Creating a wine blog has been a lot of fun, and as soon as it’s not fun Joe Plonk will be Joe History. Along the way, I’ve learned a number of things:
- Drawing attention to your blog is critical, whether you’re trying to create a community or generate advertising revenue. If nobody knows you’re out there, it is impossible to develop a following. I’m not interested in sending a lot of spam to people who might not have interest, but that seems to be the route that many take. I’ve bit turned off by people who try to push their blog on you, but suspect those folks get results.
- I have made 43 blog postings since September 8, 2008. There have been 450 unique visitors to the site, and there are about 10 to 15 regular followers. Not exactly the New York Times, but I’m proud of my following. I’m certainly appreciative, and a bit amazed, that anybody spends time reading my thoughts. Thank you!
- 41 of the 43 posts have been generally positive in tone, and of that group I’ve been contacted by 3 recipients of praise (7%). Of the 2 less positive posts, I was contacted by 1 party involved (50%). No, I’m not going negative.
- Blogging is not a money making endeavor. Using a free Google Blog account and Adsense, I’ve earned about enough money to buy case of Two Buck Chuck. Most people who do make money either (i) address topics of mass interest and have an infrastructure to support research and staffing (see the Huffington Post or Drudge Report), or (ii) blog to support a related product or services sales organization. You could make more money collecting bottle caps than blogging.
- For wine bloggers, there is a great support network called Open Wine Consortium (http://www.openwineconsortium.org/). On that site, you can find resources, discussion topics about blogging, the latest scoop about industry trends, and other information of interest to wine community. You will also find that there are a lot of other people with better wine web sites than you, such as Two Divine Girls blog (http://twodvinegirls.ning.com/), and Wine Life Today blog (http://www.winelifetoday.com/), and the super cool site for Vin Strategies (http://www.vinstrategies.com/), etc. There are lots of creative people out there. I'm not sure I'm one of them, but I'm the guy to call if you need to move heavy furniture or want to empty your wine cellar.
Your thoughts/comments about how I might increase your enjoyment of the blog would be appreciated.
Best, Joe Plonk
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