With 2016 comes to a close in a few weeks, it’s time to share my thoughts on the state of this blog along with other plans.
I have to admit that 2016 is a terrible year for me. Aside from troubles in real life, this blog hasn’t been doing that great. The main concern is the general lack of comments, which is very discouraging and demoralizing. It’s simply not reaching the amount of activity it used to be. In fact, it’s a huge drop-off from last year (683 vs 285) currently. This is a difficulty that some bloggers are facing and I am not alone in this.
I value discussion and comments on my blog since it can give me new ideas to write about. There is no surprise that there has been a lack of editorials in the past several months since I simply ran out of ideas. The comment drought is not helping. I feel that I’m wasting my time writing posts. The lack of comments give me the impression that few people are reading what I have to share. I find this troubling since I enjoy sharing my passion for anime and even video games. I simply don’t want to give that up.
With that in mind, this trend cannot continue and things have to change. I need to start focusing on developing the community, which I have been neglecting for a while. Perhaps I need to revive the forums, start writing guest posts for other blogs or even start a discord server. Either way, I need to figure out how to make this blog great again and build up the community. Otherwise, I will ultimately face burnout.
Aside from that, there are some things I want to accomplish in December. The obvious is reviewing Pocket Monsters Sun and Moon. I decided to get both versions since I imported a copy of Sun, which will take a while. In other words, I am playing Moon, which I downloaded. Without spoiling the game, I enjoy it a lot thus far. I have streamed some of it on Twitch, but the video output over wireless haven’t been too reliable. Since my new 3DS has custom firmware, I will be able to take cleaner screenshots. If I have time left in this year, I will review Atelier Sophie as well. As usual, I plan on doing 12 Days of Anime, winter 2017 season preview and the end of year stuff.
In short, 2016 have been a pretty bad year so far. I hope that the remaining few weeks will redeem itself. Sure, I have faced several setbacks in real life and with my blog, but one can’t simply give up. The sun will rise and there will always be an opportunity for things to get better, even for this blog. If you have suggestions that are constructive to improve the state of this blog, feel free to share.
I bumped your priority in the feedreader way down 4 years ago when you went deep into the tank for Obama. Your last linkworthy article was the one about RDG in June 2013. Not sure if you just go spent regurgitating the same thing over and over, or I didn’t pay enough attention. Anyhow, the hope and change didn’t work out. But maybe we can make this blog great again.
After the elections, I don’t plan on covering any more political stuff given how awful the whole process is and life is short to keep dwelling on it. I think the episodic posts has run it’s course and I will probably eliminate them all together, which can help the editorial drought.
I wonder if that political joke you made was intentional?
In any case hopefully your Guest Post idea will help boost your views and stufff once more. That or get more acitivity in forum sites and stuff.
That’s the spirit! Don’t give up yet dood!
Yes, it was intentional, but I think i need to mix things up given that things have become formulaic in the past few years. I have to admit that I have neglected the social aspect due to work, and the time aspect won’t get any better once I go back to work, which can happen at any time. This might be a cause to the problems I am facing due to lack of promoting and such.
About guest posts, I’m actually thinking of asking it publicly soon on my blog to gauge some interests. It’s all a one big question mark at this point though so I’m still not too sure either if I want to even do this altogether (I mean, it’s not like I have the most charismatic presence in the internet myself, not sure if anyone’s even interested). Maybe you might be interested? If I’m doing it, I will most probably announce this on new year, so maybe we can work something out by then.
We’ll see, but most of the changes I am doing to this blog won’t go effect until next year, when I can start afresh. I will keep on a lookout for that.