Reflections on blogging - year two.

On Halloween night I completed my second unofficial year of blogging.  I  say unofficial because my first real post happened on November 6th, not November 1st. Although to be honest, I'd been emailing friends about the 2008 election for a few months and some of my thoughts ended up in my first few posts.  Come to think of it, I did start working on the layout etc. earlier than my first post.  Probably around the 1st of November. Anyway, it's an easy day to remember and close enough to exact.

Upon reviewing things I've noticed some interesting year over year comparisons.  My second year appears to have suffered from the sophomore jinx, or else it really just was a year of crummy posts.  While the number of posts dropped to 87.9% in year two versus what it was in year one, the amount of visits to my blog dropped to 69.8% of what it had achieved in my first year.  After 3 months of blogging I thought that blogs just took off naturally.  My first real visitors started showing up in very late November but by March 26th, 2009 I had gotten up to over 400 visitors in one day.  That was an apex, not to mention a delusional impression on my part.

Along the way I've exchanged an email or two with someone you might recognize from RealClearPolitics and a couple of someones from HotAir.  Oh, and also Kevin Jackson from the Black Sphere.  I've exchanged tweets with Kelsey Grammar, and been retweeted by Jim Geraghty from National Review. I've also been contacted briefly on Twitter by a couple of conservative Congressional candidates.  In fact I've noticed that some of my posts were visited from a server in the U.S. Congress building. Seriously.  I've made it onto a podcast from LaidoffPodcast / 2 Dumb Kids.  I also volunteered and did some Get Out The Vote calling for Scott Brown when it looked like he was THE filibuster guy on health care reform.  And in the true spirit of American entrepreneurialism I've managed to make all of about $60 from Google.

Not bad for a Canadian middle-aged guy with no journalism training, just  a passion for America and conservative politics.  Some day I'd love to be an American, and some day I'd love to blog as a full time job.  They say a blog takes three years to become a success or a failure.  I don't see it that way - if I'm not a world famous uber-rich blogger by next year I won't quit.  It's too much fun.  I get to share my opinions and read opinions of other bloggers whom I respect and admire, and I get an occasional hint of almost recognition. The fact that I have to squeeze in posting between work and my home life isn't really that big of a deal.  Yeah, it can be a pain and at times difficult to get to for a day or two, but it's not a chore  99.9% of the time.  In the end the greatest reward is getting someone to look at things in a different way, and perhaps influence their point of view or at least consider things from a different perspective.

Having said all that, a donation or a click on an add or two wouldn't hurt...  Just kidding.  But not really...  ;-)