Steve’s Media Blog

I think my initial plan for this blog was to get noticed on a regional (if not national) scale, and have a popular blog that a lot of people read.  Well, I think I have a fair share of readers if I believe WordPress’ statistics, but I’m fairly certain no one links to this blog beyond myself.

But I’ve been reading a few articles here and there about blogging in general and did some thinking based on my own experiences in the last few months.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

– It’s great if I can get people to read this, but I’m not going to worry about that as my main focus.  I’m just going to write what I write, on my own schedule.  I don’t have time to do regular updates anymore.

– I’m putting less focus on other blogs that I’ve started.  In fact I deleted a bunch of them just now.  I’m still going to keep my Stargate Universe blog because it’s so specific, but it’s on hold until that show launches in Canada.  I have a separate movie review blog that I started before this one, but I’ve never really updated that one on a regular basis in the first place.

– In summary, I’m not in the market to try and monetize blogs or make money online anymore.  I have other things I need to focus on without having to worry about blogs.

I’ll still be writing, so if you enjoy the blog, please keep reading! :)

I am thinking about setting up another blog seperate from this one in order to showcase my writing.  In essence, a freelance blog to sell myself.  What I need to figure out is what blog service to use; and I hope nobody from WordPress yells at me for mentioning Blogger.

To cover off the very basics, I understand that it’s a matter of where I have accounts.  I already have a WordPress account, and another blog on here (I don’t actively promote that one though).  It would be simple to start a new blog.  But I also have a google account / blogger account, so starting a blog there is trivial as well.

I particularly like the stat tracking feature on WordPress, and I know that there is a lack of such a feature on Blogger.  But Google has Google Analytics, and I’m sure you can insert that somewhere on your blog.  Plus you can do a lot with Blogger, such as monetize it, whereas you need to host your own WordPress blog to put ads on.

Does anyone have any insight as to what service is the best to use for a freelance writing site?  My expectations are as follows:

All I want is to set up separate pages; one as a landing page, another with “practice” writing for various projects that I don’t usually write, and another with some samples of work I’ve been paid for.

I’m sure both services do these things equally well, but I don’t know which is “best”.  Suggestions?  Comments?

Before you continue reading my post, I just wanted to say that I delayed the scheduling of this post as long as possible because I have a difficult decision to make at the end of the entry.

When I started this blog, 100 posts ago, it was originally based on my little notebook for discovering what music to pick up.  As I wrote, I eventually discovered that I felt like writing more than just about music, but media as well.  Hence, “Steve’s Media Blog”.

I’ve made an effort to keep music an important part to this blog, mostly by keeping a music-central theme and posting free music every Friday.  I think I’ve done a good job with that, with only mid-December as being a bit of an off-period (because of a vacation).

I just wanted to point out some statistics before I get to my difficult decision.  Here are my top 5 all-time posts to date, based on amount of views:

• Friday Morning Free Music: American Eagle – 772 views
• More Free Music and Dr. Pepper Fallout – 514 views
• Diamonds from Tequila?  Who Knew?? – 322 views
• Free Stickers! – 232 views
• Friday Morning Free Music #3: Oprah’s Christmas Mix – 36 views

The first four out-perform every article here, mostly because of image search results (and a link from Google’s blog for the Free Stickers).  Generally I assume that numbers like 36 views paint a more realistic picture of regular visitors to my blog.

However, I’ve seen my blog rise steadily in average viewers since the start, and to date I’ve had 4,009 viewers.  Not too shabby, if I may say so!

Now on to my decision.  I’ve looked at my recent posts, and compared them to the various blogs that I follow.  My posts recently have essentially been link posts with no real substance.  Which is fine, but I’m trying to pass this blog off as something I actually write in.   I do that when I have a review, but lately I haven’t had much time to listen to the music that I want to review.

So the way I see it, I have a few options:

1. Keep writing in this blog, but veer away from link posts – or write more of an opinion around them.
2. Stop writing in the blog.  Leave it at 100 posts, and move on to something else.
3. Keep the blog as is, while starting a new project separate from this.

Right now I’m really leaning towards #2.  But when I consider the amount of work I’ve put into this blog in getting people to at the very least read it, it saddens me to think that I’ve wasted all of it.

So I’m going to do a combination of #1 and #3.  I’m going to keep writing in this blog, but I may start a separate blog somewhere else with another topic.  Please use the comments on this blog for future posts and give me some feedback on my entries.  I need to know when I’m being lazy and when I’m putting some real thought into this blog.

Don’t really have a post today beyond “metablogging” but here we go anyway.  It affects you if you read this blog, so it’s probably some useful information.

I’m going to put some more structure into the blog; already I’m giving you Friday Morning Free Music every Friday, so I thought I’d add some more “special” days to the week.  To go along with Friday Morning Free Music, I’m going to make Thursdays my day for music reviews.  That’s the minimum anyway.  On Thursdays, the first thing I’ll do before anything else is review some music.  Note that it does not have to be new music but it’s new to me.

That’s all that I could put together for now, but that seems to be enough for me.  The rest of the week (Monday-Wednesday) will be a mixed bag of interesting links, media-related stories, etc. while Thursday and Friday will be devoted to music.  I like the way that works.

I’ve got a few links to talk about but I’m going to have to put those off until tomorrow.  I’m busy working at the moment (shh, don’t tell them about this blog)!