numbers, the people behind them, and being number one

How often have you looked at your blog statistics and actually wondered how many of the viewers were impacted by your posts?

This question, or rather, something similar to it, was posed by one of my favorite (and grossly underrated) Youtubers Nathan Zed.

In a recent video, he spoke on end about how people, specifically creator-types like musicians and internet personalities, want to claim the number one spot in their respective fields. Nathan went on to cite how some of these people pine for first place so bad that they resort to moves like buying followers or making public pleads to their fans to help them achieve just that.

It’s all a bit disconcerting. As creators, they rightfully want to be acknowledged, but don’t they also want to be genuinely impactful? What will people remember of their work if they never even connected with it in the first place?

While listening to Nathan’s points, my mind predictably began applying them to the blogosphere. I questioned myself,

“How often do I actually wonder if people were impacted by my posts?”

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Finding Value In Your Blog Even If You Don’t Make Money From It // and the obsession with making money from our hobbies

Money!

Let’s be honest, it would be a dream to make money from home by blogging. Consistent bloggers know that it takes a butt-load of work to post regularly (my inconsistent blogger butt knows that too—only a fraction of it, but still 🙋) and being compensated monetarily would certainly add some value to the effort. But, I think most bloggers, especially the book type, are cognizant of the fact that there’s a slim chance that their blog will one day pay their bills.

Many of us don’t start our blogs with any ulterior motives except to talk about books.

Yet, there are still whispers in my head that all of this, this whole blogging thing, is a waste of my time. It’s silly because what would a good use of my free-time be then?

Fortunately, I know where this feeling that I should be doing something else is coming from: it’s coming from an obsession with making money from hobbies.

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Is Your Blog A Secret?

Only a few of my closest friends and family know about my book blog.

I don’t go out of my way to hide it from people—I’ll admit to having one if someone asks—but it’s also something I don’t advertise. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it, I just prefer to keep it on the DL. I’ve narrowed my reasons for keeping my blog a ~leetle~ secret down to two, quick points that maybe you can relate to:

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The Sunshine Blogger Award

This is a first.

I’ve had my fair share of tags, but none have ever been the award type. I’ve seen this particular award around quite a bit—The Sunshine Blogger Award seems almost like a rite of passage into the bookish community. So, thank you, Book Orbit, for nominating me! She’s relatively new to the blogging scene so do drop by her blog and say “hi” 😊.

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The Blog Name Bind

Let’s be honest.

Belle Can Read is a boring name. It’s unoriginal, unimaginative, and uninventive—all of the -UNs.

So, how did I come up with the name? Let me tell you all story you may be able to relate to:

When I was in Elementary School and asked the teacher, “Can I use the bathroom,” the teacher would reply, “I don’t know, can you?” They would then proceed to explain that can meant “to be capable” and may indicated possibility or permission; therefore, I was capable of using the restroom, but I had yet to ask permission to do so.

Believe it or not—and this is going to sound really silly ~~(or stupid)~~—but that childhood memory about bathrooms was on my mind when I created my blog name.

See, I knew I wanted to incorporate my nickname, Belle, and the blog’s focus, books, in the blog name, but I also didn’t want to spend too much time fussing over the name ~~(Pfft, so much for that. I mean, did you see the post title?)~~. The result was the totally creative name, Belle Can Read. The idea behind it was that although this is a book blog, there’s a possibility that I may post about other topics; even though I can read, I may not always be reading. ~~(Do you understand why I was talking about bathrooms now?)~~

I’m laughing because the more I think about it, the less sense my reasoning for the blog name makes.

Now, I’m faced with a problem I’m calling The Blog Name Bind. Should I change my blog name? Continue reading “The Blog Name Bind” →

Blogging vs. Vlogging // Why I Chose A Blog Over Booktube

There are countless of posts in the book blogosphere discussing the advantages and disadvantages of having a book blog, Booktube, or Bookstagram.

I find these posts interesting and have fun reading why people favor book blogging over the other platforms. In this post, I would like to focus on blogging vs. vlogging and why I chose to have a blog over Booktube.

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