I used to have what I considered a cute expression that described my writing. This was before my wife got on Facebook. The expression was:
When I want to hide something from my wife, I post it on Facebook.
When I want to hide something from my family, I blog about it.
When I want to hide something from the world, I write it in a book and publish it.
Cute? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But accurate? Most assuredly.
The fact is my writing has never caught on. I could post here the number of books and stories I’ve published and the number of sales I have. But it’s depressing. If it weren’t for running a few Amazon ads, I’d have no sales at all. But at least I’ve had enough sales over the years to more than cover the cost of the ads and put me a few hundred dollars ahead.
But this blog was for the purpose of getting my name out there and hopefully drive people to want to buy my books.
Obviously, I’m doing something wrong. Writing the wrong kind of books, or not writing well, or not publicizing/advertising them correctly. It costs me close to $500 a year to maintain this website. Most of that ($440) is for a security service I put in place after the site was hacked, I think that was in 2018. I’ve had no problems since then, other than many, many spam comments to posts. It’s about 30 spam comments to each real comment.
So, do I keep the website and blog? I don’t really know at this point. It’s not serving any useful purpose, so why keep it? The world doesn’t need to know about my daily schedule or the occasional genealogical triumph. They don’t care about where I stand with my current book, what books are planned, what I’m reading and if I liked it or not.
So I’m seriously considering stopping the blog more or less immediately, and stopping the website after my security subscription runs out in January.
Stay tuned.
I would be interested in all those things. I didn’t remember that you had a blog or I would be following it.
I love your writing. Perhaps you should promote yourself a little more to gather a following. I loved the book about Luke’s assistant. Is that the name? I loaned my copy and never got it back. I’m thinking of buying another copy.
Show up on Face Book regularly with comments. I’m one to talk. I don’t self-promote enough. That’s going to change next week. We’re going on a trip. I plan to post often and hopefully drive readers to my blog. We’ll see.
Keep up the good I don’t work, David.
Bonnie:
I suspect the blog will be around a while, but with posts less frequently.
I hear ya. Several years ago, I got rid of my paid blog (my own domain) and mine now is just wordpress.com (the free part of wordpress). Even now, I wonder at times why I continue. For a time I was really into SEO and trying to write posts for traffic, etc. but the technology changes so fast that I think even that is outdated now. I enjoy reading your posts; you might want to do a free one? At least you wouldn’t have any monetary outlay, and it would give you a place to share your thoughts. I understand it would be a bummer to lose all you have here, though.
Susan:
I don’t think I’ll abandon the blog, but I’m for sure not going back to twice a week posting.
Hmmm…is this blog bringing you joy or causing you grief and irritation? Is it serving its original purpose? Can it serve a new purpose? Even if no one reads it (I’m pretty sure people are reading it), there is value in writing for just yourself or to order your thoughts or to provide structure to your day.
I have only read a few of your blog posts (because I am a neglectful friend – I’m sorry) but I hold that they have value and if they are something you enjoy doing, then keep it up. However, if you find it expensive and burdensome, take the opportunity to free your time for more enjoyable pursuits.
Have you tried different social media sites or whatever other programs and apps are out there for writers to publish? I don’t know anything about blogging, obviously, but there might be a way to get your work out there on a different platform. Notice I am using the words site, program, app, and media interchangeably because I don’t know what I’m talking about. Lol.
Donna:
All of the above at different times.