Well, hello there! My name is Ryan Ethan Yeo, and I am the only writer of my blog, Ryan’s Brain. I’ve been doing this only for a month now, but so far it’s been really interesting. So, today I will “review” my first 1 month blogging, maybe sharing some things I learned during this 1 month.
Also, yes, I did not post anything during the whole of last week, mainly I was just busy but I also wanted to think about this blog more and what it means to me.
I thought I’d first explain what was hardest for me blogging, then continue, getting to the easier stuff, so to start, I’ll first talk about post schedules. In this case, I suck at getting posts done on time. Most of the posts so far have been pretty last-minute posts, where I had to basically force myself to finish the post to fit with the weekly posts (Random Monday, Tech Thursday, etc.). It’s really hard for me to put in the effort, but starting from this 1 month milestone I’m going to try to get the posts ready maybe at least 1 day before. It’s a pretty good thing to learn in my opinion, I learned that I should really manage my time better, and to prioritize some things.
Second is building an audience. Building an audience is hard, to put simply, but I really think it is important. I have to have/know my audience to be able to constantly do this. I mean, there’s no point of doing this if nobody is reading, right? On the sidebar on the right, you can see how many hits this blog has gotten, and the number of followers. Problem is, those followers are just my friends who just followed the blog basically because well, they’re my friends. Building a real audience is much harder. While still on a WordPress free plan, I can’t get my hands on any SEO* plugins so the site is basically unknown.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
It’s a catch-22*, I need to build an audience to pay for SEO, but without it, I cannot meet my audience, therefore I cannot get it. Of course, there’s more about WordPress plans and the economic aspect, but I’ll cover that in the next section.
- Catch-22: a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions
For now, understand that you reading this means a lot to me, and it could really help me. If you like what you’re reading, please follow and share this blog. Also, this blog is also part of my goal on building a YouTube channel, so yeah. Thanks a lot for being here.
Next, we go on to the WordPress Pricing/Economic side. This blog is run with a free plan. What that means, is of course I’m not paying anything, but that means there are a lot of limitations for me. These limitations vary from small things to large things, like limited themes, no plugins, and most importantly, no ads/revenue. Yes, I am not making any money from this. Yet. If you see ads on this blog, I’m not getting anything from them, the money goes to WordPress. So, if I want to earn, I’d have to get a Premium plan, which is $8, which may not seem much, but really, there’s not much readers here anyway, so I’ll just have to wait, and continue producing good content for you guys.
Still, I feel this is fair. Honestly, I think WordPress is a great platform for this. Even the possibility of doing this, hosting the actual site, giving you means to do something great for free is wonderful, and I am really grateful for that. Blogging may not have changed my life, but it is something I enjoy, being able to share my voice.
Okay! I’m done complaining, not that I meant to, I love blogging, I love this platform, and above all I wanted to meet you. Yes, you, a reader possibly on the other side of the world. It’s truly amazing.
Now, it’s time for the good things, things I really enjoy about blogging. First, I now realize all this time I wanted to find some type of platform to just share, to write, and have an online presence, and this is how I start. This is my. step to a larger world. Of course, I intend to have something come out from this, but even if I didn’t, I get the pleasure of sharing “a piece of thought” to the world. This is actually the main reason I actually called this blog Ryan’s Brain.
I don’t know, I just feel happy doing this. In a world full of distractions you could easily get lost in, it also feels good for your voice to be in the pile too, knowing it will/may be appreciated. Overall, this has been a good experience, and I definitely intend to continue this.
Alright that’s all for this week’s Random Monday, currently for me writing this, it’s actually midnight Sunday-Monday, so I better get some sleep. Please, if you can, follow, comment, and share this blog! Goodbye everyone!
Ryan's Brain 