I am a Tetradite blogger

As the clock struck 10 on the evening of the 29th of October this year, I had now been blogging for FOUR whole years! Well actually I was working on another blog, not this one, at that very moment, but oh well. To mark this monumental occasion, I will take you on a doodle journey through the last four years of blogging.

Blogger/Blogspot has been my blog drug of choice these past four years, simply because it was the first thing I found when looking for an online diary/blog. Although I do have a Tumblr blog and a Wordpress one (backup blog), that I occasionally mess with now. I have found that Blogspot is still the most suited to my needs. My niche, before I knew what a niche was, is 'Personal'. The blog was just meant to be a place to dump my thoughts on a daily (ish) basis.

How do you get people to read your waffling and offerings? Who wants to? Do you want them to? How do you add pictures, How this and how that? Basically there were a LOT of 'How do I?' type questions and somehow I found the 'Blogger Help' forums. It really was a miracle that I even found them and how I cringe at the type of questions I asked back then (Noob alert). Some nice folks did take pity and gave me some pretty good advice, mainly stop using so many exclamation marks!!!!!!!! and your layout is HORRID! So I changed the layout and curtailed my use of !!

From the Blogger Help forums, I moved onto other blogging forums, still rather clueless about this whole blogging thing and was now on quest for knowledge (and widgets). Followed by the usual thing of registering your blog with every blog directory known to man (or google).  I also started reading a LOT of other blogs in my niche, which was and still is, a personal blog of sorts.

Suddenly you are flooded with talk of SEO, Page Rank, Flickr, Twitter, Google reader, Facebook, technorati, memes, tags, awards and much much more. It is so overwhelming at first and it becomes very easy to forget the reasons why you are blogging. You see other blogs getting lots of comments and wonder how they attract so many, when not even ten people a week are reading yours (Insert sad face here).

It seemed a good idea at first to get involved with paid posting, internet memes and silly blog like things. I am sure for some people that is enough. For me though, it was horrid. I was posting so frequently, numerous times a day and felt burnt out quickly. The lesson was learnt, but I think it took about two years, before I really started developing a blog voice of my own. I think the worry was that just me on my own would be bloody boring.

It would be remiss to not point out the darker side of blogging, especially when it's something that can really upset people. There are some very very strange people on the internet, don't try to analyse them too much, just accept that and move on. People will be horrid to you, some will think they are giving you 'helpful' advice, some are just being twats. It takes a while to develop a internet strength thick skin, but you will.

Is it worth all that? YES it is. The Pros far outweigh the Cons in my opinion. The inspiration and friendship that I have gotten from the blogs that I read, and the people that read/comment on here, has changed so many things in my life. From my interest in photography and doodling, to just inspiring me to actually share my thoughts on difficult situations. I could mention a lot more great things about blogging, but I have so much more to fit into this post.

Advice:
You should really read my One, Two and Three year blogging anniversary posts to gain a better insight into how this blog has developed. There is no magic formula, just lots of mistakes, lots of learning and lots of time. I try to put a lot of time and effort into writing these blog anniversary posts, as it's a great way to look back at all I have learnt over the years. I think a lot of people want to know more about how to start blogging, how to get people to read it and so on. Those questions are hard to answer, mainly because everyone is blogging for different reasons. So I just try to show what I have done over the years, with the hopes that that may answer some questions.

Thoughts on blogging:
I thought there would come a point that I would get bored of this blogging malarkey, surely boring myself and others. Although I have been frustrated, stressed out etc, at times, I still haven't reached the boredom point. I guess I like (maybe love) sharing some aspects of my life and personality with the strange folks that wander the interwebs. It opens up a dialogue, that then translates to real life interactions and guess what? It's good to talk.

What next?
I have some rather exciting doodle projects on the go at the moment, you already know about 'Self Exam Doodles', but that is just the start. I hope you will stick around for a few more years and follow me on the next adventure.


Thanks to everyone new and old for reading!