To Blog Or Not To Blog

Prior to early August this year, I had never written or posted a blog (web log). With the assistance of my two smart adult children I learned how to set up a blog site and off I went.

I enjoy writing about my opinions of the day for cathartic reasons and for the safety of those closest to me. More specifically I felt if my head ever exploded too close to my wife, there could be unintended consequences. I used to joke about wrapping my head in duct tape. Blogging has saved me hundreds of dollars by not buying tape in which to wrap my head to keep it from exploding.

The site I use allows me to determine how many “hits” my site gets each day along with other analytic data about where those folks live (in general), etc. But the analysis I have seen since I have been posting my thoughts is telling me I do not have a very large loyal following. My guess is the folks that are going to my site on a regular basis are only close friends and immediate family, and even then not every day even though I have established a routine of writing just about every day to attract daily followers.

People can get to my site in one of the following three ways. After the first visit, they can bookmark and return to my site as a Favorite. They use the more modern way using an RSS Feeder (see following link). http://www.techafina.com/rss-explained/. The third way is if someone sends my site's URL to a family member or friend and that person opens the link.

Where is this going? When I alerted somewhere between 20 to 30 friends and family by e-mail I had started posting I received a lot of hits. But later I explained that was sort of cheating. If someone really likes following a favorite blogger they will continue to return to that site often, without prompting. So I explained to my friends and family I would stop providing a heads up but would continue to write. I wanted a way to determine just how many visitors I would receive every day to my blog site because folks really wanted to check it out and see what my thoughts were that day.

From hitting some high notes, reaching as many as 25 readers on certain days after providing a heads up my average readership has dropped dramatically.

Some bloggers write because they get paid to write for newspapers, magazines or web sites and are considered professionals in the new age of writing for others. I write for myself but based upon the drop in readership without prompting feel I may be getting followed by too few folks to continue to “post in the open”. I may as well keep a private diary, stop writing completely or perhaps send e-mails to those who respond to this posting and ask that I do so. I need some help in deciding what to do. While I don’t fancy myself a professional writer if there are not enough people who want me to continue posting, I should stop. Therefore I am going to do the following, immediately.

This is my last posting for several days, at least through the weekend and as long as a week. I am going “dark”. I have written 31 blogs to date (not including this one) with my average daily readership going from the high teens to as low as 1 but has settled between 5 or 6 per day. When you read this blog if you want me to continue to share my thoughts please put a note into comments section at the bottom of this posting or write me directly if you have my e-mail address and do not want your comment to be read publicly.

I will decide whether to continue to blog after I hear from those that respond. Several days is a long time to not write, at least for me, but it is long enough for anyone who has read any of my previous postings to come back to my site, read this and tell me if they want me to continue posting and why.

That’s it for today. I do not need to know if you agree with what I write but if I should continue. Simple enough. I look forward to hearing from enough followers to justify my time in posting my thoughts going forward.