23rd February 2012

Text with 1 note

Two Years of Manga Therapy - Where To Go From Here

This week marks the 2nd year of Manga Therapy. I don’t know what to say, honestly. I’m very amazed at myself for keeping at it for so long. Though right now, a few things bother me.

I’m wondering whether I should change my writing style, move the blog to a Wordpress.org account, and how to promote my blog further. At times, I do look at my site analytics and say “Well, damn” to some of the numbers. Sometimes, the numbers don’t bother me since blogs can take a while (two years may not lead to instant success) to become successful.

Guest posting will be on my agenda. I have only guest-posted only a few times, mostly for Ani-Culture.net. However, they were just reposts from my blog. I want to focus on stuff that I usually don’t have time to talk about on my blog and thrown to the side. I have received a few offers to guest post and I think I should take up on them. The problem is that I’m afraid of what to talk about at times and whether my writing is good enough.

Another goal is to possibly create an e-mail newsletter where I add thoughts to certain happenings around the anime/manga industry and also add some inspirational quotes from the characters. I know many blog advice sites suggest that creating a email subscription database can do wonders, but I wonder how useful it may be for my blog since I am not selling a product and a service. Any thoughts about this? 

A fun idea that I thought about was video blogging. The problem though is that doing psychological analyses of characters can sound boring if dragged out too long. I’ve been on camera before, so I think this could be an interesting venture. Video content is going to be even relevant than before and if I can create a professional-looking manga video blog, perhaps I can get a bigger following. Of course, this all depends on how the manga industries handle themselves in these crazy economic times.

I have been thinking about putting advertisements and affiliate banners on the site. I’ve had some interesting discussions with a friend about making money from blogging. The traffic I get is isn’t always consistent though. I do wonder about using ads/banners on Tumblr, when it seems like I can do it much better on another service like Wordpress.org. 

Speaking of Wordpress, the future of Manga Therapy might be at that platform. As much as I love Tumblr, I’m starting to seriously think that Wordpress will greatly help my blog even more. I will still use Tumblr though to post up wacky pictures, along with my Pinterest page. When writing for Shoryuken.com during a trial period, I really began to see the beauty of Wordpress.org.

I think that’s all I have to say. I want to say “Thank you” to everyone who follows my blog. One of the best blog comments I read was from an old lady who said my blog was good and that she’ll always be a loyal reader. It’s very nice of her to say such a thing. I learned many things from blogging that I plan to apply to my job and my future. 

If you guys have anything you want to say or advice to give me, feel free to comment below. Time to make the third year a charm, ya?

Tagged: anniversary postManga Therapysocial media outreachblogger outreachtwo-year anniversary