Well, the month is almost at an end (tomorrow’s post will be my usual Weekly Wardrobe), so I thought I’d write a little review of what it has been like to write daily posts for Blogtober, and everything that I’ve learned from it as well as decisions for the future of my blog….
The easiest thing to do is break daily blogging down into pros and cons. Let’s start with the pros:
- I have really enjoyed myself! It has confirmed to me that blogging is something I’m very passionate about and would love to carry on doing in the foreseeable future.
- I have been able to fit in blogs that I’ve had simmering in my ideas notebook, or have been half written in my drafts folder for a long time. At last, I’ve more-or-less caught up!
- It has given me the excuse to focus a bit more on blogging. In other words I can say (to myself, if not other people), I can’t do that thing (like cleaning the kitchen surfaces) because I’m too busy doing Blogtober.
- It has proven that I could do it if I wanted to. The challenge is to blog every day, and I did it! Ok, it was by the skin of my teeth a couple of times – uploading a few minutes before midnight, but I still did it, and I’m proud of myself for that.
Cons:
- Time. There are not enough hours in the day. I started the Blogtober experiment in the hope that I would get faster at blogging. I honestly don’t think I have. One day I didn’t stop doing that day’s blog post until 3 in the afternoon. That was a post I particularly wanted to spend time on, but not that much time! However that’s only because of my next point:
- It isn’t financially viable for me at the moment. I’m perfectly happy to take until 3pm each day making sure my blog post is perfect if I am earning a living from it. My hope is that one day I will earn a minimum wage for the time I spend here, but alas, I’m not there yet. At this point in time my income comes from Oshun, and therefore I need to keep most of the hours in my working day devoted to that business.
- It turns out that I’m not very good at writing short posts! I try not to ramble, but I do find myself being thorough and detailed about whatever I’m writing about so naturally that takes time. On a busy day Chris would say to me, ‘Just write a short post today.’ And I’d look at him in despair because it seems impossible!
- My You Tube channel suffered – I only managed to get two videos uploaded this month, which is a shame because my friends and family managed to boost my subscription numbers recently so I could name my channel when I reached a hundred.
- Stress. There were some nights when I went to bed not having a clue what the next day’s blog was going to be about. Some people may find that free and liberating, but I just found it stressful! Insomnia came back towards the end of the month as ideas for posts whizzed round my mind and a couple of times I had to write a post at 2am before I could settle and sleep.
Conclusion:
I am definitely never going to blog at weekends. Even if I prepare a post and have it finished and scheduled to go live on Saturday morning, there is still the promotion for that post that needs to be done at the time, such as Twitter, Facebook and joining link-ups. Family comes first at the weekend, and I’m looking forward to reclaiming it back!
I did enjoy feeling like I had the option to write shorter blog posts, and the new series I started about adulting, proved popular. So along with my regular Weekly Wardrobe post on Mondays, and longer, more in-depth posts on Wednesdays and Fridays, I might slip in the odd short post on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays. I appreciate that you, my readers like to know when a post is going to happen, but I don’t want to commit to every weekday just yet – I’d rather see how it goes. Actually, if you have time, please let me know in the comments how you read your favourite blogs. Do you go to them on the days you know they post? Do you randomly go when you spot a mention of one in a facebook group or on your Bloglovin feed? Or do you go once a week and catch up on all the blogs they’ve written recently? How long do you prefer blog posts to be? I’d love to know!
Thank you for sticking with me through Blogtober; I really hope you’ve enjoyed it. 🙂