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  1. Lebogang Shazzygal Malatji says

    Hahhahah did you just illegitimate traffic? Is there such a thing. Ohh wow

    Well, one of my blogging fails which turned into a blessing was when i moved from free premium to a paid one. I lost traffic drastically and I was almost discouraged. I later discovered that those who moved with me on a new site were my real readers as I began to be more authentic. I believe previously I wrote like everyone else and not so honest and authentic. I’m grateful that I managed to find what I truly want t write about and im happy. Blogging is not easy.

    • Shelly DS says

      I’m so glad you found your groove and are happier with a genuine readership! It isn’t the easiest thing to accept, but in the long run it is way better for you! 💖

  2. seankfletcher says

    I absolutely love this post, Shelly. Thank you for sharing your insights which are thoughtful, honest and balanced. I find your material invaluable because it makes a lot of sense and is said with your heart on your sleeve. In other words, you have helped me to be on the right track (or what I think is the right track) regarding my own blogging journey.

  3. petespringerauthor says

    I can obviously only speak for myself, but with the thousands of blogs one could follow, I look for honesty and authenticity in other bloggers. Posts like this one are what I look for. I’m trying to write children’s novels, but blogs that continuously blog about their latest review, etc… just don’t do it for me. I know it’s tough because bloggers/writers have to do a fair amount of self-promotion, and yet nothing turns me off quicker than if that is all that someone does. To use an analogy from writing, the characters I like the most and can identify with are the imperfect ones with normal human challenges and faults. People want different things from blogging. I’m sure you know by now that a lot of our “followers” are basically anonymous people who hit the follow button once and we’ll never see again. I’d much rather have dedicated followers to engage with. Keep writing from the heart.

    • Shelly DS says

      I appreciate your honesty, probably because I’m on the winning end of it 😅 But jokes aside, you’re right about the hundreds of followers who may as well be robots. As a writer, I absolutely appreciate being able to interact with you and other readers, exchange ideas and just be better as a whole!

  4. Rachel says

    A very relatable post.
    My stats plummeted last month which was disheartening.
    I just keep going and remind myself why I’m doing this. As should you. 😀

  5. Michelle (Boomer Eco Crusader) says

    Thanks for sharing this honest post Shelly. I think we can all relate to the milestones. I hear about people with thousands of followers which makes my modest number look sad. Yet, often more followers doesn’t equal more views or more engagement.

    So far, I’ve seen steady growth on my blog. I’m contemplating reducing my posts from three times a week to two in 2022–mainly because things are opening up and some of my old hobbies are “back on” and I’m concerned about having the time to post three times a week. We’ll see what happens.

    Probably my biggest mistake in the beginning was doing Pinterest all wrong and then wondering why I wasn’t getting any traffic. I took some time to learn more about it, and now it’s my number one source of traffic.

  6. Delicate and brutal says

    I could never view any if your blogs as “fails” or missed wins. You are always true, honest, authentic, and real in your writing and NOTHING about that means failure. You pour your heart into everything you do-being a wife, mother, friend, employee, and blogger and that makes you the special rock star you are!

  7. Catarina says

    That is me right now during Blogmas.. but getting back on track with writing and posting Blogmas content. I know you will get back to it and all your creative juices will increase !

  8. bosssybabe says

    I enjoy your complete honesty here. Not a lot of people talk about the struggles of blogging authentically. I struggled with wanting to write what was authentic to me but the more authentic you write, the harder it is to grasp an audience. So I feel like I had to make a decision… Be the writer I wanted to be, write the way I wanted to write and be happy with my real readers than trying to capture a temporary audience. My fail was trying to do both!

    • Shelly DS says

      I’m so glad you found your voice and stuck with it… Doing otherwise would’ve definitely made blogging a chore, because how long can you honestly go putting others above yourself?

  9. Pooja G says

    I’m glad that even though you had these blogging fails you were able to learn and grow from them. That’s a big part of blogging successfully- learning from your mistakes!

  10. Stuart Danker says

    That’s an interesting thing about post frequency. What would you say the best frequency for you per week is? And yeah, I too thought that growing my audience would take a much shorter time, but we live and learn, eh? You have such a quality site here though, so I won’t worry about metrics too much. I only see growth in the amount of effort you’ve put in here—and it shows. Anyway, thanks for this post!

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