Building a Blog In Real Time: Update 2

Photo by Carsten Mueller

As of the date of publish, this blog will be 19 days old.  During that time, I have learned A LOT, and a lot has happened.  So, without further ado, let me give you the update!

The Good Stuff

Lots of good things have been happening around here.  I’m fond of lists, so let’s just list them!

• As of August 31, 2010, there have been 74 visitors to my blog.  74 visitors and 165 page views!  This is rather remarkable, at least to me it is.  I’m wondering how much I skewed the numbers, though.  Before I found out that you can see how the blog looks though wordpress I visited several times.  Several times, but not 74!  Anyway I hope that didn’t skew the number too badly.
• I posted in my first and second blog carnivals.  On Monday, I joined in Not Me! Monday over at MkMama’s site, and then I joined in with Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.  I think that this has been the reason for the uptick in traffic, because it has all been since Monday, really.
• Because of Not me! Monday, I got my first commenter who isn’t related to me!  Thank you to Ramblings of a Woman for being my first un-related commenter.  DH was my real first commenter, and I thank him for supporting his wife’s crazy endeavor.
• When I was visiting the blog one time, I clicked over to the about page and noticed that it was the standard wordpress “you-need-to-edit-me” page.  So, I edited my about page, and I even remembered to include some contact information.
• I figured out how to use feedburner for e-mail subscriptions!  You can now enter your e-mail address in the box on the right, and you will receive free content as often as I post. 

Some Problems

Of course, everything hasn’t been teddy bears and rose petals.  After all, starting a blog is a lot of work, and I have run into some roadblocks:

• I signed up for google webmaster (basically, I told google that the blog exists), but I don’t know if it worked because some of the tracking information that I am supposed to receive is not registering.  I’m not sure if I did something wrong, or if I just haven’t waited long enough.  I think that I am going to wait a little longer before I look into it.  When I was trying to use the help feature last night, they said that it could take up to a month for the stats to show.  So, I’ll wait the allotted month.
• There are some little tweaks that need to be made to the blog appearance-wise.  I need to re-name the blog roll (by the way, does anyone know the etiquette for putting someone on your blog roll?  Do you have to notify the owner of the blog?),  and I’d like to tweak some other things, but I’m thinking that not knowing HTML is going to pose a big problem.
• I’m still having trouble with monetization.  I don’t feel like I know enough about it to start, but I don’t want that to turn into an excuse that holds me back.  So, I’m still very undecided about that.
• I’m having a time management problem.  I’m having a hard time with budgeting time for the blog and everything else.  Everything else is still getting done, but I’m sure that I need a new schedule.  I could use some advice here from the seasoned bloggers out there.  I’m sure that this topic will turn into a post when I get it figured out.

Other Updates

And then there are some odds and ends that are neither good nor bad, but you should know about them:

• I decided to put off the HTML class at the local community college until the spring semester.  I want to see if this blog is going to make it worth my time and effort before I just jump in.
• I need to make goals for the blog.  When I was looking at google analytics, it occurred to me that I have none.  So, I will make some and then let you know.
• Thankfully, I have many ideas for blog posts, and they should lead to other ideas.  So, that is really going well.

Well, there it is.  That’s the update for now.  Happy reading!

Related posts:

1. Building a Blog in Real Time: Update 1