Monday, May 5, 2014

A to Z Reflections Post

Once again I survived the April A to Z blog challenge.
This year's theme of Witches was a bit closer to my heart and I had a great time.
Here are my reflections in no particular order.



- Joining up Tasha and Sophie for the Supernatural A to Z mini-hop was one of the best things about this year. They were both great and I got to read a lot of great supernatural themed posts.

- Once again I got to visit some really great blogs and some really great people stopped by mine.  Maybe that is worth it all right there.

- I did get some new followers, which is very nice. Not something I was planning to get to be honest, but I am very happy to have you all.

- I got a lot of great comments from new visitors talking about how my posts helped them in their research or gave them something new to think about.  Likewise there were plenty of posts on other blogs that were helpful to me too.

- My hits were roughly flat.  I know I was getting more traffic from the A to Z thanks to Google Analytics, so there must be a corresponding drop in regular readers.  I find this disappointing to be honest.  After all the material in April is just as good as the material in June with the same amount of posting.
Anyone that doesn't like the A to Z care to chime in?

- I didn't get a chance to go to every site on the challenge this year as I have in years past.

- There are still a number of sites that use CAPTCHA and even set their posts to moderated which is annoying.  A few never bothered to even approve some posts.  I also don't understand blogs that don't allow replies at all. Seems to defeat the entire purpose of a blog really.

I enjoy doing the A to Z Challenge. Next year I would like to do vampires, but also include something that my regular audience can use in a game every day.  But I am going to consider it long an hard before I do.  The joy just wasn't there for me this year.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on completing yet again. Vampires sounds interesting.
Well done.
Yvonne.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

That's sad the hits were flat. I think I only made it by a couple times, but I didn't do the A to Z this year because I knew I'd be too busy. I also worried that my non-A to Z posts would get lost, but I got record comments last month. Go figure.

Arlee Bird said...

I'm not much help from the non-a-to-z'er standpoint and I think it still has great potential. Everything was down on my blogs, but I was not very active in my networking and I think that makes a huge difference.

Hope you get some feedback from the non-participant side.

Thanks for the help you gave me this year. You did a great job.

Lee
A Faraway View
An A to Z Co-host blog

Jeremy Patrick said...

Speaking only for myself, I visited a bit less the past month because I'm primarily interested in your general discussions of D&D, gaming, new books, etc. In-depth descriptions of various witches just isn't my thing--but that's okay! I'm happy to stick things out for a month here or there.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

@Jeremy, Thanks! That kind of feedback is really welcome.

@Lee, Glad to help every year!

@Diane, it's no big deal, I may have hit the maximum saturation for my blog. I did miss seeing you this year though.

@Yvonne. Thanks!

Click said...

Well done for completeing the challenge.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one whose already starting to think about possible topics for next year's challenge. :-)

B~Natrelle said...

Hello there.
Congratulations on completing the challenge! Thanks for sharing. I'm just stopping by briefly as I try to navigate the twists and turns of the Road Trip…don't forget to wave when you see me drive by. (lol)
Entrepreneurial Goddess