DOES A BLOG REALLY DO ANY GOOD?

On one of the forums I participate in, someone asked the question about the value of a blog. Apparently, she’s not gained any spectacular results from hers. I’ve had Fred Central going since 2012, and I can attest to that in many ways. My results have been less that spectacular compared to some, and I don’t mind saying so.

You may wonder why I don’t just give up. Why do I spend the $26 a year to keep loading this site with more and more info that relatively few people ever bother to look at? Others seem to put little effort into their sites and get thousands of hits a day.

Several reasons.

I don’t give up easily.

I love to write.

I just don’t give a crap about the numbers.

I HAVE had some positive results in all this effort and that’s all that matters to me.

HAS ALL THIS HELPED SELL MY BOOKS?

The main purpose of a web site isn’t necessarily to sell your books as much as to be a central clearing house for information on you, your books and what’s going on. Maybe in the good old days the web site might’ve been the go-to place for the author. However, with the advent of social media, it seems like web sites have gone out of fashion. Sites like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram get much more media scrutiny, as well as other marketing tools.

I can’t swear that my web site has helped me sell any of my books. Not a one. Maybe, but you couldn’t put me on the stand and have me swear to it.

On the other hand, even though my marketing on Facebook seems to have, for the most part, been a dismal failure, I have at least verified some results from that. I’ve verified sales.

I have pages on my site for each of my books. To help market them, I post a weekly snippet about each one, leaving a link on their Facebook page drawing them here. Maybe people read them, maybe not. My stats don’t show either way, at least so far.

SO, WHY DO I DO IT?

Way back when, the technology and the media was different. Every author was encouraged to develop a web site and a blog. That still holds today, but the emphasis on their use might’ve shifted a bit. Some authors don’t have web sites anymore, and just have social media. Others are old school, have no social media at all, and go for a blog. Others have no internet presence at all, and seem to do just fine.

Me, being of the relatively late fledgling internet crowd, as I call it, developed my Word Press web site, and decided to make it multi-purpose. I wanted something I could use for all my different genre books, and also use for my other interests. It would be a central location for my hobbies as well.

A funny thing happened along the way. Over the years, I’ve found my hits on the web site have varied from specific articles on my blog, to my hobby pages.

Yup, sometimes, certain blog articles got all the hits, while at other times, my hobby pages overwhelmed my blog articles.

Go figure.

In any case, my hits are nothing to brag about, but nothing to quit over. I can say it’s nothing in the thousands, like some people I know.

A steady trickle that varies from day to day, week to week, month to month.

I have a steady group of followers. I also follow back a lot of them.

That’s enough to encourage me to keep going. Plus, I have received feedback and results.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Numbers that would discourage most, have no effect on me.

Why?

Results.

Once in a while, I get feedback. Sometimes it’s direct notes to my web site. Most of the time though, it’s private e-mails or off-had comments face-to-face through people I meet.

Someone read one of these articles here and got something useful out of it.

That, folks, is the reason I’m here.

Plus, some of these articles are re-posted on the newsletter Writer’s Tricks Of The Trade, the quarterly put out by my friend Morgan St. James.

This all means that somehow, somewhere, my blathering about writing is doing some good, having an impact.

That, my friends, is what I’m here for. That, is why I haven’t given up since starting this blog in 2012. That, is why I keep writing about writing.

Happy writing!