I am a bit of a statistics geek (I can hear my college professors roaring with laughter.) Seriously, I like taking a peek and seeing how much traffic a new blog post gets. Every now and then I even get a wild hair to try to make sense of Google's analytics. A friend recently asked about how my blog was doing, how many monthly hits it was getting, if I had plans to monetize it, etc. I felt somewhat apologetic when I confessed I haven't made it into a money-maker, but it's a conscious choice to not pursue advertising or sponsorship. And I am fortunate: I don't need it to return a profit at this point in my life.
I also don't know if I will dally too much in the realm of touting products for compensation or freebies, either. Although my Christmas venture with Shutterfly was pretty cool, and if you're a company who would like to offer me a fabulous product or service to showcase, I am definitely willing to hear you out :-)
But by and large, I like being able to write from the heart, without worrying if my words are search-engine optimized. I like being able to write about whatever genuinely interests me, and hopefully it is of interest to those who read my posts. I have found some odd searches have led people to my blog, from reheating runzas, to potatoes au gratin, house wishlists, green bean bundles and stinky Dysons.) I hope those seekers found what they were looking for, because I sure didn't pen those posts to lure them to my blog and try to sell them anything.
And I like following writers who blog about subjects they are passionate about, whether it's tied to their vocation or avocation. Contrived posts full of strategically crafted phrases and wording....blech. The internet is bound to attract some spam, but thankfully we can snub it in favor of bona fide content written by people who care to share their real thoughts with the world. And hopefully Google (or another up-and-comer search engine) will soon figure out how to weed out the spam for us.
Happy blogging,
