the exponential rate that it once did. Fact is, Facebook and TwitterX are much easier to do and require far less consistency and commitment and can be respectfully maintained on a casual basis.

After 15+ years of blogging here is what I have learned about it and how to keep on keeping on:

1. Purpose: Number 1 you must have a real reason to be blogging or keeping a website in the first place and a vision for what you are doing and want to accomplish.

2. Goals: It is a good idea to sit down at least at the beginning of the year and define and set some goals for blogging.

3. Strategies: With goals in mind, define how you plan on meeting and surpassing or even measuring your progress.

4. Action: When it comes to blogging, action involves consistent writing but also constantly adapting, changing, and maintaining your blog or website.

5. Evaluation: It is a good idea to stand back once in a while, maybe every 3 months or so and evaluate your performance and check out whether you are meeting the goals that you set for yourself. Also, are you being true to your original purpose and vision?

6. Correction: In response to the evaluations many times corrections are in order. Can’t tell you how many times in 15+ years that I have made major changes and corrections to what I was doing on a particular blog or blogs. particularly how I was spending my time. 

I made a major change this year shutting down several blogs and switching others to a new domain and all of my sites to a new host.

6. Time out: If you are in this for the long run it means that you will need to take some time off from blogging. I usually take Saturdays and Sundays off every week. Then there are vacations and times to go fishing. Once in a while there are long weekends that need to be taken to keep peace in the family.

Here is a valuable tip: If you can’t seem to write, have a block, or blogging begins to seem like work rather than fun –take a day off or two. It has worked for me and I still love to blog and maintain websites after 15 years and counting.

May the Lord bless you and continue to inspire your blogging and mine also.