Hello, I hope this picture of my handsome husband with professional wrestler Mick Foley got your attention. Consider this my gift to you in return for interrupting this regularly scheduled blog with a bit of business.
Since I only update 3-4 times per month, many of you follow me on Facebook so that you know when there is a new entry. As you may have heard, Facebook has recently made some changes that make it very, very difficult for "small businesses" to stay in touch with their fans.
Let's be honest, this is a hobby, not a business. I make enough money from advertising to pay for hosting and that is it. Of course, every little blogger like me dreams of being the next Dooce, and that is why this situation is so frustrating. I have worked my butt off for YEARS to get to just 450 fans on Facebook. Do you know how many people saw the last link I posted to Facebook? 61. The one before that? 82. Not even 20% at this point.
The option they give you to reach more people is to pay to promote each individual post. This costs $5 each time and I can "reach" 2,000 people. Not even my 451 fans, necessarily, but 2,000 random people. I tried this once a couple times ($10, equal to one year of hosting) and got one new fan. One. I do better than that when I just post the link to my personal Facebook page and beg my friends to share it.
So, I am done with Facebook. I'll still post the link there when I update, but I can't make a full time job out of increasing my reach when it would take away from providing new content. If you use other social networks, you can follow me on Twitter, G+, or Pinterest. (Stop by and check out the new Pinterest page, at least. I love the look of a visual archive!) If you still maintain that they will have to pry Facebook out of your cold, dead hands, you can get a link to the latest posts emailed to you by using the subscribe list on the sidebar.
Of course, regular readers are a million times more valuable to me than any "reach" on Facebook. I appreciate every single time you tell a friend or share a link. Knowing that even 61 people care about what I'm doing keeps me digging for more fun things to do, and for the first time ever I think I'm going to get through the winter without a big "oops, there went January" lag. Thank you!
EDIT to add one more: I'm really enjoying the revamped StumbleUpon! Come join me in the search for inspiration!
FaceBook has neither ever made, nor does it currently make, any sense to me. The number of people who "saw" a given post I make there varies so wildly that I cannot begin to comprehend how it works (if indeed there is a proper "how it works," which I doubt). The whole thing is a liar's game, I tell ya!
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