Hi guys, I’m down here! Keep scrolling, you’ll find my site under all the ads. Keep scrolling…..
Wow. So….ads! As you know, I was trying to format my blog and I did something really strange. In the process of trying to repair the damage I had done, my site went a bit funky for about a week there. There were word ads everywhere! I have finally managed to learn how to control how these show all over the place and have them removed. If you are like I am, you hate visiting sites that are plastered with ads! I hope that I have solved the problem, and I truly apologize for any frustration or annoyance that this may have caused for you. Thank you so much for your understanding.
For anyone struggling with this, contact WP support. They’ve been very helpful!
Yours truly decided that she was going to give this blog a complete make-over. In the process, I seem to have installed some items which did not work well with my format and seems to have scrambled … or just deleted…. many things on this website.
Basically, I got a bit over-motivated and broke my site. 🙁
I am working with wordpress to correct these ‘issues’ as quickly as just is possible. Please be understanding. We will find a way to get things back to normal soon!
This post (formerly just accidentally published & emailed to all of you…sori about that!) is about a new blog series I have been thinking about.
I thought it might be nice to share some of my budget bending tips for all things. Living on a budget isn’t easy. Neither is blogging on one. But if there’s one thing I have learned, it’s how to live on as lean a budget as possible. Also some time-management, resource management & quick solutions. I know that I am not alone in this, so I thought, this might be a fun series to start here on Lifexperiment Blog.
I am a blogger, I am broke… I am the broke blogger. Hey, why not?
I decided that I would like to add a bit of ‘newness’ to my blog here. As you surely noticed, I have been changing formats like I’m trying for new shoes. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. I just can’t seem to find a format that I’m super happy with.
Does this happen to you? Do you become overwhelmed with the options and find something you think is perfect only to discover you can do nothing with it? Ugh.
Oh, if there was a format that you either do or do not like, please let me know.
Very, very cool! I am all smiles at the moment 😀 😀 😀 You can imagine my reaction when I looked at my email yesterday evening and noticed an email from Bloggers Bash. I have seen some of the posts about Bloggers Bash shared on some of my favourite sites, so I knew it was a real thing. At first, I didn’t completely understand what was happening. And then…Eureka!
Speaking the truth, I really don’t know how to react. This is the first actual blog award I have ever been nominated for, so I am surprised, stupid happy and many other things which I am unable to describe at the moment. I guess ‘can’t find words’ is true in this case. (I always wondered how that was possible, now I know!) I also spent most of last evening dancing around and annoying my husband. I think I mentioned this at least 30 times. Today I will mention it more, but I did not receive the email until it was already evening. 😉
So here’s the thing: Some of you actually nominated me! (Yes, I checked the site to make sure I didn’t actually nominate myself in some weird early morning stupor. I didn’t. It’s impossible.) So to whoever of you nominated me, A VERY BIG THANK YOU!! I cannot believe it! As a blogger, having someone appreciate our work enough to nominate us for an actual award means so very much. Especially when there are days when all of us wonder if anyone is actually reading our posts. 😀 So Happy….SSSSOOOOO HAPPY!
The email told that voting does not happen for awhile yet. I will, of course, let you know when voting begins. Because, well…now that I’m in this thing, I think we should do this!
Thank you to everyone in my blog family for making this such an awesome place to be!
Well, my people, I’ve done it! I have completed the year long blog following experiment! Can you believe that a year has already passed? Where does the time go so quickly?! For those of you that are unfamiliar with this experiment of mine, allow me to explain. As many of us do, I got really frustrated following blogs that would suddenly stop, or disappear. I started to do some online researching (because, well, that’s what I do!) and some of the articles I found were… eye-opening. Like this post from Hellbound Bloggers which states that ‘…out of every 100 newbie bloggers, around 90 hang up their boots even before enjoying a trivial amount of success’. (Singhal, Harshit, 23 April 2017) or this beauty from the New York Times which cites a 2008 survey by Technorati and says ‘only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs that the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to roughly 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned…’ ( Quenquay, Douglas,5 June 2009) I kept telling myself, that this can’t just be true! So, I decide to do a little test for myself. You can find the full blogpost here explaining this whole process.
Results:
I followed 1000 blogs at random for 12 months:
Sites remaining after 1 year: 480 = 48% of total
Of those 480 sites, 346 had been updated within 7 days.
Month 1: 80 sites removed in February, which hadn’t updated the site in 2 months, 8% of total
Month 2: 95 sites removed in March, which hadn’t update in 2 months. 9,5% of total
Month 3: 0 sites removed in April. 0% of total. This has my attention. What’s happening in April?
Month 4: 25 sites removed in Maj, which hadn’t update in 2 months. 2,5% of total
Month 5: 23 sites removed in June, which hadn’t updated in 2 months. 2,3% of total.
Month 6: 35 sites removed in July, which hadn’t updated in 2 months. 3,5% of total
Month 7: 29 sites removed in August, which hadn’t updated in 2 months. 2,9% of total
Month 8: 23 sites removed in September, which hadn’t updated in 2 months. 2,3% of total
Month 9: 33 sites removed in October, which hadn’t been updated in 2 month. 3,3% of total
Month 10: 26 sites removed in November, which hadn’t been updated in 2 months. 2,6% of total
Month 11: 50 sites removed in December, which hadn’t been updated in 2 months. 5% of total
Month 12: 83 sites removed in January, 2019, which hadn’t been updated in 1 month or more. 8,3% of total
18 sites were formatted where the posting dates were unavailable/hidden. 1,8% of total
Analysis:
Although my small, unprofessional experiment shows that 52% of the blogs I followed were left abandoned within the year. This is a large difference to the 75%-95% of failing blogs that I read about.
It does seem to my mind that the reports were accurate in that the larger percentile of blogs left abandoned were within the time frame of the first 3-6 months of the blog’s creation.
Surprisingly, there seems to be an interesting pattern regarding the time of year. This may be entirely coincidence, but it seems that a higher percentage of blogs are ‘abandoned’ during the winter months. I very much want to know why April seems to be a magical month for blogging! Not even 1 blog was left unattended for the 2 month limit during the month of April. Which tells me that something is happening during March/April that is affecting blogging motivation. This may warrant further study, as I am unable to stop thinking about it.
34,6% of the total blogs studied had updated within 7 days of the end of the experiment. Many (but not all) of these blogs have an excess of 1000 followers. This could be approached from the view that more followers, leads to more blogging focus. OR that higher blogging focus leads to more followers. Either or neither could be true.
Methodology:
Follow 1000 blogs directly from the reader in a range of topics at varying times of day. I didn’t read them, I just hit the follow button on the top few posts under each topic. Wait several hours and repeat so as to gain a variety of nationalities. This lasted several days.
Once monthly, I would remove the blogs that had not been updated in 2 months. I would collect data and record it in experiment excel file. (colour-coded by month unfollowed)
On January of 2019 (the final month of the experiment) I removed all blogs which had not been updated in 1 month or more. Data was collected, recorded & coded in excel file.
On January of 2019, I recorded data as well on all remaining blogs that had been updated within 7 days.
Recorded data counted and recorded in above ‘results’ section
Methodological issues that could result in false data:
I was unable to give accurate monthly updates, as I first thought I would be able to. This is due to the fact that 1000 blogs is ALOT and when you go ‘manage blogs’, I noticed that only part of them would display. Even when I waited patiently, changed the order…It still could not display the entire list. This also needs to be taken into account when considering the things that could have affected the outcome of my experiment.
Blogs followed were followed directly from the reader > discover > tags section. As it would distort data to include some languages, but not others, I used only english language in the tags search (as it seems to be the most widely used language on this platform). This has limited the control group to blogs written in the english language.
1,8% of total blogs followed did not show (on my reader or their sites) the date of last update. So there is a 1,8% unknown variable
So this is what I have found, people. I did invest much time into this experiment and I hope that I was able to offer some data that you find interesting. There are some surprises in this which I think may warrant further investigation.
Thank you for reading and you are welcome to share this if you wish.
-Mliae
*Sources:
Pixabay, Feature photo
Quenquay, Douglas, ‘Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest’ New York Times, 5 June 2009
Singhal, Harshit, ‘5 Reasons Why Most Bloggers Quit Blogging Within 6 Months’ Hellbound Bloggers, 23 April 2017
*This blog experiment was a small-scale, personal experiment for blogging/entertainment purposes which should in no way be considered as professional, publishable data.
Today, I want to ask you about posting some of my series’ a bit more often. I have noticed that my ‘Quirky Quotes‘, ‘Random Factoids‘ and ‘Getting to Know You‘ series’ have actually had a much better response than I ever imagined they would. I have tons of fun with these also, so I have been going back-and-forth on the idea of doing them weekly, as opposed to monthly as I do now.
I originally opted to post these monthly because 1) I never imagined anyone other than myself would have so much fun with it and…2) I was only posting 2-3 times weekly. I am now posting more often so it would not be difficult at all to include these on a more frequent basis as well.
You are the ones reading my blog, so I leave this question in your very capable hands. Would you like to see more of these, or prefer I keep it the way it is now?
I love it when I get happy notifications from WP. Today, it’s that Lifexperiment Blog is celebrating its 3 year anniversary!
I must admit, I never thought that I would be celebrating 3 years here. I am so honoured that you take the valuable time out of your lives to read, comment, chat and even offer fun ideas! It means so much to me. I feel like I have made so many connections here, my home on the blogosphere. Thank you, so very much!
Every year when this time rolls around, I like to thank everyone by hosting a link party…and this is it! Please, feel free to tell us a bit about your site and leave your link in the comment section of this post. I hope that you will take the time to hang out a bit, chat and visit some others sites. We have a great community here!
So grab a drink, a few bites and let the fun commence! Wooohoooo!
Also, you are free to share this post if you think your readers might want to join the link-up also!
Happy Sunday! Well, maybe not for everyone…you know what ‘they’ say: Going to sleep on Sunday, results in Monday. Anywhoo…
I read a great post by Ali at the Mindful Gardener. In the post, the possibility of starting a new theme on WP is discussed. That theme being ‘Soulful Sunday’. Now, don’t cringe. This has nothing to do with religion. (Trust me, I get it. I was scratching my head too before I read the post.) No. This is about posting a photo and telling about something that kind of makes you all warm and fuzzy inside that relates to it. (Please, correct me if I am mistaken here.) However, due to the ease of misunderstanding – I’m switching up to ‘Significant Sunday’.
I, personally, think it’s a grande idea! I mean…why not. As bloggers, we discuss products, health, travel, love, gardening and all manner of technical things. But we never quite manage to make ourselves the tiniest bit vulnerable, do we?
So here we are; Let’s get personal.
This is my nostalgia for the week. I know, it seems like I’m about to do a promo. I assure you, it is nothing of the sort. The reason this makes me nostalgic is purely because of thoughtfulness and a seemingly new tradition of sorts. You see, every December for the past 3 years, no matter where in the world I am at the moment, my mother sends me a Body Shop Advent Calendar. It has come to my home, my office, and at one point when I was unable to be pinpointed exactly, a local pickup.
Ever year she waits for them to be released. And ever year I get a different one. And every year, I do not have to go out and buy myself nice smelling items for a good long while!
The fact that she thinks of me so diligently (and also that she manages to find a way to get these to me) just warms my heart.
Family is so IMPORTANT! We must take the time to appreciate every bit of thoughtfulness. Our schedules are never too busy for that!
I thought long and hard if I should invest the time and effort required to do this, and the answer is ‘Yes’. A while back, I was quite frustrated because so many of the blogs I follow just seem to drop off the face of the earth. No explanation, no nothing. Sometimes a blogger will return months later with an apology post. I understand that life happens. But it can’t be that so many people drop out due to illness or family situations.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you can read my initial post here. I wrote a post saying that I was so tempted to follow a random 1000 blogs for 1 year to see how many were left standing at the end of that year. I didn’t want to do it from this blog because I am an avid reader of the blogs I follow here. I didn’t want them mixed up & wasn’t sure how to go about it, or if I should.
Thanks to the fact that I’ve got some awesome people who actually read my blog (THANK YOU!), I got some great advice in the comment section. So, I created a different site and spent several weeks following my 1000 blogs that will make up my ‘research base’. Once every month for the next 12 months, I will go through and unfollow every blog that has not posted for 2 months or more. (I am leaving a bit of room for error on the updated message, as some bloggers may have scheduled posts a month in advance.) On the 12th month, I will visit each blog that hasn’t updated in 1 month just to make sure there aren’t really any new posts (earlier than a month) and if not, I will unfollow those as well.
Each month, I will post an update of how many remain out of the original 1000. If I can manage to keep track of it, I will also keep a record of how many I lost that particular month and maybe it will give us a glimpse of actual insights. Plus, I will continually be looking for any additional publications or stats regarding the same issue.
This should be an interesting experiment. I do hope its worth the time I’m investing in it & I hope you find it somewhat interesting as well.
My first stats to share with you are this: It took me about a month to follow 1000 blogs. By the time I got them all followed, there were 5 blogs that hadn’t updated (according to the reader) in 2 months or more. I’m thinking that most of these had to have scheduled posts because I followed from the reader. Of the 1000 followed blogs, 28 followed me back. 1 of those that followed, no longer exists as a WP site. Wow, that was fast!
I follow a lot of blogs. A LOT. It’s part of being an active part of the blogging community. This is not a problem, as I never have a lack of blog reading material. I also learn a lot. However, I’ve noticed that I have to purge my followed blogs on a very regular basis or else it just becomes all clogged up. I haven’t purged my reader in quite a few months, so last week, when I embarked on the purge, I was shocked by what I saw. WP now shows how long its been since each blog has updated last. OMG. Do you know that I found blogs who hadn’t updated in 2 years?! Now, when I follow a blog its because I’m interested. They seem to be updated regularly before I hit the subscribe button. But this…THIS! I purged more than 65% of the blogs I was following because they hadn’t updated in MONTHS!
Those of you who have been reading here for awhile probably remember that one of my biggest pet peeves is when a blogger disappears for months and then writes a post apologizing – and – returning. Now, I understand some people are sick, or are dealing with loss & transition. That is not the problem. If I know that you are dealing with things, then of course I’ll wait. But if you just up and vanish, then come back 5 months later apologizing – that life has been hectic – I’m out. I want to follow bloggers who are dedicated. Bloggers who care that their readers are looking for them. If your blog isn’t a priority to you, it surely isn’t going to be a priority to me. Know what I’m saying?
So, anyway. After many hours of deleting blogs who are no longer in existence, I find myself wondering ‘is this a regular thing?’. Am I going to have to continue cleaning out my reader every month. Am I really investing this much time … into this? Why do so many blogs just … stop?
So, I am so tempted to follow like 1,000 new blogs for 1 year, just to see how many are left that update more than once a month. No, really. Why? Because life is an experiment. That’s why.
The only tricky part to this is that I follow many blogs that I love to read and that update regularly & I don’t want to get them mixed in with my experiment group.
I was having some technical issues last night and it seems I managed to lock down the entire site in the process. My apologies, we’re up and running again now! If you don’t mind, please let me know if you can view the site or if I’m still on private mode.
Next time, I’ll send out a post beforehand so you’ll know whats happening. Thank you for caring! 🙂
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a link-up, and they’re always so much fun! However, I wanted to do something a bit different this time. You see, I need your help!
With all the noise I’ve been making about Halloween, I finally decided to do it. I’m throwing a Halloween party! There will be both children and adults, so it has to be suitable. But I need some fun food ideas. Easy ones. I can cook, but I am no chef. But….. For some weird reason, I have a mental block against baked goods. Cakes, cookies, rolls – fuhgget about it. So, I’m sending a plea out into the blogosphere! If you have any, easy to make – don’t need a ton of ingredients – Halloween recipe on your blog, please leave it below! (Or if you have a recipe not yet on the blog & feel like helping me out – please write that bad boy out!) I need all the help I can get! Also, I’ll share the recipes I used after the party in a follow-up post 🙂
Whaddya say? Can you help me?
Can’t wait to see what you’ve got! Remember to leave the link to your Blog’s Halloween recipe below!
When it comes to reblogging, we should never assume that all bloggers would like their work to be shared. Many do, of course, as its a great way to create awareness of ones blog. But not all blogs are the same. Many blogs are related to specialized fields or have taken a sincere amount of research, or the blogger/author would like to keep their content unique. Not to mention the businesses on wordpress which create a blog as a way to create a more personal bond with their clients. This is why we must always. ALWAYS ask before reblogging a post, and ad a sincere thank you and shout-out to the original author when reblogging.
This can be time-consuming and frustrating when we, as bloggers, stumble upon a post that we would love to share because we know our readers would really like to see it! To help ease the pain a bit, I have put together a list of sites that have stated that being reblogged is totally cool and they appreciate it.
I will be updating this list for you regularly. If you would like your site to be added onto the list, please leave a link and state that you would like to be added, in the comment section below.
Feel free to reblog this post, and keep it handy for reference later if you’re a reblogging fan! And remember; If you would like your site added to this ever-growing list, please leave a comment about it in the comments section 🙂
What are some of your biggest blogging turn-off’s that make you hit that un-follow button?
My answer: Blogs that still sport WP templates (i.e.; ‘This is where your feature post is displayed’) on their pages is the biggest. Having to search difficult to navigate home pages in order to find recent posts is another turn-off.
I had to share this great blogging post from www.aopinionatedman.com This is one of the blogs I follow daily and it is chock full of great advice from a standpoint based in reality. 🙂 I think all of us need these reality checks every once in awhile…
Thanks, J, for letting me share!
If the title to this post is a bit of a head-scratcher, please allow me to explain. Since reblogging seems to be a bit of a hot-potato issue, I decided that I would just straight up ask all of you, to please let us know whether you are pro-reblog or anti-reblog. There is no judgement here, or explanation needed. It would just be simpler to know and share those blogs which encourage their followers to reblog, and to be aware of the blogs that would rather keep their content original, so that people will know to respect your wishes and not hit that reblog button.
So here’s my thinking: Everyone is more than welcome to join. The more, the merrier! I will, at a later date, be posting a comprehensive list (or several, dependent on the level of interaction) of sites that have an open reblog policy. I would also like to somehow let people know of good blogs that would prefer to maintain their original content. (In a separate post). If this is something that interests you, you let me know in the comments section and I will link to you on the follow-up posts. Bonus point- you can use this post as an arena to market your site. I will only include sites in the list who have clearly stated whether they prefer TO be reblogged, or whether they prefer NOT to be reblogged, along with the link to your site (so as to avoid any confusion on my part).
Please, if you would like to be included, leave your stance on the issue in the comment section along with your link. And, since I love reblogs and would like to make this list as comprehensive as possible, please feel free to share this post 🙂 Let’s make the blogosphere a more familiar place!
Today, I’m celebrating my first glorious year of blogging! This month has been full of surprises and celebrations and I am so happy to be able to share another high note with you 🙂 Imagine my delight when I woke and found thins notification:
‘Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!
Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.’
It’s been an amazing year and I’ve had the privilege to meet so many of my fellow bloggers and make some really great friends! I’ve found myself going from posting once weekly, to 2-3 times weekly, and recently on an almost daily basis! I guess I just have too much to talk about…blabbermouth 😉
Thank you so much, everyone for your continued readership, help, ideas and friendship! You have really kept me smiling and blogging this year!
This was my very first post. Boy, we’ve come a long way, haven’t we? Happy 1st birthday, Lifexperiment blog!
As I was scrolling through my email, instagram and followed blogs this morning, I began noticing a common theme: Turkeys.
Turkeys?!? Why? Did I miss something or somehow otherwise pull a Rip Van Winkle last night? You know, go to bed in October with all the ghouls and spooky stuff, Wake up in November with all things …Thanksgiving?
What’s with all the Turkeys?! Seriously, please enlighten me.
-Mliae
Update: Thanks to the very friendly blogger over at The Analyzed Life , I just learned that today is Canadian Thanksgiving! So THAT explains all the turkeys in my feed. Thank you for enlightening me 🙂 Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
Hi all! I wanted to share my guest post that I wrote for Chape Personal Trainer. He’s got a great site, full of motivational posts and some super workouts! I recommend you give it a look-see, you’ll love it 🙂
I hope you enjoy his site as much as I do and I truly hope you enjoy the read!
This is only the second blog party I have hosted. However, I thought that due to my upcoming bloggaversary of my first year blogging, that it’s the perfect time to host a Par-tay!!
Everyone here has made it possible for me to continue blogging and I would like to give you a sincere ‘Thank You!’ for being awesome!
The gig is pretty simple:
Say hello and drop your link in the comments below
Don’t be a wall flower, meet some people! Eat, chat, drop some rhymes or funny anecdotes and enjoy yourself!
Reblog this post on your site, the more, the merrier!
Grab some hors d’oeuvres & a glass of bubbly, then check out some of the other sites 🙂
Enjoy yourself!
I’ll be hosting this party for the next few days, so don’t be shy!
Thanks so much to those of you who helped me get to the proper places in wordpress to figure out what I had done to my pages, while creating more pages. I finally got everything all linked up in the header menu for easier navigation! Yes!
I’m still having a hard time figuring out how to add additional pages that will automatically update with said tags, without losing my entire menu and many days of work. Once again, if you have tips, please share!
OMG..WHAAAATTT?! 😀 I can’t believe it! I’m super duper excited to share that I now have 1000 wordpress subscribers!
When I started blogging in October of 2015, I wasn’t sure I was taking the right path. I set a challenging goal for myself: 1,000 subscribers. I told myself, if I can reach the 1000 mark by my first year blogaversary, then I will continue blogging, I’ve found my place! If I fall short of that mark, then it is a clear sign that I am not doing something correctly, and after spending a year blogging, maybe its best if I pursue other options.
Today, I have reached that goal in wordpress! All in all, email subscribers included, I have reached an excess of 1,200! THANK YOU SO MUCH, EVERYONE!
