I'm a late adopter of the whole blogging thing. At times I feel like a late developer at school, finding excuses to be last showering after phys ed. Thankfully I'm a developer who's focused on web technologies for a number of years now, making the technicalities a lot more accessible. But still, hosting a site publicly has introduced a new world to me.

Obviously I want what I write to be read. There are many things I can do by myself that have more obvious immediate reward. I've decided to devote these chunks of time for various reasons, lowest on the list is a misplaced geek narcissism. While I'm in this for the long term, knowing people are reading makes it immediately worthwhile. But getting people to read at all is the challenge.

This has given me a baptism of fire into the world of analytics, submission, optimisation and all things that offend my modesty and original intent. I was vaguely aware that there were professional bloggers out there (Jeff Atwood, for one, but doubtless others I read), but I must confess sites like ProBlogger have been an eye opener.

I've recently added Google AdSense, but that'll likely end shortly. After two days and a few hundred impressions I'm sitting on a balance of $0.00, so when I hit infinity I'll still get nothing back. I think Justin Etheridge summed it up best, "You're annoying your readers, and you're not making any money". The AdSense experiment has given me insight into the sheer volumes that the pros must need to sustain themselves, though, and a better understanding of the origin of spam.

Besides, I don't want to turn this into a profession. I enjoy my job as a developer, my learning and experience that I blog about can only ever stem from this. I feel I'd have sold out if I construct posts targeting keywords, with appropriate density, of course. I'm not prepared to use Google keyword tools to find the long tail, and produce content that will draw them in. The thought of paid reviews and listings is bizarre, as is reciprocal (paid?) linking.

I've recently sent my blog out to numerous free submission sites, though. I poured myself a single malt, rubbed some anti-inflammatory into the wrists for the carpal tunnel, googled for "Blog Submission", and hit them hard. I've never typed my own name so many times. I felt like my parents must have when Christmas card mass mailing was still vogue. I'll likely draw a visitor here or there, though, so that'll be nice. Some are actually really decent, and I plan to spend some time browsing their directories.

I've had the links to dzone and DotNetKicks for a while, knowing that they're both great sites that could draw traffic, but mainly since BlogEngine had them here by default. Only recently I noticed that other bloggers submitted their own content (I had assumed that was faux pas, so avoided it). I followed their lead and submitted some of my own posts. Not everything, mind you, just the few I think are the more valuable. My ever-watched Google analytics has demonstrated the numbers of readers this had drawn, so I'll likely continue. To those of you who've followed the links, welcome, and please let me know if this is, indeed, reprehensible.

This is, after all, a whole new world to me...