As it turns out, being a “successful” blogger is pretty hard… With success being defined as, you know, getting people to actually read this thing, it turns out to be a lot harder than I ever anticipated. Luckily, I’m not making a career out of it (not yet at least), and am really just enjoying the ride. But I just thought I would share with you (the few readers I actually have amassed), just what goes into this blog life.
I started this website just over a year ago; my “launch” date was August 27, 2014. It started out to be purely for fun. I had found myself, in my personal life, obsessing over photographing meals, drinks, concerts, and other adventures around NYC so that Jason and I could remember all of the awesome stuff we were doing. My friends and family started making fun of how few photos I actually shared of myself or other people in my life. I mean, I do share some on my personal Facebook page, but other than that, I find NYC and the other places I venture into so full of photographable memories. And so, Baconboozer was born. Here is a list of the steps I’ve taken, in mostly chronological order:
- google “how to start a blog” and obsess over it for a few days
- search for an available domain name and buy it
- find a host website
- discover wordpress through google searches, and create an account
- create a gmail account (baconboozer@gmail.com)
- play with all of wordpress’s many functions to figure out how things work
- figure out how to actually make a “post” on the website
- figure out the formatting and layout of the website (pages vs. posts vs. categories vs. tags ahhhhh!)
- google “what is a plugin” – attempt to use them functionally
- google “what is a widget” – attempt to use them functionally
- download a plugin that crashed the website for a full day – utter panic – email wordpress frantically and delete the plugin (problem solved)
- learn how to monitor website statistics on wordpress’s jetpack – become obsessed with it (today I am averaging between 10-15 visitors a day – wild, I know)
- learn how to use “SEO” (search engine optimization)… sort of – this has been the subject of probably hundreds of my google searches, and I still don’t really get it; I know I use Yoast and that creates sitemaps – whatever those are
- buy a special “theme” package from wordpress (foodie pro) – and panic when it completely screws up the layout I worked weeks on to accomplish… spend probably twice as many weeks redoing everything
- learn how to save photos with captions and words instead of weird numbers and acronyms so that they’re recognizable by search engines
- attempt to learn the ins and outs of google AdSense (that’s what those ads on the right side of the blog are) in order to make the blog somehow profitable (I have earned $0.04 in 368 days – I AM RICH)
- attempt to use amazon associates in order to make the blog somehow profitable, but get informed that due to its utter failure to capture any income, my account was shut down
- try to get better at actually taking pictures of food (work in progress) – learn about focus and lighting and exposure and forced perspectives; this also involves spending awkward amounts of time in restaurants and bars standing over your food and obsessing over the “perfect shot,” and making friends/family wait for what sometimes can be ten minutes before they can take a bite of their meal; photography has become a big interest of mine over this last year thanks to this blog
- add my website to search engines other than google
- make a google+ page but completely fail at ever utilizing it properly – I’ve been getting “urgent” phone calls from them lately, but continue to ignore them… I hope that’s not horrible?
- make a Facebook page (Baconboozer)
- make a twitter account (@bacon_boozer)
- make an instagram account (@bacon_boozer)
- make a Yelp account but get it deleted for violating their rules about posting links to my personal website – oops … I’ve since made my own personal Yelp page, which I rarely use
- psychotically follow anyone on instagram related to food
- learn that it’s “uncool” to follow 1087 people when you only have 34 followers of your own – delete unnecessary people
- creepily email editors (or really anyone important sounding) from multiple magazines, websites, blogs, newspapers etc, trying to get advice or some mention by them – no one answered
- try to link all of the social media accounts and add “buttons” to link to them from the website, but become overwhelmed and stressed
- make my own “business card” in the shape of a piggy (yes, I cut those piggies out myself, for hours) to slip into the bill folders at bars and restaurants after a service to inform them of their upcoming review and give them my information
- continuously get too drunk at bars and restaurants and forget to leave those piggies with the bills
- buy a cool lens to attach to my phone to take even cooler photos of food
- realize that I have to take my case off of my phone to use this lens, which is a bad idea considering my clumsiness; decide to never use the lens
- email lots of restaurants with links to reviews of their service and get ignored about 98% of the time – learn to deal with constant rejection
- become too overwhelmed by all of the social media venues I created and decide to make the website and the Instagram (@bacon_boozer) my main focus (I’m up to 575 followers, which in my humble opinion, is pretty cool)
- learn how to insert links (like the one in the previous bullet point) into posts (not sure what that really gets me, but it seems so high tech)
- forget my login information for the web hosting hub thing, and panic that my website will be dissolved if I don’t renew; email them for a new password and pay the renewal fees – order restored, yet again
- obsess over and spend hours researching which instagram hashtags are the most popular and continuously edit a note in my cell phone where I have them saved, for quick copy/pasting
- learn about tagging popular food bloggers and photographers on instagram
- spend at least 30-60 minutes a day being “active” on instagram: make genuine comments, like relevant photos, look for inspiration and ideas, etc.
- figure out what days and times are best to post on my website and instagram (apparently Wednesday evenings is a very successful time for me)
- design and order real business cards from moo.com, which I will NOT be forgetting to hand out, since they cost me a decent chunk of money.
Those are the highlights. So all in all, my “hobby” has officially turned into a huge, giant, enormous, daunting task. But what I’ve learned, especially since getting the wordpress basics down (I think) and refocusing on the few outlets I actually enjoy working on, is that blog life is pretty f-ing awesome. And even if no one is reading it (yet), I think I’m most likely just on the brink of becoming one of the biggest most famous food blogger/instagrammers that ever was. I mean, I have earned four cents, and do have two visitors today, so far!
In the end, I’m doing something I really like to do, and sharing it with whoever cares enough to take a look – and that was the original intention behind this website, anyways. So I’m learning to let go of the little things and to just enjoy it. And it’s become a pretty fun topic of conversation with new people that I meet. If you have any feedback or ideas on what I’ve come up with so far, please feel free to comment or email me directly! I look forward to doing more of what I love, and I hope you enjoy it!