Lessons from Ultimate Blog Challenge (Round One)

In January, I made a weak attempt to do the Ultimate Blog Challenge (31 blog posts in 31 days) on my esoteric blog, Gleamings from the Golden Dawn (at first) and on this blog (after seeing the initial results on GFGD). There were reasons why the attempt failed...including the fact that I was working on a major project that needed to be partially finished by February 1st. But it was mainly what I learned about my personal results that made the attempt weak.

One of the benefits that is claimed for the Ultimate Blog Challenge is that it helps build up your traffic. I saw absolutely no evidence of this--but then again, it was a weak attempt. Of course, it could also be the simple fact that neither this blog or GFGD is really set up for selling people stuff, saving their souls, or simply posting for the simple sake of posting.

In other words, the benefits that other bloggers report for the Ultimate Blog Challenge may not even be possible for me. After all, the type of audience that I am writing for is very limited. Plus my readership on GFGD is interested in a very specific type of post (they merely tolerate my cat fetish), just like the readers of this blog are interested in a very particular type of post.

And there was also the simple fact that I did not feel like just writing junk posts just to hit the goal of 31 posts.

So what did I learn from the first attempt at doing the Ultimate Blog Challenge?

One, it is not going to boost my number of readers or pageviews. (I have yet to see any scheme that actually works for any of my blogs.)

Two, I am not going to get any more comments than normal (even the daily comment thread on the Facebook support group would only net me one comment, and not the two that it was supposed to).

Three, I have a really hard time commenting on other people's blogs when they are just trying to sell a service (or product), or are trying to get people to embrace Jesus.

Fourth and most important, if it is really going to benefit me, I need a posting plan--an ongoing planned series of posts that naturally fits into the existing audience of whatever blog that I decide to use. Fortunately, I have a couple of ideas that would result in a series of posts--ideas that I have not followed up on simply because they require a certain level of commitment.

And doing the Ultimate Blog Challenge would help me get the series done--it is a daily checklist type of task if you are working on a long series.

Therefore, I am going to do the March 2013 round of the Ultimate Blog Challenge on GFGD, but I am going to be aiming to accomplish a long series of interelated posts, and completely ignore the claims of improvement that other people make--the type of gains that I will collect are going to be different. After all, I am not really trying to sell people salvation. No, I am merely trying to inflict the possible first draft of an ebook on an unsuspecting audience.