Since I just celebrated my 19th blogoversary, I had this idea for a post. I've been around a long time and things have changed somewhat for bloggers and how people blog. Here are just a few things that have changed for me in that time.
I used to just grab a picture off the internet when I wanted to add a picture. But then in 2012 things changed when I found out that you could get sued for posting pictures you found on the internet, and I almost deleted my blog because I used to post a lot of pictures. I made two blog posts about it at the time that you can find here and here. Ultimately I decided to just delete most of the pictures I had posted over the years and just change some things. So now if I want to use a royalty free picture I go to a site like Pixabay and find a picture there that I can use for free. The picture in this post are from there.
I like using pictures in my posts because posts with pictures tend to get more traffic and pictures make the posts better, at least to me. So I take a lot of pictures myself as well.
When I first started blogging, my friends and I started off using our blogs as diaries for the most part. One friend used hers as a site for all her recipes. I don't see a lot of personal blogs anymore, where they just talk about themselves. But I do see friends have a blog post every now and again about themselves or little snippets about their lives. I love those posts. It's nice to be able to get to know your blog friends. I value my blog and the friends I've made here because of it.
While the types of blogs might have changed and there are more blogs sharing news, articles they find, politics and book reviews, there are still a lot of active blogs which I love. I like that I can experiment with self expression in my posts and tell stories that have happened to me as well as still share things I like. I blog for fun and to share my thoughts on things like books, products I like, freebies and my life. So I still post like I did when I first started out even though blogging has changed a bit.
I used to see a lot of ads on blogs. So much so that they would pop up and slow my browser down. I don't see that anymore. Instead there are affiliate programs where you click on a link and the blogger who posted it will get a small revenue incentive. I don't blog to make money, I do it for fun. But something like an Amazon affiliate program might be worth looking into for the posts I share books reviews on.
How has blogging changed for you?