I have not written anything on my blog for quite a while. About a year. Seems the way with a lot of blogs. I’ve actually been doing a lot of work on the blog recently. I moved the blog back to Movable Type. WordPress was not what I wanted. I put a new graphic design in place. I designed my own Flickr image display. The blog has been my practice arena to remember and improve my html, css and javascript skills. So now, I’d really like to start writing again.
It is interesting, what many people want their blogs to be. Like so many things in life, we start out with very grand intentions when we set up our blogs. I think everyone goes through the phase where they think they will earn some money from their blog. That is the dream that Google AdSense was selling. That was an interesting evolution. Google AdSense will not be a significant revenue stream for the vast majority of bloggers. Guy Kawasaki could not even make it work.
The most interesting blogs are the ones that actually have something to say. Usually a theme or a topic that they are focused on. My own blog hit its high water mark during my first tour in Iraq (Kuwait, actually). I do not really know how many readers I had but there were quite a few. In the hundreds. People read my blog because I was talking about an experience that they were interested in. I was a deployed sailor talking about life on deployment and the war in general. That is what people tuned in to read about.
So, how do you keep a readership? Joey de Villa is still blogging after good lord knows how long. Technically speaking, Post Secret is a blog. As is Engadget and several other tech blogs.
So, obvious very focused and entertaining blogs draw readers. But what do personal blogs need in order to be interesting? That will be part of the effort here.
The other goal here is to have a place to practice html, css and javascript. The goal is to have this be a showcase of my web development skills. We’ll see.