As all of you probably know by now, I recently made the move from WordPress.com to my own domain name. I did this because I felt I’d taken my blog as far as I could on WordPress and wanted to expand it into new territory.
Now I’m searching for a new level for my blog. I’ve moved to my own domain, and I have enough visitors to receive ARCs and review copies of books from publishers (which is AWESOME!)… but what next?
What are your blogging goals?
Is meeting those goals a measure of success for you?
Or do you measure your success in other ways – stats, comments etc.
Words Read & Written 
I measure blog success by visitor interaction. If someone visits and leaves a comment because they find something interesting or like a post, then I consider that a success. I started my blog as a way to share work and start conversations, so that is what is most important to me 🙂
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When I first started blogging I was obsessed with the stats. Constantly checking them. Wondering why I didn’t have more. Wonder how I got so many views on certain posts: was it content, the time of day, writing vs art?
Now, though, I measure my success on my contribution to my blog. I write a short story a day, 5 days a week. If I succeed in that, I’m happy. I finally found happiness in my content, instead of how many people saw it.
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I agree with Logan. Initially, it made a big difference to me whether people visited, liked and commented. Now, I am content to write it as a blog to myself, with others welcome to read it as well. It’s easy to take a cynical approach as a blogger: did that person just like my post or follow my blog so that I would visit their site and like or follow them? I realized that if 2 or 200 people click through my site daily, I still like having a record of my thoughts that I can go back to months and years later. The advantage a blog has over a journal (which would otherwise serve the same purpose), is that I would probably not worry about the cosmetic appearance of my journal at all, whereas I have some incentive (real or imagined) to make my blog posts look good, read well, and be of interest to someone other than myself.
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My goal in blogging is just to write about whatever comes to mind. Sometimes, it gets a lot of hits and comments, but oftentimes, it just gets read with maybe a few likes. I write for myself, and when others like it, it is icing on the cake.
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I don’t really use goals per se, I just know what I should focus on and focus on it as hard as I can. I measure success as continuous growth that sufficiently rewards the effort put in. Whether that’s more followers, more average views per day, more likes, etc. It’s like a state of being, rather than a specific point or event.
Yikes. I just said that success is a state of being. Pretty cliche.
But seriously, I don’t use goals. They stress me out. The only goal I ever have is when my blog stops growing, which is “get the blog growing again”. Other than that, I don’t really operate on a specific time-frame. Not that I need to, because my blog is growing pretty fast.
Cheers on getting your own domain! I’ll be doing that someday soon.
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Right now, my writing goals relate more to my memoir than my blog. I am trying to inject passion/feeling into a time that was extremely difficult and therefore hard to write about. So far, my writing has been flat. I need it to pop.
Thanks for the explanation on how getting books sent to you by publishers. That’s awesome.
Fondly,
Elizabeth
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You are amazing, already ready to jump to next level. My goal if there is one, is to make myself known to my future grandchildren if they ever become curious to who their grandmother was outside of being grandma. 🙂
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I don’t dare measure my blog’s success by comments. I don’t get enough of them. I choose to measure instead by things like whether I get interesting terms in the search queries that bring people to me. Those sometimes happen.
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I, like everyone who’s already commented don’t judge my blog by stats. I don’t judge it by any measure or standard actually. It is a place where I have a commitment to write something of value each time I post. whether it’s a cute pic of Widdercat or a rant about gender discrimination, or what I’m planning to write next. That’s about it.
What did you find wanting that prompted you to move from WP.com? Define,’new territory’? Why do you come to your computer and compose a post? What are your goals as a writer, and how does this blog fit into them?
Maybe your next step is somewhere inside your answers.
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My goal with my blog is to end up somewhat where you are. I want people to look to me for book reviews and send me ARCs. I’m actually super jealous of you right now. lol I have often considered moving to my own domain, but I don’t have enough readers for it to be a necessity at the moment. Congrats on the domain and the success. 🙂
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soooo…..what’s an ARC? And don’t give me any answers that include the word “cubit.”
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ARC stands for Advanced Review Copy. It’s where a publisher will send you a copy of a book before it’s available to the public)
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I suppose I could have figured that out, if I’d put my mind to it. Damn internet, conditioning me to seek instead of think. Ha!
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Success is so ambiguous that I refuse to even think about it concerning my blog these days. My blog is two parts catharsis and one part educational. I write because I have to. I blog because I have to. Final answer.
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When I first started blogging, I had wild dreams of making a lot of money and using the blog to launch a writing career. I had hoped to attract millions of hits every single day.
While these goals have not entirely gone away, my current goals are much more modest. I write 4 blogs. One is about hobbies, one is to help my students with English, one is to rant, and one is most therapeutic. The English one and the therapeutic one get the most visitors. This tells me that things that help are going to be more popular. The good thing is that they both help me too. One is making me a better teacher while the other one is making me a better me.
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Stats are nice. Love ’em. For me, however, success is keeping the entries coming on schedule and making connections with readers and other writers.
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I have no goals for my blog. If the random person wants to comment or make suggestions, that’s fine. All the better, really, but I’m not going out of my way to increase followers.
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Yikes! Stats! I can’t even think about stats. I do my best to help couples with their relationships. And if I can get just one comment it’s all worth it.
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My blog consumes my time (and me!) and threatens my writing, rather than supports it. I’m working to correct the balance so that I can refocus on my writing, but for some reason it doesn’t want to be tamed!
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I base it on how often I can jot down what feels like a complete thought, and not writing just to write. Having people respond is also a big thing, especially when I ask for advice. Crickets chirping at that point is a bit of a downer. I used to look primarily at stats, but then I realize there’s so many factors that go into if my blog is seen or not that stat surges are a nice surprise rather than a goal.
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My goal has changed, I’m not even sure I have one anymore. What started out as a way to force myself to make art every day has become a place to “talk out loud”. Job loss and many life changes in the last year have turned my life upside down. My blog has become the story of my journey. I’m trying to work my way back to art, to a “normal” life, and a new beginning.
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Ultimately I would like to move my blog to its own domain name and add/improve features especially related to me as an author. Currently due to limited time, I enjoy watching my blog grow blog in response, although stats are not a concern for me at this time. As a fairly new blogger, I am still discovering which way I want my blog and someday website to go 🙂
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I think this is such an interesting question. I began my blog because I was told to “create an online presence” and “generate followers” so that when my novel came out, viola! I’d have buyers. Over the years, that has fallen completely by the wayside. For one thing, I’ve noticed this strategy often doesn’t work, even for very successful bloggers—followers do not necessarily buy books. More fundamentally, though, my writing fairly quickly did what it does: takes over. I write what I want to write. And when anyone at all comments that what I’ve written touched them, I consider that a success.
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