To what extent is your blog a place for your own self-expression and creativity vs. a site designed to attract readers? How do you balance that? If sticking to certain topics and types of posts meant your readership would triple, would you do it?

My blog serves my own interests, as I use it as a soapbox to express myself to anyone who cares to read. I don’t actively seek out readers, as I blog principally to journal my travel through this lifetime. If I pick up readers, and they enjoy reading what I have to write, that’s a value added extra, a happy touch of serendipity but that is where it starts and ends. I refuse to pander to the hated phrase “SEO” which I find distasteful and repugnant. Who cares if the search engines find my drivel, I’m the last person who wants to game the system. I’m just here to talk into the darkness. I find that very comforting, as the darkness is a great listener.

I don’t and I won’t “monetize” my blog because that, along with the general notion of advertising makes me feel like my work is being turned into bait for a trap than worth anything on it’s own. There is a difference between a pat of cheese and something really worth pursuing. One of those is just there laying on a trigger in a trap. No ads, no money, just my drivel standing on it’s own with all the attendant misuses of grammar, spelling, and general gleeful disrespect for English. As I have said before, English is a whore, screw her, then push her down the MC Escher staircase.

If you enjoy reading this drivel, thanks, for what it’s worth. 🙂