State of the Blog Year 1: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

At the time this post should be going up, Espharel is a year old from its first post! For this wondrous anniversary, I've decided to throw back the curtain a bit and talk about what I've learned in a year of blogging.

What is Espharel?

First off, what the heck does this name even mean. In short, nothing. In length, it's a nonsense word I came up with and noted down years ago. Originally, I wanted to name this blog The Byzantine, in a twisted homage to The Alexandrian, one of the first RPG blogs I came in contact with. I went as far as to make it my username as well, but when the time came to make the blog, I found it, and most variations on it, taken (by years-inactive blogs! the horror!). So I instead worked through my old notes for inspiration, and found the word.

I decided afterwards that the name of my in-progress homebrew fantasy world, which most of my early blog posts detail, would be Espharel, the greatest city of which was Byzantium. That homebrew world quickly went on hold once I realized that I really wasn't good at worldbuilding, and trying to do it top-down like that didn't work.

Content

Learning what you want to write about and developing an identity around that takes time. For the first few months of blogging, I was effectively trying to be Goblin Punch, except for my own fantasy world instead of Centerra. At the time I hadn't discovered the OSR Discord, and had no engagement with the soon-to-die Google+. As a result, I wasn't really marketing myself, just putting out what I thought was good content to build a backlog of content, in the hopes that 'one day' I would have an audience.

After a couple-month hiatus I returned to blogging in the summer, and used the time I had to write a a much faster rate. Moving away from my old habits to write GLOG content gave me more inspiration, and I was reading more OSR blogs to get ideas. My first post to get traction was the Gun Witch, inspired by KSBD. I can credit its early popularity to a signal boost by red kangaroo of the Library of Attnam, who put it on a compilation of GLOG Wizards. Shortly after, I posted to the first time to the OSR Discord.

Looking back through my history there, I was surprised to find I first joined in March (The same day as Valker of Parasites and Paradoxes, actually), asked a single question then left. It was only in August that I came back. I shared a post, chatted with people like grimlucis, retrograde tardigrade xenograft, Lexi, Ancalagontb, sentient bacteria daddy and mtb-za, and made myself at home.

As I got more feedback and started to collaborate with other bloggers, particularly with Lexi on the Carbarian, I started to find an identity. I was an adapter, either taking short stories and turning them into classes, spinning dwarves as golems into a massive post, or (my biggest draw to the blog) adapting the Elder Scrolls to GLOG.

Posting Rate

When I got back into blogging in the summer, I tried to maintain a posting rate of once every three or four days. Oftentimes, I would be writing more quickly, and would save a post for later, so as not to spam the Discord. Once classes started again, that rate became untenable, but I wanted to keep myself dedicated to it. A posting rate of once a week, even if it was just a write-up of my Sunday game, would keep me on track.

Now that I'm off for Christmas, I've been maintaining a blistering posting rate of once every forty-eight hours. I'm slightly worried that I'm spamming people, but nobody's said anything yet so I'm sticking with it.

The key really is to keep your posting rate regular, making it a part of your schedule.

Audience size

I don't know how big others' audiences are, but I figure I'm (quite obviously) very much on the small end. Between posting to several channels on the Discord, some followers and clicks from other bloggers' rolls, my posts reliably get between thirty and fifty views in a day. Some, such as goblin-themed Christmas recipes, get much less. Others, like my Elder Scrolls stuff, get substantially more, but 30-50 is the usual range.

It's hard to say how that compares to other blogs, but compared to not having an audience at the start of the year, I'm pretty happy with it. Moreover, that figure has been steadily increasing over the last few months, so I think there's still room for organic growth, even in the niche OSR.

Tips for new bloggers

If, like me, you sometimes draft your posts in an external document, or paste things from other sites for reference, you may find that Blogger absolutely hates external formatting, especially colors. Paste without formatting is your best friend from here on out. I've recently gone back and edited several of my old articles so that they aren't rendered unreadable by a change in theme.

If you're having trouble keeping a regular schedule, consider what kind of content you're putting out. Do you play in or run a weekly game? A report on your most recent session will be entertaining or useful to somebody, trust me. Consider what media you consume, and see if you can adapt or take inspiration from it.

Look for collaborations with other bloggers. In my experience, especially on the Discord, people are open to collaborate and share even if they don't know you very well. You may think that somebody else is so much bigger than you are, so much more established that they won't want to collaborate with a newbie. In my experience, that's not the attitude here at all. Be respectful and honest and you'll do just fine.

Any other questions from behind the scenes? Thinking of starting a blog but don't know how? Drop a comment down below, and a Merry Christmas to all!