[blog birthday] one year of blogging

It began because of a religious argument on Stephen Pollard's site with Indecent Left and it just seemed not right to use another man's site although, looking back, I don't think it hurt his stats.

So I started my new blog, not reticently but embarrassingly forward on the Harbour template [sailing roots] - what unmitigated chutzpah on my part.

I launched into profiles of Tim Worstall and Stephen plus Clive Davis, Cleanthes, now at The Select , Oliver Kamm and Chris Dillow and was just starting on Melanie Phillips and Norman Geras when I began to burn out and became a bit more circumspect:

Jean-Remy von Matt, the CEO of a German advertising agency … called blogs "the toilet walls of the internet". "What on earth", he asked, "gives every computer-owner the right to express his opinion, unasked for?"

If it was meant to be smiled at, this comment, alas I think, in my case, it may be justified. Yesterday in my enthusiasm to get off the ground, I committed every breach known to the blogosphereThose bloggers just mentioned, plus Euroserf and Johnathan Pearce of Samizdata came in and encouraged a blogger newbie at exactly the right time and gave sound advice, sometimes as a little slap on the wrist, e.g. on linking etiquette.

Those were the days of 29 or 30 uniques a day and the blog was punctuated with posts about how my stats were so low compared to the big boys and whatever could I do? I cringe now when looking at those days. Don't know what those guys were thinking, in turn.

I "ran into" Iain Dale at this point and he turned out to be a thorough gentleman.

And so October, December, the stats slowly increased and some American blog awards really got me up in arms, one or two other bloggers picked up on it and Blogpower was born. That can all be read onsite.

The New Year saw me through the 100 uniques barrier and it's been a slow build ever since, with periods of dropping back, such as this week actually. Advice from the big boys, passed on to any newbies reading this:

1] Work hard at it and try to be consistent in style and in output;

2] Forget stats at the early stage. They will come if what you write has any quality. It's a very slow build over two or three years and as your total body of work increases, so your Google hits on various topics will also increase;

3] Never become discouraged because a post [like the photo quiz] is ignored and don't get too ecstatic when a strange little post [like the announcement of the French election result] still gets huge hits;

4] Don't be an island, hoping they'll come to you - visit, read, comment and link;

5] Never be afraid to offend [one of my problems], as long as you believe what you say and can back it up;

6] In the end, try to be entertaining, meaning don't get so far into your material that you lose your reader in a mass of text.

In the end, I'm still a new blogger. This advice just quoted is not mine - I was just passing it on. I'm still learning, myself.