Welcome to Blog Post #1,971.
Blogging now for a decade, starting in May 2009.
The hope was, over time, to build a fan base that would routinely check out the blog on their own. It's relatively easy to bookmark the blog and visit. I put up three to five new things a week, so the waits between posts are not long.
I post a huge variety of things, but I figure that's okay - something for everyone. And it's easy to check the tags and the lists of posts to find what you want.
I had hoped to see traffic steadily build. I knew I would never be huge, but I had hoped to see my traffic build each month incrementally.
That has not happened. On a good month, I exceed over 3,000 views, In a bad month, it is under 2,000.
And, with a few brief exceptions, this has been true for most of the last ten years.
The only recent change is less and less of my traffic is coming from Facebook. That social media juggernaut has changed its algorithms, and fewer and fewer people even see my blog postings. They want me to pay them money to "advertise." Not gonna happen.
I've urged supporters to share my blog posts on Facebook so more people can see them. A few diehards do that if I plead hard enough, but for the most part, it doesn't happen.
I have not fallen below my average page views because I am growing a more extensive follow base on Twitter. Twitter now draws in more views than Facebook. HOWEVER, whatever is happening on Twitter, it does not involve likes or comments. Not that Facebook was ever a vast treasure trove either, but it does so more than Twitter. And, yes, no one on Twitter shares my posts either.
I had hoped to earn a little bit of money from advertising from my blog. That part ended several years ago. I made the mistake of telling a nonprofit group I would share my advertising income with them. They bombarded me with ad clicks, the Google cops came in and banished me from advertising for life. FOR LIFE. Violent, hardcore criminals get shorter sentences.
So, even with my dreams crushed, I continued on with the blog. It was a good writing exercise for me, and I do have a few who like to read regularly. My political posts had, until recently, generated more page views than most of my stuff.
Being a creature of habit, I slog onward. But I have to admit - the blog is not doing what I hoped it would do. Naive or not, I just want to make a little income writing so that I can further reduce my dependance on an accounting career.
That's not happening.
I have to rethink. Stop writing? No. Redeploy how I do this to increase the tiny likelihood that I can generate some income? Yes.
So, as a further adjustment on the great experiment, I am going to abandon Facebook as a posting site for blog entries. I just want to see how that affects traffic flow. Facebook is becoming more and more irritating, and I want to see how much not posting on it will change things.
I will continue to post things to my Facebook page, T. M. Strait. I will, for now, no longer post to my general newsfeed.
So, please, if you want to continue to check out my blog, bookmark it. See something you like? Share it on your own social media.
This will not last forever. But I have to shake thing up.
Sincerely,
T. M. Strait
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