Do you remember when you first started blogging? 
Although I don’t think about it often, I still do.
I was scared to hit “publish” the first few times, and I worried because I kept switching my theme.
I didn’t know any of the blogging terms either.
Being self taught, I spent most of my non-writing time searching for help, but even when I found help, I usually didn’t understand what to do with it.
I was pretty naive.
Today’s Lesson
When I think back to when I first started blogging, I didn’t have too many expectations except for thinking I could make lots of some money by having a blog.
- I wasted a lot of time signing up for affiliate networks and tweaking my Google AdSense ads.
- I didn’t know that without thousands of visitors a day, making a decent income from a blog was out of the question. When I figured it out (that I needed traffic to make money), I wasted time trying to get more traffic, too. Instead, I should have been learning more about SEO (search engine optimization) and spending less time looking for an “easy way”.
- I wanted comments. Little did I know I should have kicked the “If I build it, they will come” attitude and should have spent time visiting and commenting on other blogs.
- Although I worried about changing my theme so often, I should have realized without a steady stream of visitors, it really didn’t matter.
- I love numbers, so for me checking my statistics became a daily obsession. Instead of wasting time watching the numbers rise and fall, I should have spent time either writing and publishing or learning techniques which would take me closer to my goals.
- Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook can be fun, but they can also be addicting. Before signing up, I should have asked myself if the benefits of participating in social networking will outweigh the investment of my time.
Truth be told, I wasted a lot of time on blogging activities I should have postponed until later or maybe not even got involved in, but that’s in the past.
What about you?
Today’s Assignment
Looking back, if you had to do it all over again, where would you have spent more time?
Where would you have spent less time?
Care to share?
Hi. I'm Barbara Swafford and I'd like to welcome you to Blogging Without A Blog. Grab a seat, share your thoughts and join in the conversation. 
One of the biggest gripes bloggers have is how their visitors do not read their posts.
It’s maddening.
After all, we meticulously craft our posts, carefully choose each word, spend time adding SEO (search engine optimization), tags and the perfect picture(s), ensure we’re providing value, double check to see if the words are spelled correctly and are grammatically correct, only to find out our visitors are skimming.
Some visitors will even rat themselves out by leaving a comment which doesn’t make sense.
We know they didn’t read our words, but yet we enjoy those comments.
What’s a blogger to do?
Today’s Lesson
With many bloggers blogging part-time, writing posts for their blogs AND making time to visit other blogs can be challenging.
Time must be cut somewhere, so it’s often done while they’re reading/skimming the blog posts of others.
So, what can we do?
Accept it.
If we know our posts are being skimmed, why not make it easier for a visitor to do so?
Here are a few suggestions:
Take your reader’s time constraints into consideration and they may reward you with a comment.
Today’s Assignment
If you had a choice to have a visitor read your post or leave a comment, which would you choose?
Do you have any other tips on how a blogger can improve their chances of having their posts read in their entirety?
Care to share?