How to be a successful blogger

Are you wondering about what makes a successful  blogger? Someone who's blog gets noticed and read, and who manages to write those kind of posts that people want to leave a comment on and to connect with others? Well, so am I. And I'm afraid I can't give you any answers to these questions, because I haven't go a clue, really.

It's almost a year now since I started this blog. I've now written almost 200 posts, an there's an average of about 30 visits each day according to the statistics. I don't really know who reads my posts. A lot of those visitors seem to come via a Google search.

It's all about connecting. I don't seem to be very good at that. Admittedly, I find it often difficult to find the time to spend a considerable amount of time with reading and commenting on other people's blog. But I do try, and I've also made an effort to try and connect with a few artist/painter bloggers from an e-course I took, whose styles appeal to me and with whom I find it would be interesting to connect. The result so far is not very encouraging. None of them seems to have any interest to connect, at least not with me.

So I've been thinking quite a bit about my blog and why I'm doing it (I must admit I'm still not quite so sure about the why). After all, it does take a lot of time to write a post and to take and process the pictures to go with it. I've been thinking about quitting once or twice, because after all, a blog is meant to be shared with whoever is out there and if no one's interested, well what's the point? I can just as well write all this stuff into my personal art journal or diary. Well, if it wasn't for my Flickr/blogger friend Nigel from Finnesse Fotografic, who keeps visiting my little corner of the blog universe and leaving kind, funny, encouraging and inspiring comments, I might well have quit. Thank you, Nigel, I really appreciate it!

So I've decided not to give up, yet. I'm willing to give it another chance, and to try to improve both my blog and my efforts to connect with others. I'll try to set some time apart during the week and/or the weekend to read and comment on blogs I like, and I've also decided to sign up for an e-course (I'm getting quite addicted to those) about blogging and how to improve one's blog and blogging skills, Blogging Your Way. Because apart from the frustrations it sometimes causes me, I'm actually quite enjoying it.

The class starts tomorrow, but we've already received some preliminary informations and instructions for accessing the forum etc., and I've spent some time today going through it all. There are two things especially I already liked a lot about this class: 1. there's a PDF-download button for every class blog post. I'm one of those people who like to print out all information and put it into folders, so that's perfect. 2. there's a class outline, complete with boxes to tick off, spaces for notes, lists to fill in with your own priorities, progress etc. and templates for notes for blogs to read and connect with. I love lists, and ticking items on them off. So, it looks like it's a class to my liking, and I'm really looking forward to when it will start tomorrow. There'll even be homework! Yay! ;). I hope to pick up some tips and tricks for improvement, and hopefully, there's soon be some noticeable changes to this blog :).