Why I Finally Tried Blogger

I've blogged on my site for years on my own (though the Run Down may be down right now -- effing Geocites!). My inspiration was Suck (the archives are still online, though the site no longer adds new content) and when blogging became all the rage, I held-out against setting one up on an actual blogging site because this was back in the day of the Internet rush. Sites went up and then down literally overnight back then, and I didn't trust my content to someone else's server. Plus, I wanted to speak my mind, and the TOS on most sites wouldn't allow for that.

Then came the whole advertising thing. Amazon was first, of course, with their Affiliates program. And though I signed up right off the bat and everything was fine for a little while, pretty soon, most of the free sites started disallowing it and would lock you out of your site or even delete it completely without so much as giving you a chance to take down the links! So I took down the ads and kept webmastering and blogging as I felt like it, but I really wanted to make some money doing it. Plus, maintaining a blogroll on my own was more trouble that it was worth -- it's a lot more than just adding an entry, like you do here -- you have to redesign the whole page for each new entry. Plus, the blog was always about whatever was on my mind, whereas the rest of the site is really dedicated to role-playing, so I was always worried about attracting young people who really didn't need to see the smut I usually write about.

So I signed up for some blogging sites and some affiliates and am getting ready to redesign the site blog to lead to them. This way, I can have different blogs focus on different themes and hopefully keep better track of who's visiting and what they are reading.

But a lot of these sites are new and have their share of problems. They're up one day, down the next; the feeds don't always update like they should; many don't support Technorati and other services... so I decided I might as well get one on an established, reputable service -- and Blogger was the first one that came to mind. This and LiveJournal (which is probably the next one I'll join). So, here I am -- for what it's worth -- and while I am still trying to get my Yahoo! 360 blog to connect to my website (GeoCities always takes forever when you swap index files in a directory), my intention is to finally set up a "real" website -- register the domain name, get a real host, and so on -- but there's no sense doing that until I can afford broadband, which is why I am branching out and trying to make some extra money so that I can afford to do just that.

So, as always, be patient, Gentle Reader; all good things take time, and this is no exception.