Tell Me Something Tuesday was hosted by Rainy Day Ramblings, but she has (temporarily?) stopped blogging. So a group of us that had been doing posts (Linda from Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell, Karen from For What It’s Worth, Roberta from Offbeat YA, Jen from That’s What I’m Talking About and me) decided to get together, come up with some more topics and keep the meme going.Michelle made us a logo and we’re off and running. For more details, check out this post where I reintroduced the meme.
I can be sporadic, but when I do join in I will always share next week’s topic at the end of the post. So, today is about…
How do you measure blogging success? Followers, page views, interactions, etc.
This is such an interesting question because my feelings have changed so much in the 10 years I’ve been blogging. When I first started, it was about getting visitors and comments. I was into all the metrics, followers, page views, subscriptions, etc. If there was a number, I was tracking it.
Then it shifted to be about content. How many reviews was I putting up? Was I keeping up with ARCs? Was I GETTING ARCs? Did I have interesting posts that generated discussion and tweets? I also got really obsessed with my ability to keep up with comments.
The third shift was when I couldn’t keep up with any of the above and just was focused on COYER. If I could keep up with what I needed to do with COYER – forget having posts, forget commenting, etc, because I couldn’t keep up with any of that. This is about the time I started blogging here at Because Reading with Michelle, instead of going it solo on Fantasy is More Fun (may she RIP lol). I was THIS CLOSE to quitting. If Michelle hadn’t kept me afloat I would have disappeared.
And in the past few years it has shifted once again. Successful blogging now is doing what I enjoy. I like hosting COYER. I like reviewing books (my way, without lots of editing or worrying about having great turns of phrase). I like buddy reading. I like reading posts from all of you and I like commenting. I also like taking breaks and not stressing about it. If I’m enjoying blogging, blogging is a success. You can’t keep doing this for a decade plus (because that’s where Michelle and I are at!) if you don’t enjoy it. I don’t make money from it (nor would I want to), but I have made great friends, discovered great books, and take great pride in the amazing COYER I’ve co-created. So yeah, that’s my measure of success!
I can definitely relate to what you’re saying here. I was all into the stats and metrics at first as well. And now I am at a similar point as where you at, I want to enjoy blogging and count that as success. And I want to try and keep up with ARCs and review them in a timely manner were possible. I also try not to stress too much if life gets busy and I can’t read and review everything in time, but that can be tough. I don’t even keep up with much of the social media anymore like I did at first. Mostly I just focus on writing my reviews and sunday posts.
Yes, no stress ans enjoying it. This is the way
I like the comments and interaction that happens with other bloggers.
Your blogging success journey is a familiar one progressing to simply doing what you love.
That’s almost exactly my answer. It’s changed over time and now it’s just to have fun doing it.
Karen @For What It’s Worth
Yep!! I am with you on the desire just to enjoy what I do. Yes, I do it for me, but also for anyone who wants to read the reviews and enjoys talking about books.
Remember Google Followers… That was the measure back in the day!
Blogging is about the people and the community and of course, the books. I love COYER. I also have my own memes and things I host like Library Love, Thrifty Thursday and the Read-along. Oddly, I don’t have many subscribers to the blog even though I have readers and they are not following on Feedly, Bloglovin or WordPress either. Facebook is a pretty good crowd though. So I look at stats but only because publishers do when they are approving you.
For me is interaction. I love people commenting and I like TO comment. 🙂
“make” gah
“If I’m enjoying blogging, blogging is a success.”
💚
It was interesting to read about all your different phases, especially from the perspective of someone who also started blogging 10 years ago, but has always done it at her own pace and without making any serious effort to make her blog grow. (Yeah, I know I’m sort of a curiosity LOL). I do struggle with my posts (especially reviews) a lot because I want them to be the best that they can be, but that’s because I’m a perfectionist – not because that factors into being successful for me. Either than that, we have a similar approach to blogging – it has to makes us happy.