Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard people say it with no matter what skill that once you do something a thousand times this will make you master that particular skill. As I’ve reached the first 500 entries submitted to Slevi I suppose that this would make me… half a master? I have to admit that when [...]
Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard people say it with no matter what skill that once you do something a thousand times this will make you master that particular skill. As I’ve reached the first 500 entries submitted to Slevi I suppose that this would make me… half a master?
I have to admit that when I started off with this blog I could never have imagined that I would ever even reach a figure of around 100 entries, let stand the 500 which I’ve reached today. By far this is definitely my longest lasting piece on the web and there’s definitely not a reason which I could come up with to stop anytime soon so who knows, perhaps one day I might even reach the first 4 figure entry, entry number 1.000.
Since my first days of blogging with Slevi, or DigiRev as it was actually called back in the early months, there’s been a lot which I’ve learned. Whereas my entries started off short, usually no longer than probably 2 small paragraphs, and frequent I have reduced my posting frequency a bit and instead writing longer posts at once.
Whether this is a better approach or not I’ll not judge, since after all it is what both the blogger and their readers prefer but in my case I have to say that for myself this feels more natural, it feels more me. Just spamming my blog full with short incoherent messages isn’t my thing I suppose you could say.
So what is my thing? Well, we’ve come 500 entries later by now and I suppose there’s just one box where you can truly shove this blog in, namely “personal”. I’ve never really let myself be guided by a certain niche, even though there have been periods in which certain aspects have been more prone than others it definitely has never really taken over the general style of this blog which simply is the reflection of my interests, my thoughts and my dislikes at that point in time.
For me that’s what makes it even more interesting since it opens up a backlog to my own life within the nearly past 2 years and probably for the many more years to come as well. Rather than spending my time writing on those things which hundreds of others write about as well trying to make an easy buck on the net and hoping to launch the next best problogger I’ve put a little bit of me on the net, a thing which on itself is totally unique and there to stay.
There’s a lot more which I’ve learned through all of this though since a blog is more than just a place in which new entries simply magically appear. One of those things for example is my English writing, I must admit that even on high school or before that my English skills have always been pretty solid but writing has never been one of my strongest points; even in my native language that’s something which got reflected in my grades quite well. Because of writing hundreds of entries though, which has literally been hundreds of thousands of words, it has greatly improved and enabled me to write texts much more fluently and quicker these days. Saying that writing goes even more natural than speaking these days wouldn’t even be that far from the truth I’d say.
Playing around with the design of Slevi has taught my quite a bit as well, from going more in depth into CSS or playing around with Photoshop it are skills which since I started working on this blog have all greatly improved. As through design you want to leave a certain impression on your readers it’s hard to really go around it I must say, and even though at times it drives you crazy when things don’t work out as you desire I have definitely learned a lot in the process.
Because my writing habits have greatly changed since the early days it’s probably going to take quite a while before I reach my 1.000th entry, but I suppose that about 3 or 4 years from now we’ll be seeing that glorious day happening and I hope that I’ll be able to say I’ve learned yet again much more by then.
Mar 15 at 9:02 pm
Comment: #1
Hey man, I’ve been firing up my blog lately and my current goal is to do one post a day for a year, which would bring me to about 360, just under your 500 mark here. I’m curious what your results have been looking back on it now. Not only in terms of cold hard cash - I know you mentioned you decided early on that it was not just about the $ but personal - but also things like relationships you’ve built with other people online, networking, that kind of thing. What would you say the sum total value of your 500 blog posts is?
Thanks!
Mar 23 at 2:38 pm
Comment: #2
In the forms of cash I must say that I do have made some profit of course, but it’s definitely not much especially since the lot comes in USD currency which is becoming more and more worthless with the day. Substracting my hosting costs from what I’ve made so far I think I’m on a figure of around 400 USD within the past 2 years, definitely not something to write home about I’d say.
Especially since soon I’m going to have to renew my hosting and that’ll take off about another 100 USD from there.
On terms of relationships well it’s a bit of a weird story since it tends to jump around with my personal interests. Within the blogosphere you usually tend to see similar bloggers come together a bit, but as there is no real niche going around on my blog many people just find their place here temporarily as long as what interests them is being written and move a bit to the distance once my subjects change.
Because I write for myself though rather than the pure entertainment of others that’s something which can’t really be gone around.