Blogger Progress Report: One Week of Activity

After only one week of activity, it may not seem like the best time to start a Blogger Progress Report, but I would disagree. There is the fact that I am excited to write one; to tell you guys what I have been up to and how I have been feeling since I re-opened the MB Blog; and that I welcome any scrutiny or tips that may follow from it, as the first stage is all about learning. Or re-learning, in my case!

First off, you should know, if you don't already, that I am not blogging for profit at the moment. I am what you would class as a part-time blogger - so I blog either when inspiration comes to me or I make use of my time after work to write posts that I plan on posting later. For this reason, I will grow more slowly than full-time bloggers in terms of readership, and I know that I shouldn't, if possible, compare myself to them on design either. That said, I have been doing some research and adding to my 'reading list'. I have been reading some of the top ten travel blogs in the world, and yet I found at least a couple of them had very simple blog design, and this is where I would like to stand out and be different.

Aesthetics
My first step, after customising my theme and layout, was to have a look around at some logos. I knew I wanted something simplistic, brassy, and circular. I found a few that I liked, then made my own based from elements that I liked of all three. I am not saying that it is perfect or is here to stay forever, but at the moment I am working on the ethos of improving at least one thing each time I visit my blog (which at the moment is at least once per day). For instance, my new logo may have been up for a week, but it has taken until today to work out how to make it truly transparent. Re-learning Photoshop after so many years is hard, even with the online tutorial I read, and eventually I found transparency was easier to master on the alternative photo editing software I have been using. Who needs Photoshop anyway!

Another thing that I have found difficult to replicate is continuity when it comes to blog title images. I am finding that I have a bit of a mish-mash of fonts at the moment because I get too excited to use different ones, but this will easily be fixed when I have time to focus on it. Good continuity on images is something that all of my favourite blogs do well, so I really want to live up to this.

Pages
Just today I have added a Meet the Author page, something that was really Josh's idea to fill some of the page space at the top of my blog. I thought it was only fair for him to have his own section on there, as he contributes so much to it. We go on most of our adventures together, and I felt like he needed introducing, especially since most of my travel blogs are "we did this" and "we did that"!

Statistics
Hopefully soon I will be able to speak to you about stats. This one is going to be a little bit complicated for me as technically this blog has been on the net for several years, and so my all-time page views will not be in line with when I re-opened in August 19. I also found that my own visits to my blog were being tracked, as I had not turned the cookie blocker off on several devices (rookie mistake). As far as I am aware, there is no way to rectify this on the Blogspot Analytics, so I may be able to talk about Stats more next month. After reviewing them today, all I really noticed was that I have had at least one view come from Pinterest, which I only started linking to my blog yesterday, so that's a good sign!

Technology & Expenditure
You will be glad to know that our new Canon EOS M50 has ARRIVED! We took it for its first proper trip out to Elvaston Castle today, and I am pleased to be able to start tinkering around with it. The Wi-Fi/Smartphone feature will be something that is super useful when we are in Croatia, so I can't wait to see how it goes. Aside from this one-off purchase, the day-to-day running of my blog currently costs me nothing. The excellent image-editing software I use is free, and I have no plans to switch from it anytime soon.

Future
What do I see myself changing in the near-ish future? Well, at the moment I am all on board with Blogspot because I am very familiar with the software after years of using it. However, now that I am back to blogging I have been reading tonnes more blogs, for ideas, for inspiration, for recommendations and tips. One of the main things they all recommend is to begin your blog on Wordpress, as you will have more blog design options and better SEO. I tend to agree that at some point this is the way my blog will have to go, but I really want to prove to myself that I can and will keep this hobby going alongside my full-time job, before I pay for the Wordpress personal. My expectation is that - if I can keep regular content coming and growing an audience - I will begin to trial Wordpress at the beginning of 2020.

In the meantime, expect a few small things to change as I continue to tinker with how the blog looks and reads. Of course, as new content is posted, I will be going back and deleting some old content so that the blog does not become too bare all at once. Oh, and look out for my next Blogger Report which I hope will be one month from now!