Today is the 4 year anniversary of this daily blog.
Sure, I’ve missed a few days over the years (my estimate is 4-5 days), but for the most part I have shown up here every day and written something.
Sometimes that something is very short and/or bad. I’ve had a few people say to me: “I can tell when you’re super busy. Your posts are shorter.” I’m okay with that. Part of this exercise for me is simply about the discipline. 80% of success is showing up, right?
In some ways, what I do here is an anachronism. Here is a good vintage article (2011) that talks about two different schools of thought when it comes to blogging.
The reality is that it’s painfully slow and difficult to build an online audience via a personal blog using your own domain. It takes years, unless you’re a celebrity, which I am most certainly not. That’s why many people give up.
Instead, many people/influencers choose to build their audience on top of an existing network, such as YouTube,
Today is the 4 year anniversary of this daily blog.
Sure, I’ve missed a few days over the years (my estimate is 4-5 days), but for the most part I have shown up here every day and written something.
Sometimes that something is very short and/or bad. I’ve had a few people say to me: “I can tell when you’re super busy. Your posts are shorter.” I’m okay with that. Part of this exercise for me is simply about the discipline. 80% of success is showing up, right?
In some ways, what I do here is an anachronism. Here is a good vintage article (2011) that talks about two different schools of thought when it comes to blogging.
The reality is that it’s painfully slow and difficult to build an online audience via a personal blog using your own domain. It takes years, unless you’re a celebrity, which I am most certainly not. That’s why many people give up.
Instead, many people/influencers choose to build their audience on top of an existing network, such as YouTube,
. Medium is pretty tempting and I’ve seen lots of bloggers port over their personal blogs.
The idea here is that you simply bring your content to where your/an audience already lives, instead of trying to get them to come to you.
Of course, one of the risks of this approach is that you don’t own/control the platform. What if people one day decided to stop using MySpace? I like the idea of owning (at least part of) my online presence.
So here’s to another year on the blog. Thanks for reading! I really do appreciate it. Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.
. Medium is pretty tempting and I’ve seen lots of bloggers port over their personal blogs.
The idea here is that you simply bring your content to where your/an audience already lives, instead of trying to get them to come to you.
Of course, one of the risks of this approach is that you don’t own/control the platform. What if people one day decided to stop using MySpace? I like the idea of owning (at least part of) my online presence.
So here’s to another year on the blog. Thanks for reading! I really do appreciate it. Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.
This past Sunday was the 3rd anniversary of this blog. That is 3 years of me writing something here every day (I think I’ve only missed 2 days in the past 3 years). So I have now written almost 1,100 blog posts.
Admittedly, they weren’t all masterpieces. But that doesn’t really matter. To do good work, I think you have to be prolific and show up every day.
The big change this year was that I “unbranded” this blog and started writing just under my personal name, as opposed to Architect This City. I got some initial pushback when I did that, but I continue to believe it was the right decision for what I am trying to achieve here.
I recently had someone ask me if there was any change in traffic after the switch. And the answer is no. If anything, traffic increased.
Over the last year, this blog received about 225,000 page views. Of course, this doesn’t include the 14,000 or so people who read via email subscription and Tumblr, and never actually land on this site.
But honestly, I don’t care about the numbers anymore. I used to. But not anymore. I blog because it:
- Forces me to stay current on the topics that matter to me
- Allows me to clarify my thoughts in a way that thinking alone can’t do
- Holds me publicly accountable for the things I say and the stances I take
- Connects me with people I would never otherwise meet
- Exposes me to new business opportunities
- Gives me a distribution channel for discussion and sharing
- Allows me to learn from readers who know more than I do
- Allows me to exert my personal independence (I write what I want here)
- Promotes greater transparency and, hopefully, better city building
I could go on, but those are some of the most salient points.
At the same time, the world of blogging and social media is all about giving first. So I do try to curate content and posts that I think would be valuable to the readership of this blog. If there’s something else you’d like to see on here, I am always open to suggestions.
Thanks for reading! Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. And yes, those are my old skateboard decks hanging on the wall behind my desk.
This past Sunday was the 3rd anniversary of this blog. That is 3 years of me writing something here every day (I think I’ve only missed 2 days in the past 3 years). So I have now written almost 1,100 blog posts.
Admittedly, they weren’t all masterpieces. But that doesn’t really matter. To do good work, I think you have to be prolific and show up every day.
The big change this year was that I “unbranded” this blog and started writing just under my personal name, as opposed to Architect This City. I got some initial pushback when I did that, but I continue to believe it was the right decision for what I am trying to achieve here.
I recently had someone ask me if there was any change in traffic after the switch. And the answer is no. If anything, traffic increased.
Over the last year, this blog received about 225,000 page views. Of course, this doesn’t include the 14,000 or so people who read via email subscription and Tumblr, and never actually land on this site.
But honestly, I don’t care about the numbers anymore. I used to. But not anymore. I blog because it:
- Forces me to stay current on the topics that matter to me
- Allows me to clarify my thoughts in a way that thinking alone can’t do
- Holds me publicly accountable for the things I say and the stances I take
- Connects me with people I would never otherwise meet
- Exposes me to new business opportunities
- Gives me a distribution channel for discussion and sharing
- Allows me to learn from readers who know more than I do
- Allows me to exert my personal independence (I write what I want here)
- Promotes greater transparency and, hopefully, better city building
I could go on, but those are some of the most salient points.
At the same time, the world of blogging and social media is all about giving first. So I do try to curate content and posts that I think would be valuable to the readership of this blog. If there’s something else you’d like to see on here, I am always open to suggestions.
Thanks for reading! Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. And yes, those are my old skateboard decks hanging on the wall behind my desk.
