I started blogging about technology and other things on 11/11/2007 so today marks the first anniversary of my blogging career or whatever you want to call it. I began with a free WordPress blog (http://thepaisano.wordpress.com) which is no longer updated because I ported over to my own self-hosted blog some seven months later around July 22, 2008 which is where we be today: http://ThePaisano.com.
Originally, believe it or not, the name of my blog was “Pai in YO Face!”. I thought it was cute and clever at the time and people seemed to like it. Here’s how the header looked along with the black theme.
After awhile though I started getting a lot more visitors and more professional type people and the whole in Yo face shtick lost its luster. I tried a few different names but ultimately stayed with “American Pai” for many months up until I moved to my own self-hosted blog. Here’s how that looked for the majority of time on the free wordpress blog.
My blog had become basically 100% technical so I stopped writing about personal subjects which bothered me. I still wanted to share those thoughts and feelings but understand that a blog should focus on a central theme and stick to it if you wanted to be successful and keep readers coming back for more. Problogger convinced me of that when he shared some personal experiences and how he used to blog about several interests but didn’t attain success until he separated his themes into their own niche blogs. So my blog became a tech blog.
Seizing the Day!
Well, on February 14, 2008 I gave myself a Valentine’s Day gift and launched my personal blog on www.Blogger.com and called it simply The Paisano. It’s no longer there because a few months later I also decided to move my personal blog to its own domain and self-hosted blog and re-launched it as “Seizing The Day” at http://SeizingTheDay.net. Here’s the original header.
Humbled Pai!
Around April sometime I was asked for the first time to guest blog for someone else’s blog. It wasn’t just anyone either. It was none other than Sarah Lacy! She was the hottest news from the SXSW ‘08 conference and I was looking forward to reading her upcoming book called “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0”. She and I became acquainted on MySpace and Twitter and she was interested in a tweet I made regarding her employer, Yahoo and the horrible job I thought they were doing with Delicious (a service I loved and still do). So I was flattered and wrote my very first guest post and it was so exciting! I loved being read by a much larger audience and getting intelligent feedback in the comments, sometimes tough medicine is good for you. I went on to write several more pieces so I owe Sarah a great deal of thanks for giving a rookie such a break and so many lessons.
Around the same time I was asked to guest blog for another blog, SocialMediaMom! She asked me to write something about being a dad so I contributed a piece about my 9 year old entrepreneur son who used social media for a class project.
The MASH Unit
Ultimately, everything lead to my favorite tech blog in the world, Mashable.com in August! I wasn’t sure I was ready for such a gigantic blog but I knew it was my chance to see what I could do and I was so grateful for the opportunity. I’m still writing for Mashable where I’ve had the honor of contributing over 120 articles in only three months! While my output will continue to drop dramatically over time, I will still write an occasional feature for them. They’ve been incredibly nice to me and continue to teach me new things about professional blogging and journalism in general. I will be forever grateful to Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Sharon Feder, Mark Rizzn Hopkins and everyone else there.
My Guardian Social Angel
If I were to thank any one particular person for any success that I’ve achieved in my first full year of blogging and in social media/networking it would have to be everyone’s guardian angel, Chris Brogan. From the first time that I met him on Utterz and Twitter, he has been a gentleman and scholar and a great friend. Calling him a friend feels funny because you hear so many people do the same thing all over the web. It reminds me of Sparticus, “I’m Sparticus!” “No, I’m sparticus!” and so it goes. But the fact of the matter is that Chris Brogan truly does have that many friends all over the place. He always takes the time to share wisdom and experience and no one has taught me more about social media and social networking and blogging as he has. He’s also taught me many lessons about life and friendship as well. My favorite line he shared with me was “The Sun can warm a field of daisies or it can burn a hole through solid steel”. The lesson in that gem was a reminder for me to “Stay focused Pai!” So, every time I start to bite off more than I can chew or start procrastinating, I remember Brogan’s Daisies. Thanks my friend! By the way, I call him The Broganator because he’s a machine that cannot be stopped! P.S. I’m honored to be a contributing editor to Brogan’s new blog for dads called Dad-o-matic!
So here’s my wrap up of my first 365 days as a blogger.
ThePaisano (161)
Seizing the Day (132)
Mashable (120)
Dadomatic (11)
SarahLacy (6)
SocialMediaMom (1)
Total Posts 431!!!!
Wow. 431 posts in 365 days. This is amazing when you consider that I continue to maintain a full-time day job in the I.T. industry and raise three children ages 9, 5 and 3 and I’ve never missed any of their practices, games or school functions and activities involving dads. I can only imagine what I could do if I were able to blog full-time!
I think everyone should stop and reflect on their anniversary and see how far they’ve come. I look forward to the next year online with all of you.