Post 600 and Still Going

Welcome to my 600th blog post. Most of the time you are reading posts that I have written a week or two ago. I write several posts at a time and save them for posting each day, unless I choose to post something about a timely or time-sensitive topic.

Having been in the blogosphere for almost (but not quite) two years, here are some things that I have learned:

• In order to keep people coming back, you need to post fairly often. Perhaps not every day, but certainly more often than once a month or less.

• 80% of blog visitors come from Google searches, so choosing the topic title is important -- that's what Google indexes on first.

• Most of my blog visitors continue to find my site by using a search engine, rather than bookmark the URL. I think bookmarking is a relic of the web 1.0 times and only us old codgers remember how to do that.

• I am happy to say that at least 100 of my daily visitors have used the "Google friend connect" feature, and come visit this blog that way.

• Most blog visitors read the day's message then surf on. Unlike websites, blog readers read one page and leave, while website visitors may surf around much more on the site.

• Images posted on blogs rank high on search engine image searches. Post a photo of yourself, and within hours, it will appear in an image search. Lesson, then, is to be careful with the file name of the photo. If, for example, you don't want your name revealed, then don't use your name as a file name for a photo.

• People who know you will find your blog, even if you don't tell them about it. I see my neighbors in my home town, and in Rockville, Potomac, Gaithersburg, and Germantown, visit my blog (and website) regularly.

• You can't keep your family from joining in and making comments (snicker)

• People who are gay and are open about it on a blog (as I am) may occasionally suffer the consequences of someone who has stereotypical misperceptions about gay people try to post rude, snarky, dumb-ass, inappropriate comments. Two lesson from this: a) you have to set the commenting up for approval before publishing (a feature blogger offers); and b) you have to establish an anonymous commenting policy.

• For a personal blog, if you do not have much time to manage comments and deal with criticism, then don't talk about politics or religion.

• Blogger is not all "wysiwyg" -- it really helps if you know HTML so you can fix persistent errors with formatting and specific placement of photos if there is more than one photo within a blog post.

• Blogging can be a great experience, can serve as a catharsis sometimes, and can be fun. When it stops being fun and seems like a drudge and you choose to stop blogging, then take down the blog so it doesn't keep coming back to others in internet searches.

• I do not know if this is true about all blogs, but I have observed that for this U.S.-based blog, more than half of my some 500 daily visitors are from Europe and Australia, with a few from Hong Kong and Japan. None are from China (because China blocks access to anything on blogspot within mainland China).

• I wish to thank my fellow blogger, Straightjacketed, for linking from his 'Straight-Acting' blog to mine -- he wins the prize for "delivering" the most visitors from another blog link.

In calendar year 2009, I have posted something on this blog each day. I have posted twice on a few days. Mostly, though, I have settled into a daily routine.

I hope you, my visitors, find my blog posts interesting, entertaining, or at least mildly amusing. Thanks for joining me here in the blogosphere. Remember to keep smiling, and surf on!

Life is short: keep blogging!