Two PF blogs going away
Money 4 a Mass of 1, a fairly new blog, announced that he will be shutting down. The Useless Tree announced last Friday that he'll be doing the same, albeit for happier reasons than the former. I just found both of them and am sorry to see them go.
I have to say that I've sometimes felt a bit like M4aMo1. I think that's why I don't actively seek more traffic. I believe I've only asked one person to trade links. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely flattered that anyone links to me at all. But, if I were to go out and drum up traffic, the pressure would be on to provide really "useful" content. I don't think I'm being unnecessarily hard on myself when I say my blog isn't particularly useful, but it's been entertaining for me and if people like to read it, that's wonderful.
My response to JLP's Question of the Day (Do you look at other bloggers' stats?) is related to what I've said above. I said I sometimes went a few days without looking at my own stats, much less other bloggers'. What I didn't say on his page was that I sometimes find it embarrassing to look at my own stats. If I've written a blog entry I don't feel particularly proud of (and that happens fairly often), seeing my stats only make it worse because it's proof that people have read it! (I've actually felt my face get hot when looking at my stats!)
Despite what I've said, having my blog has been more fun than anything, and I'm happy to be a part of the PF blog community, however much of a satellite my blog happens to be. If I ever do take it down, I'll stay active in the community by reading other blogs and commenting in them. I hope the owners of the blogs above do the same.
posted by SMB @ 5:33 PM
5 Comments:
If you're not blogging for yourself, then it's not really worth doing because eventually your motivations will be all wrong and you'll burn out. I'm glad you continue to write. :-)
I think that the best way to get some publicity is to shut down your blog.
Thanks, mapgirl! I do find the anonymous nature of this blog works better for me. I used to have a personal blog with my name all over it, pictures, the whole bit. I'd see in my stats that some people were getting to it by googling me (I was even able to identify one as a detested ex)!
Once I got over that mild shock I realized that it was having an effect on my writing--somewhere in my brain I was thinking of how I wanted to portray myself. I still do it here, to a degree, and I've wondered if it's not just human nature. Even if that's so, I do it to a much less degree when I'm anonymous.
Well being, there is a part of me that agrees with you. In the case of M4aMo1 (that's surprisingly hard to type), I think he just found blogging wasn't for him. In one of his earlier posts, he talks about being a wallflower (and wishing he wasn't). Maybe he just had a bad day; who knows.
I hear you about the embarrassment factor. My blog is anonymous, altho I'm not very good at omitting telling personal details. If somebody who knows me ever happened upon it, the gig would be up pretty quickly. I suspect at least one co-worker has found it but he hasn't said anything to me about it.
I find that when I write a post that's really personal and difficult for me to write, that's the post that gets tons of comments and people link to it from their own blogs. It's always when I regret posting, and think about taking a post down, that everybody else seems to be taken with it and it gets plastered everywhere. I recently wrote about comparing myself to other people. Afterwards I was mortified that I'd posted about that. But I know of at least 3 people who have responded to that on their own blogs.
I may get tired of the baring-my-soul-to-the-world thing eventually, and I don't seem to be able to write a strictly informative impersonal blog. So I may take it down at some point, probably around the time the first person who knows me offline discovers it! Or maybe when my only paid sponsor's contract runs out in Fall 06.
I for one love your blog and hope you keep it up after you move, change professions, etc. It will be fun to read about those changes. Also, I know you're in nonprofit/education too and so I feel like we're working with the same financial challenges.
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