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May 4th: What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced to continue blogging and how did you solve them?
Over the course of 11+ years, my challenges have changed. Originally it was trying to get numbers up. I solved that with contests and working hard to get my name out there. But as the blogging world has changed and the importance of the small reader blog has diminished, I’ve solved the numbers game by being satisfied with blogging for me and not for the numbers.
The next big challenge was trying to find content for daily posts. At one time, I had four “full-time” reviewers besides me, and we all posted on a weekly basis, plus two others who posted one to two times per month. Altogether, we could have two posts every weekday, plus some on the weekends. Now I’ve got a much smaller crew, and at times I’ve had to stretch out posts so I have content every weekday. I’ve solved the content issue by adding non-review posts to my weekly schedule. Tuesdays, I have the TMST posts, every Friday I post about FitReaders, and I’ve continued my Sunday Snippet feature. I also have a small set of reviews I’ve written for Goodreads but never posted on the blog – I can grab these for posts if I have a hole.
Another challenge I’ve dealt with is over-scheduling. At one time I was finishing a couple books per week, so I’d pick up more ARCs and schedule lots of books. Like many, I went into a reading slump last year and found I couldn’t keep up with my schedule. I solved this by moving some of the books to later in the year, and I stopped worrying about getting an ARC review out right at release time. This year, I’ve been more realistic with my scheduling and allow myself way more time in between books.