One Year Blogging Anniversary

 

I can’t believe it’s already one year! Last year during this month I published my first post. Since then I have grown up in many ways in this blogging world. My writing has improved, so are my images. At least I believe so.

Here is a graphic showing the main highlights of the year.

 

Blogging TimeLine: Year One

 

 

Reflecting back, I can visualize my growth. At first, there were posts with one picture and poorly written paragraphs. Followed by edited photographs and blog graphics with long posts. Forget the book reviews (still trying to find my voice for them, so bear with me). And the lonely travel posts are like long lost friends for now, with whom you meet once in a while. Apart from this, explored WordPress themes and plugins while designing the look of my blog.

There remains a great deal to learn and understand about blogging. For example blog promotion. 

Coming back to this eventful year. Let’s break the timeline into five phases I believe I went through.

 

The Promising Start 

On February 20, last year, I started the blog with my first post, “What to do with ripe bananas“. I was so excited that I shared the post with family and friends. There was a mixed response. Half were skeptical while another half happy. Anyways, my aim(at that point) was to build a repository of recipes online for myself. Hence, continued blogging.

 

Persistence: One post per week.

After the pompous start, things cooled down for a while. The frequency dwindled to one post per three weeks for the first few months. I couldn’t get enough ideas. Or got tied up in perfecting the post. I lacked the passion and motivation. The bleakest and darkest stretch of this year.

There have been hobbies or projects I started off in the past but abandoned midway. I resolved not to have the similar outcome for this endeavor. I wished this one to stick around.

Thence I pushed myself to publish something, even if small, every week. Furthermore, I organized the system of post making. Followed it to the letter. Made notes of ideas for blog posts. And finally attained the target of one post per week.

 

New look for the blog

After “Vegetable Oats Omelet“, one of my friends recommended introducing step-by-step photos in posts. The help in picturizing the words. Since then I try to capture as many pictures as possible.

Not thrilled with my blog’s design, invested time researching on Google for the best free themes. And selected “The Dyad Theme“. Right away, my new homepage displayed the latest blog posts and incorporated a header with featured post carousel. This look was all right for the moment

 

Book Reviews and Travel Posts:

Book reviews along with summaries assist in summoning the stories from wherever they hide inside the brain. Also, forces me to examine what part of the book affected me. Alternatively, recording these reviews give me fresh ideas for posts, and a side-by-side inventory of books read.

I immensely enjoyed converting memories of the Grand Canyon trip into words. It is the only set of travel posts I wrote till now. I do plan to write more. Reminiscing these memories is therapeutic and makes me forget the present for few moments.

Besides, this marked a significant change in the blog’s course. Now onwards book reviews and travel posts were also part of the blog.

 

New domain and Another change of looks

By the end of November, I had grown certain I won’t leave blogging soon. And so bought my domain and theme. This decision brought another round of challenges. Mainly, choosing best and cheapest hosting service and domain name provider. Another difficulty was migrating existing posts and subscribers to the new blog. 

Bluehost is the hosting service and Soledad is the theme for this blog currently. Although restructuring and re-designing are still in progress.

 

 

Recently I started my newsletter using MailChimp and Icegram. Setting up of MailChimp mailing list and the campaign took ample time and gave enough headaches. One last thing that I picked up last year was developing blog graphics using Canva.com. And editing the images using Befunky and PicMonkey. There remains a lot to explore even in these tools.

This ends the first year’s journey. I hope by the end of the coming year, I will have final look for my website, some new followers and a lot more new posts. 

What have you learned in your first year of blogging? Or share any special memory from that first year? Leave a comment.