This weekend has seen my blog site benefit from being featured on the wordpress homepage ,Freshly Pressed, it’s been incredible and the post Stock Market Gambling has generated much debate and comment.
I’ve seen my stats go through the roof, almost trebled in the space of 3 days and to be honest it’s been a very humbling experience.
Wow.....It's me!
At first, I thought that the post itself was responsible for the traffic and that I’d tapped into the topic of the day, ” this is it baby! “. Then I had a visit from another blogger by the name of Zach Machado, he asked me how it felt to featured on freshly pressed and then the penny dropped; I’ll be honest my heartbeat dropped a little too.
After realising that the attention was artificial and dealing with the deflation in ego, lol, I actually got down to making the most of the experience whilst it lasted. I’ve replied to nearly all of the comments posted and visited many blogs from the visitors, I’ve seen a modest increase in subscribers and to be honest it does make you think twice about what you’re going to post next……well just a little bit.
Frequent visitors, lol, will know what my style is like and I shan’t be changing my approach any time soon, it’s a ‘warts and all’ attitude over here.
Zach also prompted my own thoughts on blogging and what I get out of it. I’m new to blogging, 3 months approx. and I have been surprised how good and healthy the experience is. Therapy, education, socialising and stress busting are all benefits that I’ve enjoyed through blogging.
If you have something on your mind, it may be the cause of stress or sleep deprivation, writing things down is a good way to get it out of head and giving clarity to your thoughts.
Blogging is also great for me because it allows me to keep a detailed diary of my life and helps me process events and feelings; sharing these with others is liberating, receiving different perspectives and views can also help in life’s learnings.
I received an email from Joy at wordpress, an automated email I suspect, nevertheless I’ve asked her / wordpress what are the selection criteria for Freshly Pressed? No reply as yet, but I now think it must be random, if I do get an answer I’ll post it.
Anyway it’s been great timing, and thanks to my haemorrhage I’ve been overdosing on wordpress recently and this has lifted my spirits no end!
Question: What do you get out of blogging? Do you feel like I do?
I’d really like to know how others use their blogging experience in life.
Respect and Peace!
@dam
Good morning!
So glad you clarified that you aren’t going to change. lol
I’m in the same boat as you, I believe. I just started about three months ago. I’ve loved it. I truly thought I’d never blog. I think my first blog entry was that I had no idea what to write and didn’t know if I’d continue, but I was giving it a try. I couldn’t understand folks wanting to blurt their personal minutia all over the net, but now I get it. As you said, therapeutic, social, interesting. I’m totally enjoying this new bloggy business. I feel I’m getting more in touch with what’s going on in the world at large.
I saw your post on the gambling. I don’t know enough about it to even comment as I have never done it. I don’t even buy lottery tickets. I think it’s all a waste of time. lol But some of the comments were interesting, and some just plain nasty. lol I wondered how you were going to find the time to reply to them all!!!!
Blogging also tends to help me look at the bright side of life. I mean, who wants to read all sorts of negativity and whining, and being aware of what you are putting *out there* is an issue to some degree. As you said, I won’t change either… but I am a bit selective in my wording. lol
Have a great day, fellow blogger!
I have always liked writing and blogging is a way to express myself to the world. Just clicking that upload button and thinking this might make someone laugh or give them some help just feel really good!
Haha anyway good job!
C.
From
http://tehbigwebtheory.com/
Adam,
It’s funny, I used to always love writing and used it for therapeutic purposes – mostly with poems and short stories. Then I stopped because life got busy…marriage, new house, new job, first baby, etc., etc.
Well, life changed again – went downhill for a bit – and I was pushed hard by my wife and sister to start blogging. Initially I started telling stories of my experiences as a stay at home dad raising a baby girl while on disability (won’t get into that). I still blog about that every now and then on my other blog….but I felt like I had more to say about what is going on in the world and that is how my Create Your Own Luck blog started.
It is still therapeutic – as it gives me an “adult” outlet to “discuss” my opinions or feelings on different subjects (my 22 month old stares strangely at me if I try to talk to her about the effects of Social Media on advertising…and every other aspect of life. This is a release…and escape…and a place I can let the world know I still exist.
Cheers,
Zach
It’s important for parents to maintain their identity, it’s so easy to let the arrival of children to wash over you completely and it takes a few years before the balance is right!
I’d give my right arm to be a house husband, I’ve told my wife so many times, as much as I like work; I’d rather not lol.
Respect and Peace!
@dam
Well done, Adam.
First of all congratulations ^^
And for me it’s also mostly getting all those thoughts out of my head. I used to write them down for a long time but actually writing them down for a post involves a little bit more work. Research for example, but I get rewarded by people telling me what they think about it and asking questions. I am getting another point of view that way, which helps if I am stuck with my thoughts.
And I just love to see the stats and discover that someone linked to my blog and people clicked it. Seeing that there were 30 people on my site today just makes me happy.
I started a couple of years ago with blogging (in German back then) and mostly published my poems etc. and although I am rarely writing anything new over there, I still have about 2000 clicks per month and this always makes my day.
But with this “new” blog I also started to realize that it is a way for me to write about things that bug me about society and raise awareness for the problems I stumble upon every day. And I am a little more active when it comes to really thinking about stuff, because I feel like I have a “responsibility” to write something at least every couple of days.
And it’s a great way to communicate with people who have similar beliefs and views on life, reducing borders like location, age, language, gender, …
And it’s anonymous, as long as I don’t want anyone I know to read it the chance that they will find out about it is rather small.
“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.”
- William Saroyan
D
D – so funny! I click on that button a lot to see how many visitors, and who. And then I go see their blogs! lol Makes me happy, too.
What a beautiful blog you have. No wonder it was chosen. I’m going to show it to a friend of mine who runs a program for autistic children. Good luck and good writing!
Many thanks for your kind words of encouragement – I now feel more at ease in sharing our experiences with Jack, writing about things really helps me sort things out in my own mind and if it helps others make sense of their situation; then game on!
Respect and Peace!
@dam.
thans for great sharing
I had to laugh reading this. The same thing happened to me last week – suddenly my iPhone was going berserk with comments coming in and my stats went through the roof. And then, as you say, I discovered I had been featured on Freshly Pressed. Not that I was sad about it, and I even picked up a few new subscribers. But what is most interesting is looking at the stats and seeing the strange, and wonderful, places that are linking to my blog. Odd indeed.
Like you, writing is something I just have to do. To not write would be to leave things bottled up inside. It is my therapy, and a lot cheaper than going to a shrink!
Keep it up and I hope you make it back to the Freshly Pressed page some time in the future!
Peace!
It is great when you’re featured. I found the range of comments I received was the most interesting thing I took away from it, so many differing opinions at both ends of the spectrum and everything in between.
Also trying to reply to them was highly amusing. Not having much experience of comments beforehand, I didn’t always notice who the comments were meant for and sometimes replied to someone’s comments that were meant for a previous commenter; very confusing lol.
Before then I hardly looked at the freshly pressed but I pay it far more attention to it now.
It’s an amazing blogosphere out there with many talented writers and social commenter’s, it’s been hugely entertaining and educating and I’ve even started writing poetry!
Thanks for dropping by
Respect and Peace!
@dam
Ha… I think I got hit with that last week. lol
My hits were suddenly around 140 a day instead of the usual 30 – 50.
It was crazy! lol
I think we’ve all done that… replied to someone else’s reply to someone. lol It happens… plus the layout of these things.. you have to really look to see what’s going on with which message.
I think that your blog has tons of great stuff in it.
It was the first one I linked to when I entered they bloggy world. 
Have a marvelous day!
Thanks for the positive vibes T – I’m loving your thing too
Respect and Peace!
@dam.
Very Nice website. I built mine and i was looking for some ideas and you gave me a few. The website was developed by you?
Cheers
good stuff. Do you have a RSS feed? And also would it be cool if I put in your feed to a blog of mine? I have a website that pulls content by RSS feeds by a number of sites and I would like to add yours, many people really don’t mind since I link back and everything but I like to get approval first. Anyway let me know if you can, thank you.