Do you have a blog?

[SkyBlue]

I started a blog a year ago, but it only lasted a few months.  It was quite a lot of work for one thing, keeping it up to date and replying to comments.  My blog was about writing, particularly for competitions. 

I found it interesting to do at first.  There is always a novelty value in beginning a new project, isn't there?  Perhaps I wasn't good enough at promoting it, as I didn't really get the amount of visitors that I'd hoped for.  In the end I decided that it was taking up too much time which I could use in better ways.  Maybe I'll try again one day. 

How do you all find ways to promote your blogs and increase your number of readers?

[jjmm]

I'm currently making a blog about making money online... I still have to post some payment proofs and add some sites, but I expect it to be finished in a week or so.

I will also add this site if I get accepted and I get paid 

[Raven]

I have two blogs. I created the first one for somewhere to just vent and rant and put down my thoughts. It kind of metamorphasized into a helping-hand site for writers when I kept getting questions from people asking how I find writing markets and where I sell my articles.

The second blog is a finance-related blog. I figured since I'm qualified to give financial advice, I could be helping people to survive and even thrive in these unstable economic times. It's only a few months old, but I'm slowly building content on it.

[Tammy]

I have two blogs. On one, I write about a variety of things that would be of interest to other people who are looking for entertaining and /or rewarding ways to spend their time online. It's mostly reviews about other websites that I just happen to run across on the internet in my spare time and that I feel are worth sharing. For example, games you can play for points, contests and funny readings. The other is my wordpress blog and is a part of a website that I am still creating. It is geared toward women and parenting and is basically just a blog to keep everyone informed of the happenings going on with the website.

[MichMomma]

I use Blogster and Blogger for my blogs. I usually just post my Associated Content articles on there but will through in a personal blog every now and then. I haven't been blogging that long so I'm still learning the ropes. I do enjoy writing and meeting new people.

[ferodynamics]

The second avatar is the self-hosted version. ( http://www.wordpress.org ). What you do here is download the script that you will have to unzip and upload to your own web-space on the internet. You'll need to have your own web-space and domain in order to use this version though. These are easily available for free online, but if you're only looking to create a beginner's blog, I suggest the first version.

As for me, I have my own website, and one section of it is the blog. For this, I've used Wordpress. The link ought to be visible to you in my profile. Lately, though, I've done some research and reached the conclusion that Wordpress is not necessarily the best software to use for a blog. It's quite heavy and can crash your web-server if you have too many people visiting it all at once or if you have a very popular site.

Yes, installing your own Wordpress is not for the meek, but there's a very large, helpful community, and it's free.  If you're not interested in PHP or XHTML, I'd say don't bother.  But if you know what you're doing you can push out a million pages per month without investing in a dedicated server, so it's not that heavy.  What slows you down is the fancy themes and plugins.   

[ferodynamics]

I found it interesting to do at first.  There is always a novelty value in beginning a new project, isn't there?  Perhaps I wasn't good enough at promoting it, as I didn't really get the amount of visitors that I'd hoped for.  In the end I decided that it was taking up too much time which I could use in better ways.  Maybe I'll try again one day. 

How do you all find ways to promote your blogs and increase your number of readers?

I know what you mean.  My advice is, at least keep the old content online, keep the registration renewed.  The older a site is, the more valuable it is, because older sites tend to have more links and are favored by the search engines. 

[ferodynamics]

The latest and most fun part is to see traffic increase!  Eight months and I'm pretty steady at approving comments now.  While before it was pretty dead.

If you get over 100 comments/day it's not as fun.  My secret to save time, I have Wordpress set to auto-approve all comments, but any comment that has any links or a "trigger" word will put that comment into moderation.  So you can take a week off and the good comments still flow in, and when you get around to it you can moderate the questionable ones. 

The problem with approving every comment, it can really make or break you.  Let's say a new hot trend emerges and you're an hour too late to approve the  game-changing comment that was in moderation, that means Google indexed the idea somewhere else, you miss out on millions of visits.  Happens every day.   

[purplesky]

I had a blog but did not have time for it as you need to change content at least three times a week plus a lot of promotion. I now have Squidoo cells, they are much less work, are free and take the same amount of promotion. For those of you who don't know a cell is really a website. There is a lot of free information out there on the internet on how to promote your blog written by experts and the better ones will tell you that if you make $500.00 in six months you are doing well and it will take about two years for the money to come in if you keep working at it.

[mywritingbiz]

I have set up Wordpress blog couple months ago,
it's all about internet business and stuff.
I make all posts on my blog as fun as possible.
So it would be not too boring for me to make
those posts.

Squidoo is one of my choice to make the promotion
for my blog. With all of  it's lenses, Squidoo is definitely
one of the many ways worth trying for.

[mytwocents]

I do have a blog of my own through Blogger. I do not update it regularly, rather I use it as a means to keep track of legitimate online opportunities in order to share them with others and to use as my own personal reference. I have a lot of respect for those who are dedicated to contributing, advertising and updating their blogs as I found it, personally, to be the only time I am ever at a loss for words.

[sayantan04]

I actually do happen to have a blog and I seldom write in it since I donot get anytime.It's mainly a work from home guide. I am writing it based on my own experiences. Its actually quite tough to get a blog successfully on air and get visits.

[slippers]

I actually enjoy writing, so over the past few years I've had a few blogs.

But the only one that I really kept up with is one I've started a year and a half ago, about traveling.

As I said that I enjoyed writing, filling up my blogs with content was never the hardest part. It was always the promotion; I've always had an easier time promoting my websites than blogs.

[tristanj]

I was about to create my blog page on some free blogsite. I am also planning to transfer my website of adult content into the blog type called Wordpress. I'm new to this kind of thing.

[Marius]

But the only one that I really kept up with is one I've started a year and a half ago, about traveling.

Would you mind revealing the address? Travelling seems to be our common hobby, and I wouldn't mind to take a look into your experience and visions:)

Personally I am not a big fan of blog-writing, as I prefer to sit with a glass of wine telling the stories to typing them by the shining screen, but... reading blogs is cool;)