My Blogging Experiment

I started blogging on September 17 of this year. It wasn't something I thought about doing prior to that moment. I stumbled across the Blogspot homepage, saw how easy it was to create a blog, and got started. Next thing you know, I'm a blogger. In truth, prior to my first blog entry I had never even read a blog. So to say I didn' t have a clue what I was doing would be an understatement.

Have to admit that it came pretty naturally for me. I have always been a writer. Let me rephrase that...I have always enjoyed writing. The top of my closet is filled with the many volumes of a journal I've kept that dates back to the 1970s. I also do a lot of writing for my job, and have been told more times than I can count that I have a gift for it. Perhaps one day I'll type all my old journal entries into a blog (though I suspect a lot of editing would take place!).

Days after I started blogging, I installed the code from Google Analytics so I could see how many people were stopping in. Took me a while to get that part right. FYI--it didn't work until I switched the "new" code for the old code. Now it works like a charm, and I'm hooked.

After the tracking code started working, one day I popped into just about every room on Gay.Com and posted the URL for my blog. The next day I had over 100 visits, from all over the world! I also had my first really nasty comments. More importantly, I learned about bounce rates. For readers that have not learned about bounce rate, it gives you an idea of how long visitors stay on your pages. A high bounce rate means that they don't stay very long at all. The day I had more than 100 visits, my bounce rate jumped up around 80%.

So I abandoned the adbot strategy, and started following blogs that looked interesting to me. That generated some nice comments on some of my postings (thanks guys!). It also took me to Joe, My, God. This is a GREAT blog, and it has inspired me to do better.

So today I have been searching for tips for successful blogging. I'm going to continue with The Crotchety Old Man for a while. I like the appelation and it really feels good to vent. But based on what I've been reading, I don't think this will ever be a "successful" (translation: profitable) blog. But for now, I'm still...

The Crotchety Old Man