Breaking the Blog Rules…

Warning: This post includes all 5 ‘blogging sins’ as outlined by BrianÂ Clark at Copyblogger. It’s not actually a case of a blog post gone wrong, as his title indicates -Â but more a case of me just rambling… because I can.

Consider yourself warned!

Lately I’ve been working straight through, daylight to dark, and enjoying it immensely. If it’s not a cool new Internet Marketing project it’s weeding the flowerbeds or cleaning out the closets.

I’m on an insane schedule, mind you, and I dont know how that happened. Probably a mix between school starting back and too much coffee. I’m up before daylight (sometimes as early as 4am), napping in the afternoon, and working late into the night. But it feels good, and I’m in some kind of super-productive zone, so I’m not complaining…

That’s not to say I’m not having a little fun too, because I am. In fact, just a couple of hours ago I was eating cookies in bed with my daughter while we watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. She’s gotten the hang of this Netflix thing now, so I have to keep an eye on my account or I end up with season discs of Gilmore Girls one after the other .

Speaking of Netflix, I got a great movie last weekend: Tristan & Isolde. I thought for sure this was going to be a total chick flick… but it turned out to be more like Gladiator than Romeo & Juliet. I can honestly say this is the best movie that I’ve seen in a long time! I had a group of friends over for this one, and even the guys loved it . Coming in a close second was Failure to Launch (hilarious!), and I would definitely have to give the Traveling Pants movie a thumbs up if you have teenage girls in the house.

I think I got sidetracked and forgot the point I was making…

Oh! Having fun – that was it. Yes, lots of fun going on around here. Between movie night, coffee with friends, reading great books and getting out and about – there’s never a dull moment. Last night was dinner at the local Greek restaurant with close friends. Saturday night was steak & sushi out of town. Yesterday was an afternoon coffee with Jana, who brought me a beautiful hangingÂ plant as an I-was-just-thinking-of-you-for-no-special-reason gift. You have to love friends like that!

But unlike the summer, which was a great break from all the working, the ‘fun’ is back on the other side of the scale now.Â The majority ofÂ my time andÂ energy is going into business and goals at the moment. All work andÂ a little play tooÂ makes Jane financially secure so she can take off during the summer months . (Isnt that how the saying goes??)Â

Hmm. I try to be funny and nobody laughs. That’s the thing about this blogging – there’s no live audience. I have no way to judge how well something might go over until it’s entirely too late and the whole blab is already out there in front of the whole world.

Well, “the whole world”… that would pretty much be a major overstatement. Truth be known, my blog stats seem to have plateaued. For the last few months there have been just over 2,000 unique visitors consistently. Interesting to note though, the majority of those visitors (over 96%) come in through a bookmark or a direct link (meaning they type the URL into their address bar).

That’s a great thing I suppose, but it means I’m falling short on the task of getting new readers. The other 3+% of my traffic comes from the search engines or referral links. I have some work to do here, dont ya think?

It’s not a big deal, because I have a strategy outlined. But I’ve decided I’m going to do some updating and changing to the blog as a whole before I dive into a major marketing plan. For starters I am taking the ugly pictures off… Yuck . I’ve lost 35 pounds since Spring and I cant stand looking at the fat pics of myself every day .

Speaking of which, anyone tried the new Brownie Squares from Domino’s? Mmmm!

Back to the blog – keep an eye out for the upcoming changes (if you’re actually reading this far). That has a relatively high priority on my task list, along with removing Adsense from product-based sites in preparation for the upcoming holiday shopping season and other important things. I have mailing lists to revive, content to write, stats to go over and a long list of tweaks to various sites that need to be done.

Fortunately, that’s just the kinda stuff I love to do!

I should close and get back to it, actually. A few random thoughts before I log out: Yahoo! Answers is addictive, 2CO charges too much, Keywords Analyzer just released a new update… and I’m going roller skating tomorrow night.

So yeah… this post was incredibly long, full of pointless details, a complete waste of time, littered with incessant rambling andÂ way off topic. A perfect example of a blog post gone horribly wrong. Thank you Brian, for the inspiration!

Lynn Terry, rambling blogger