This coming Sunday, Cool San Diego Sights turns seven years old.
Seven years doing this? Unbelievable.
Starting a blog and watching it grow very, very slowly over many years has taught me an important lesson about life. Patience and perseverance might be the two most important keys to success.
While having fun and doing things that I love–walking and writing–I have spent literally thousands of hours working on Cool San Diego Sights. A good chunk of my life has been spent taking and selecting photos, cropping and adjusting them, doing research, being a detective, plotting out future blogs, making corrections, being obsessive/compulsive, providing updates, pulling out my hair (what’s left of it), periodically wondering if I should quit this sometimes tedious exercise…
And now, to my complete surprise, I find myself getting traffic from Google News, News Break, Chrome’s suggested articles, and a remarkable variety of major websites.
As a result of Cool San Diego Sights’ growing success, one of my other websites, Short Stories by Richard, is being visited by students from classrooms around the world. Most are reading my little story One Thousand Likes, which I’m told might be used in an upcoming twelfth grade textbook produced by one of the world’s most prestigious publishers.
Pinch me.
Is this real?
To think this thing started on a whim. I’ve always walked. I had an unused little camera. I created a simple, easy WordPress blog. I figured I’d post a photo and a few words once in a while.
So if you’re a blogger or writer out there in a ridiculously enormous world that contains billions of web pages, and you’ve begun to wonder if it’s really worth the effort–keep at it! Don’t give up! Do your best! Stay passionate! Write well, be truthful, be original, be creative, be smart, be curious, understand and appeal to your readers’ humanity, and remember to always maintain your sense of humor!
And never lose hope! Because you never know!
Cool San Diego Sights! 
That is so cool! Congrats! I think many of us started blogging with some vague idea that we might reach a few people with our words. Now, seven years later, I feel so grateful for the friendships (many whom I’ve met in real life) I’ve made through my blog.
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Yeah. It’s all worth it. I’ve met many people, too, that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And it’s still fun!
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This is wonderful. Congratulations.
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Thanks!
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Wow, awesome stuff. I myself often wonder if what I’m doing has any purpose to it at the end of it all, but your post gave me that little encouragement that I needed. Thanks for sharing!
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It really all boils down to lots of quality content and receiving links from great sites that appreciate your content! It can take time to develop. Keep on truckin’!
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Congratulations on your success! I started following you because I have family in your area, and have enjoyed reading about sites and attractions there.
Coincidentally, I started blogging in 2013 as well. I haven’t gained as many followers, but I have noticed that Google has placed some of my posts on the first page of a Google search of the area referenced (behind their paid ad sites, of course). I wonder how their system makes those decisions.
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I’ve found WordPress followers aren’t nearly as important as people coming to your site due to a search they performed. The more good backlinks you have–other credible, respectable websites that link to you–the higher you will appear in search results as a rule.
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