Posted by It was two years ago I started this blog. In June 2010, I started with a free blog on wordpress.com. At that time, I was a binge blogger. I would blog every day for a week or every week for a couple of months, and then as work got busy, I would skip a few months. I also did absolutely nothing to promote my blog. It was in January of 2012 that I really decided to take it seriously. In the last six months, I’ve had at least one post a week, and usually 2-3. Thank you, readers, for reading and commenting. I still get a little thrill at every comment that someone is actually reading and cares enough about a topic to comment. I still look at my numbers almost daily(or maybe hourly) and love to see it when I get more than 200 views in a day.
It was late last year and early this year that I did technical work on my blogging skills, too, learning about tools to help me and design tips. If you’re a blogger too, or thinking about it, I really suggest Technical Blogging by Antonio Cangiano. That book has done as much for my reader volume as posting more frequently has. And the author is a really nice guy who actually answers questions if you send them through his blog.
Ask anyone who knows me – I still get a thrill every time IDUG tweets or shares one of my posts on facebook. And if someone whose name I recognize as a DB2 author or presenter comments on a post, I’m over the moon.
I really believe I’m helping newbie DBAs and those new to WebSphere Commerce databases. And hopefully I have content that helps those who aren’t so new find solutions to problems or better understand some areas.
Believe it or not, I search my own blog and refer clients or colleages to it at least once a week, so it’s kind of like secondary brain storage for me. Just yesterday, a colleage who was helping me during a spike in workload while I was sleeping in after working overnight ran into the “root capability required” error on instance creation, and I referred her to my post on it. One colleage said I pulled a “let me google that for you” only with my own blog. Another told me he was putting it on his RTFM list to read.
All of this is why I blog. It probably sounds corny to some, but I really just want to help people. I hate it when I google something and cannot find the answer, and I really hope that my blog makes it so that happens less often for others. I figure if I run into a problem, others are running into the same thing. And if I wonder about how something works, someone else probably is too. I have not yet “monetized” the blog significantly, and don’t know if I ever will – I have tiny ads to pay the bills, but being in Colorado doesn’t let me do affiliate stuff with Amazon, and I haven’t yet pursued sponsorship or other more major money making avenues. I’m not really sure I want to at this point.
What’s in the future for me? Well, first is continuing the momentum of the frequent posts of the first half of this year. I’m going to add in at least a few guest blog posts both on topics I know well, and possibly on things that go beyond my own expertise. So let me know if there’s a topic you really want to see – if I don’t know it, I can probably find someone who does. My personal goals include writing something for developerWorks and also getting a presentation accepted for the IDUG tech conference in Orlando next year.
So if you’re a regular reader, thank you. Keep reading and I’ll keep writing.
Congratulations Ember
Congrats Ember!