Busting the Newbie Blues in 2012!

Busting the Newbie Blues a great event organized by one of my favourite bloggers Small Review is back, and I'm taking part again! I love this event because not only does it offer bloggers helpful advice and encouragement, it also enables me to find great blogs which for some reason or another might not be on my radar. 

You can see my 2011 Busting the Newbie Blues post here if you want to check it out.

You can find out more about the event here.

When did you start your blog? 

March 2010

Do you ever still feel like a newbie? 

 Yes and No. At this point I feel pretty comfortable in my blogging skin, but then there are some days too when I feel totally out of the loop. I guess the thing is with the internet and with blogging is that it's a very fast moving medium, constantly evolving and changing. Sometimes I keep up, sometimes I fall behind. I don't think I'll ever stop learning.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?  Did you make any mistakes new bloggers can learn from? 

When I answered this last year I said my biggest challenge was dealing with HTML and fixing up my layout. That's still true, by the way. It's a constant struggle. These days I try not to mess with the HTML.

Scheduling post and blogging regularly is always a challenge too. I can appear to be very organized --people often say this to me in my real life and I have to laugh in their faces. :-p I am Miss Last Minute. If I can get away with not planning something, I will do it.  I like being spontaneous. Trust me though, in blogging matters, scheduling is key. And it's something I'm still working on. At this point I know that scheduling posts for maybe three days is as much as I can hope for, though. Currently I don't have anything scheduled for next week. Hmmmm....

Oh, and reading slumps. We blog because we love to read. And then we are sent books for review that we might not necessarily read, but we read them, because it's a new publishing contact, or because we were sent it for review and now we feel obligated. I've done this, and my advice to new bloggers is don't fall into that trap. Read for fun, read because you love to read, review what you want to review. You don't have to review every book you read. You don't have to read every book you are sent. That said, the majority of review books I receive are 'surprise' review books. If you are requesting all those review books, you probably want to be reviewing most of them  too!

What did you find most discouraging about being a new blogger? How did you deal with this? 

 Comments! The lack of comments! I used to really stress about this. And then I stopped stressing. I usually get a fair amount of comments on my posts nowadays, but if you look back to this time last year, I used to get more. Because I was obsessed with comment counts. I thought that comments equaled success in blogging terms, and I wanted more, more, more. But while comments are nice, they're not the be all and end all.  If you want to receive comments on your blog, you have to give them. But then I decided that I didn't want to spend all of my free time commenting on blogs. So now I just comment when I can, and if people like my blog enough to comment, that's cool. If I notice you on my blog, I'll more than likely seek out yours and comment too. :)

It's also discouraging if you comment over and over again on certain blogs and they never visit you in return. I know, I've been there. But I've probably done that too, and it's not intentional. It's not because I don't like your blog. I'll get their eventually. Like I said, I'm completely disorganized. I have very poor time management skills, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're flat out lying!

Also (I know, I know, I need to wrap this up--this is important, though!) This didn't apply to me as a new blogger, either because it wasn't happening, or maybe just because I wasn't aware of it, but I will say to new bloggers: don't be turned off blogging or reviewing because of recent events in the blogging/reviewing community. Just don't be. Write your honest reviews, and if anyone has a problem with that, then that's their problem, not yours. Honestly...

What do you find most encouraging?

 The lovely community of bloggers I met when I first started blogging. A bunch of us started around the same time and now y'all are my book twins.

Comments, too. I don't stress about having a whole lot of comments on my post, but it's still nice to get them, especially on book reviews. I like hearing what people think about my reviews, if they've felt the same as me about a certain book, or if they feel totally differently. I like to hear that too.

If you could go back in time and speak with your newbie self, what five bits of wisdom would you tell yourself?

Don't stress the follower count and don't stress over comments either. Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. Stick with it and you'll get the followers and the comments.

ARC's are good, but they aren't the be all and end all of blogging. You don't need to get ARC's to be a blogger. Additionally, your blog won't suffer if you never get an ARC.

Remember: Quality not Quantity. One or two meme's once in a while is fine. A meme every other day, not so much. Concentrate on the reviews!

You don't need to post every day. You don't need to stay awake until 1a.m to write that review. Seriously. It doesn't have to go live tomorrow. The next day will do.

Remember why you started blogging and remember that blogging should always be fun. Don't ever take it too seriously. It's not a job.

What do you like best about the blogs you read? Have you tried to replicate this in your blog? 

I like blogs that have good quality, detailed and honest reviews. I don't want to read a blog that rates everything five stars, where every book is the best book ever, because that's just not true.

I like a little personality and bloggers that are innovative with the features they do.

I like clean and simple layouts. 

I like nice people. Bloggers that whinge and moan. Not for me.

Yes, I've tried to replicate all of this in my blog. Have I succeeded? You tell me. :)

What do you dislike about blogs you’ve seen? Do you try to avoid this? 

I dislike mean and bitchy reviews. I don't like writing negative reviews, but I do it, because I always want to be honest in my reviews. I never get personal, though.

Also, reviews that tell me nothing other than the synopsis I already read on Goodreads.

Meme filled blogs. I'm all good with memes, but I've seen blogs where everything is a meme.

Cluttered layouts. MUSIC on blogs. I love music. But not on blogs. Countdown widgets that autoplay. Ugh.

Oh, and complicated comment systems. I know they look fancy, but they are sometimes a waste of my time and I might just have to leave without commenting.

I think I've avoided all of this. None of that here.

 How did you bring your blog to the attention of so many people?  

Twitter - every blogger should utilize twitter. I'm very active on twitter & I get a lot of my traffic from there.

Submitting to Search Engines and Book Blogger Directories.

Commenting on other blogs, reaching out, saying hello.

Blog Tours (although I'm not sure on how much traffic they bring) and giveaways! (Lots of traffic. Traffic jams!)

When and how did you get your first ARC (or first few ARCs)?  

I've looked back through my posts and it looks like my first review copy was Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James--one of my favourite books, so I got lucky!  This came about via a Waiting on Wednesday post I did about a month after starting the blog which the UK publisher saw (probably after I had sent her the link on twitter!) and got in touch.

I contacted one or two UK publishers in the Summer of 2010 to inquire about blogger mailing lists,  and I'm still working with those publishers today. (I think the first publishers I contacted were Bloomsbury & Simon & Schuster--lovely people!)

A lot of UK publishers offer review copies via twitter, and this is where I make most of my contacts/have gotten most of my review copies in the past.

I've never requested very many review copies. It's tempting, but I have to stop myself. If I requested everything I'd like to read I'd never get anything done, and then everything would go insane!

That's all! I hope you like this post! Feel free to ask questions and leave feedback, because as I said above, comments aren't the be all and end all, but I love them all the same! :)