Day 90 Fast Approaching

I am approaching the 90th day since I started this whole blog thing. As I wrote in my very first post, I mostly got into this as a way to share pictures and recipes beyond the limits of my facebook account. There was also a little part of me though that was curious about the idea of blogging and the act/art of writing. I wasn’t sure the direction it would take or if I would enjoy it. Now that almost 90 days have gone by, I have to admit that it has turned out to be much more fun and interesting than I anticipated.

I have found blogging to be enjoyable on several levels – some expected, some unexpected. Just the process of writing is fun to me, always has been, but not having to do it for work or school takes it to a whole new level. The research is often an adventure, especially when it involves wine. I have not really altered what it is I cook, but I might take a little more time to plate so I can get a better looking photo. Also, I am a little more cognizant of taking photos during my travel. I don’t think I will be getting into photography, but capturing that just right shot does give me that winning feeling.

On the unexpected side, I didn’t realize how technical blogging could be. Coordinating it with my website and other social media, optimizing it for search engines, driving traffic, and all the little backend things have been very interesting to figure out. I had never heard of Reddit before – not sure what I think of it yet. Stumbleupon was a nice find, albeit a real time suck if you are not careful. I certainly did not anticipate the sense of community, maybe camaraderie is a better word, that exists within the blogosphere.

There are few things that have really surprised me and some that have left me scratching my head. For instance, I shared the readership by country in this picture above. When I started this, I assumed it would just be viewed by people in the US. I am pretty shocked at the breadth of countries represented here. Now that I see it though, it makes perfect sense- it is called the world wide web for a reason. But then it makes me wonder, 1.something billion people in China and not one person from there has read a single page? Is it censored? I can only speculate on the lack of readership from other countries, but I am intrigued as to what the reasons may be. Politics, culture, poverty, education? I would love to see the overall readership stats for all WordPress blogs.

Other random thoughts/stats…I had the highest traffic day and most all time views for my post on Foie Gras and it was mostly driven by Reddit. In fact, Reddit has driven more traffic than any other community, but it is a picky little site that doesn’t seem to like me submitting my own blog. Blog Catalogue has been 100% worthless and Diggit is a close second. I have some background in SEO so my expectations for search were low. Oddly, liver pate leads my keyword traffic. It makes me happy to think that someone out there, maybe in Qatar or Slovakia, is sauteing up some livers right now to make my rendition of pate. Hmmmm…maybe I should start an all things liver blog?

Tags: blogging, diggit, optimization, readership, recipes, reddit, SEO, social networking, stumbleupon, traffic, wordpress