It’s this blog’s 16th anniversary. (Actually, it was last Friday I believe, but nothing can stand in the way of FQ’s.)
I started the blog to draw some attention to myself so I could get an editor to publish my travel book. One said, “Very funny and if you were Dave Barry I’d buy this in a minute. But no one knows who the hell you are.”
I explored getting a PR person but that idea was quickly abandoned when I saw what they charged.
Publicity from a blog was free — except the work involved in writing and maintaining it.
Doing a blog and having no readers is a fool’s errand so I was very interested in ways to grow my readership. I contacted several successful bloggers and sought advice. One said write something new every day. If people know there’s always new material they’ll keep coming back. So I did that. Another suggested a weekly feature that people could count on. Thus Friday Questions was born.
It also helped that at the time blogs were the rage. I was in the Zeitgeist for a minute and a half.
I had no idea when I started this that I’d still be doing it 16 years later. Practically everyone else who was blogging when I started have long since closed theirs down.
How long will I keep going? I don’t know. I’ve had my podcast for five years now and that’s still in the Zeitgeist (for the moment). I’m a little disappointed that more of my readers don’t listen to the podcast. But I get it. There’s only so much of “me” I can expect anyone to take. That said, if I’m going to drop one it’ll be the blog. I very much enjoy doing the podcast and that audience is growing (from other sources).
I also vowed not to junk up the blog with ads. Even though I never really monetized this venture, it wasn’t worth the few hundred dollars to fill the page with cheesy ads. So this blog was truly a labor of love.
We’ll see how it goes from here. For my ten year anniversary I had a big party. For sixteen I ate leftover turkey. What keeps me going is you and knowing you’re still out there. Over 40,000,000 hit so far. I’ve made some lifelong friends because of the blog and it’s nice to know there are people I’ve never met who, for some inexplicable reason, care to hear what I have to say. So thank you. Onwards and sidewards.
Oh, and did starting a blog work? I ended by self-publishing that travel book.
Ken
from By Ken Levine
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