9 Things I've learned in my first year of Blogging.

Wooo!

This month marks the one year anniversary of the greatest website blog ever: Motion Select, of course. Thank you to all those that have come across this blog and read a few things here or there. And speaking of things, yes things... here are the 9 things that I have learned over the course of the year:

1) There is no money in blogging.
Really, mostly everything has been written about and there is already a blog out there. And yes, I've read books on blogging and have visited the many posts from problogger and copyblogger, but really, it's a job to make money from blogging.

2) It's tough keeping up with a blog.
It is quite hard to keep posting items when you have a job and many other things going on in your life. It's also tough coming up with article ideas and concepts... that takes some time.

3) Analytics is the way to go.
I used to post more items, but due to the fact that I a lot of my posts were news items from other websites (even though I found them interesting), it didn't really bring people to my site. So that's why, if you noticed, I have done a way with a lot of that, especially random movie-news type of stuff.

4) Digg and Stumble Upon.
These are great sites to get your articles noticed. However, don't expect lots of people to click your ads. The good thing about these sites is that the people actually take time to read your articles even though they don't care for ads. Which I'm okay with, since people are actually hitting up my site. I've personally gotten way more people from Stumble Upon than Digg. And I've also learned that Digg's ratings can spike high very quickly, but it also gets buried really quickly. Stumble Upon usually comes back once in a while.

5) Post your own posts.
All the posts that I have come up with myself have done ten times better than the others. So look for more fun lists and experience related type of posts in the future.

6) More posts doesn't mean more attention.
Like I said earlier, now that I am posting less I've gotten more hits. It's because of what I've posted not how much I've posted.

7) People Love Dropping F-Bombs.
Just for the hell of it. It's true and it's funny. You know what I am talking about... people love to flame whatever posts you write.

8) Don't take it too Personally.
I'm sure you've seen people who get all fired up because an opinion differs from their own. Although, it does make for good readership.

9) You should do this for fun.
It does take time out of your life, and unless you devote all your time in trying to figure ways to make money from it, blogging should be something that you like to do. Many people, it seems, try to make money at something they don't want to do because they thought it would be easy.