How has your blog evolved?
Heeeyho Readers! Got this question bugging me for ever!
Most Hivers I know are here for nearly a decade, which means hundreds of posts have been created throughout our journeys. For most of us (too), our blogs are to a vast extend a digital record of our lives during this period. Rants, trips, birthdays, struggles, meetings, accomplishments, marriages — we've seen it all. It seems natural that our writing style and interests have changed, after all, we are always evolving and our evolution reflects in our texts.
Have you ever scrolled back to evaluate how your blog has evolved?
That's one post idea that's been bugging me this week; I couldn't wait to ask the community. Let's see how many of us have managed to stick to the same theme (I believe photography-related bloggers are the most consistent ones).
My journey
I started off as a brockpacker traveling Patagonia without money. Brokenness still follows me, though not much traveling lately. Handcrafts have gotten me excited more recently and is the driving-force behind my motivation to post. Lengthily wild travel-story posts are my favorite still, but, for that, I need to hit the road again because every-single-story is recorded on here for everyone to read: Patagonia, Winter European trip, Tour of UK, and many others. Tails of a Patagonian Journey (my book) was born after dozens of posts on the blog.
Somewhere in between, the first episode of the Off to the Ranch series replaced the travel stories. During the pandemic, I believe, when nothing much was actually happening. By the way, our ranch is up and running! The only reason why I haven't updated the series is simple: nothing much happening there at the moment. Talking about composting all the time became kinda repetitive; as soon as something new happens at the ranch I'll update the series.
One theme that's on this blog since the beginning is cycling. I just love to cycle and everything bicycle related. The job @friendlymoose does at the #cycling community is sensational and inspired me to bring forward a bunch of maintenance-related posts, including a full series on a complete bicycle build. Scroll back and you'll see that the most absurd situations I've got myself into, almost always involve being on a bicycle {laughs}.
Photography-related articles are also frequently out on the blog, though I can't compete against the guys at the #photographylovers community. I still remember my first photo posts when my brother lent me his DSLR waaaaaay back then — many moons have passed and I still can't tame the beast.
Whenever a beginners asks me how they should start, I always tell them to post about whatever makes them happy. There was a time when we recommended newcomers to stick to a theme so they could get some visibility. With the communities and the way posts are organized today I don't think that rule applies. Back then, we only had #tags, and getting some visibility was a lot harder on super popular tags like travel, photography, etc. Hence, concentrating your effort in one tag used to be the best way to go.
With the communities, curators and readers tend to check the community feed (at least I do), which makes it a lot easier to filter our interests, so it doesn't really matter if one posts about a recipe one day and their trip the other day. Someone, somewhere, will find your blog.
Anyways. I'm not going through seven years of blogging in this post as that's not the idea. I'm more curious to discover how my fellow Hivers have evolved.
How has your blog evolved? Have you stayed around the same theme or have your interest changed over the years? Was there a period when you thought about giving up? Why? If you post about your journey don't forget to ping me to let me know.
Peace.
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Find me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrprofessor_
~Love ya all,
Disclaimer: The author of this post is a convict broke backpacker, who has travelled more than 10.000 km hitchhiking and more than 5.000 km cycling. Following him may cause severe problems of wanderlust and inquietud. You've been warned.
I guess my blog has evolved after 6600+ articles, but at the same time, I hope it has been consistent in the sense that it is about improving, going forward, building a better future in some way, even if a lot of it is depressing.
I hope there is hope.
Write what makes you happy and write what makes you feel like you can make a positive difference in the lives of others. There is value in that. I think.
Then it's for sure evolving if you are seeking a better life. Little by little today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today.
Interesting point of view. I have been here for more than 7 years. At the beginning of my blog, I wrote about science (this is my profession), and economics. From time to time I did reviews of books and movies. After some time I decided to publish mainly about photography (my main hobby).
The cool thing about photography is that, even if we post about photos for 10 years, it's still changing in terms of exploring techniques. It's kinda sad that we don't have as many daily themed photo contests as we used to
Omg I've been all over the place. There's a heap of stuff I just want to delete and say NO LONGER AVAILABLE (though we do know it's findable somewhere) because it's embarrassing or really shit.
It seems an impossible timeline to construct - there was all the Abundance Tribe and Ecotrain questions, and the Natural Medicine stuff... ugh, I don't really want to revisit it.
By the wayz what happened to natural medicine? Is it still running? I reckon it was a lot of work to put that together.
Post idea alert! Whats your most embarrassing post ever? XDD I guess nobody is gonna revisit those
WHATSAPP sent
Nice one!
I came in for the photography and still am. You're right; once a photographer, always a photographers.
I don't know how many there were back then, but there are quite a few weekly ones and one daily. I'm publishing a weekly post with an overview of all the photography contests by the way.
Although I'm still a newbie (4 years on Hive) compared to some of you my blogs did change over time. There was a time where I was into crypto and posted quite a lot in Leofinance.
I've started the Cycling Community many years ago, but didn't have the knowledge and followers to make it a success.
A while ago I tried to bring it back to live since and with over 500 subscribers and new cyclists joining every week we're getting somewhere :)
Thanks for the mention.
Every now and then I also blog about my hobbies; cycling, craft beers and gardening (plant propagation).
The cycling community today is a lot more diverse and alive than when I used to run @cyclefeed, which is awesome.
There was a bunch of photo contest back then. Most famous, that I remember of, is @czechglobalhosts -- @phortun might know what happened to them.
That ranch looks very pretty! did you do a lot of renovations to it?
Yiiiis! It's changed a lot since then. Dad built a completely new house alongside that one. I should make a post about all the changes, great idea