2008-01-24

685

Today is my second Blogaversary. It hardly seems like a year has passed since I started Cromely's World, and yet it's been two years and 685 posts.

Here is my first post.

And here is my first Blogaversary post.

I started blogging so I could write about something other than work. I needed to exercise some other parts of my brain. In the process I've met some fascinating people on line, and I've become a more attentive reader.

I set a personal goal to write 5 out of every 7 days (71%) when I started. In the past year, I posted on 314 out of 365 days (86%). Some days it's though, but that simply rule kept me disciplined.

The past few months have been amazing. I went from an average of 10 visitors a day in January 2006 to an average of 100+ visitors a day this week.
I drew the extra traffic by participating more actively in Entrecard and Blogcatalog. I tried other services, such as Blogexplosion and BlogRush, but they just didn't give me the traffic I wanted.

My ongoing challenge will now be to manage my content and links. My Favorite Posts section was too long and outdated so I updated it in December. I removed a bunch of links and replaced them with "Best of 2006" and "Best of 2007" links.

Many of my posts are part of an ongoing series (Shatner-Palooza, Book Reviews, etc), so I tried to make them more accessible.

I'm thinking about removing my limited blog roll from the sidebar. I don't use it. Instead, I rely on the feeds from my favorite blogs, and I display that feed in my sidebar. This way my readers can visit my favorite blogs by first getting a sample of the content. And it's always updated. At this point, I can also tell which blog a post comes from by just reading the head line. I'm may expand this feed. What do you think?

Above all, I hope I've kept my content useful, interesting, or humorous to a few people.

And I look forward to another great year at Cromely's World.

11 comments:

Jon Clarke said...

Congratulations!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the second blogaversary. The feed vs the link is an interesting idea. I always use the links myself because I don't read other blogs every day. I usually wait a couple days, then cram. The blogroll helps me keep the blogs together that I frequent without burying them somewhere in my browser bookmarks.

Nice looking blog though. Thanks for the comment on mine. The panic at the fed article looks interesting so I'm off to scope it out.

Anonymous said...

Happy blog anniversary.

I have a problem with old content, too. I have 3 blogs that are over 3 years old and I just had to move one from blogspot to a host. What a nightmare. I thought about just leaving some posts on the blogspot, but I did not want to lose my readers.

Anonymous said...

Your blog is great. Congrats! There's a little something for everyone. I enjoy visiting every day.

RollerKaty said...

Happy birthday! You're a toddler now! ;) katy

Anonymous said...

Congrats Cromely. You are rocking on blogs. 86% is really impressive. I am glad to hear your traffic is up too. I hope to hear that by the end of next year you are at 1000 unique visitors per day. Way to stick with your passion.

Best of Luck,

S.A.M.

Anonymous said...

I see you're in your terrible twos now. Happy blogiversary!

Mo and The Purries said...

Congrats on your second Blogaversary!
My second is quickly approaching at
It’s A Blog Eat Blog World
and I just signed up for Entrecard, too. Hope to get an imprssive increase in traffic like you did.

crpitt said...

Congratulations on two years :)

I am a big big fan of BlogCatalog, you will normally find me hanging out there in the discussions.

That and Entrecard have been great for me blog.

Noelevz said...

congrats! I have just used Entrecard for like 2 days ago and the results are fascinating!

Cromely said...

Thanks for all your great wishes. That (and my own compulsive tendencies) are what keeps me going.