A to Z Challenge: Reflections

It is Finished

The A to Z challenge for the month of April is over. It actually was a lot of fun, especially since I'd been kinda lax in my posting lately. It was nice to have something to post about just about every day.

Firstly, this fun event was brought to you by several blogs:

• Arlee Bird's Tossing It Out
• Jeffrey Beesler's World of the Scribe
• Alex J. Cavanaugh Alex J. Cavanaugh
• Jen Daiker's Unedited
• Candace Ganger's The Misadventures in Candyland
• Karen J Gowen at Coming Down the Mountain
• Talli Roland
• Stephen Tremp's Breakthrough Blogs
  

I wish I could say it was a huge success for me. It is in that I actually completed it! It is in that I did gain a few more followers, but it's hardly the success I've seen others reporting in their wrap-up posts. (Sure, there's a tiny bit of blog jealousy, but not much.) Of course, part of the issues could simply be related to the fact that I had to basically start this blog over, and lost most of my followers as a result. (Please, come back!)

Anyway, the stats are decent:

• I have more than doubled my number of followers since starting this challenge. (That would be much more impressive if my numbers weren't in the single digits back then ...)
• I had 1,548 pageviews for the month. (That is more than half of my total pageviews.)
• My top post from this challenge for the month was my H post with 37 pageviews. (Most of my top 10 are NOT from this challenge.)
• My next most-viewed challenge post was my V post with 15 pageviews.
• After that, it's my R post with 13 pageviews. (And that's it from the top 10 posts in the month of April.)

I had a lot of fun, even if it didn't generate much interest in my blog. I'm OK with that. I blog for fun, and that means the goal was accomplished!

Things I've learned:

• Plan ahead. I was a late starter to this challenge, as I didn't even find out about it until April 1 or 2. As such, I didn't really have much time to prepare. Next time, I'll do better.
• Schedule posts. For most of my posts, I wrote them the night before. Often going into it I knew what I was going to post about, but occasionally I didn't. And I think the quality of the posts suffers as a result. Next time I'll write ahead of time and schedule them so they're ready to go.
• Monitor blog. Of the few posts I did write ahead and schedule, a few didn't post when I had told Blogger to post them. (So not cool, and so not something that would've happened with Wordpress.) Next time I'll be more vigilant in making sure the posts are visible when they should be.
• Be creative. I saw a lot of posts that were just fabulous. I really liked them a lot. I was impressed, awed even, by the creativity. I vow to be more like that next time around. (Wish me luck!)

Finally, Elizabeth Mueller kindly created this award and gave it to all participants of the A to Z Challenge. THANK YOU, Elizabeth!

If you would like to read more wrap-up posts, there's a linky over at Tossing It Out.