Most people probably are not aware but this blog turned 3 years old today, marking a nice blog anniversary for Adam's Auto Advice. (Also it's Earth Day, so Happy Earth Day!) You can checkout my first post I did 3 years ago from today, which wasn't all that amazing, but that is how I got my start blogging and writing online. As well you checkout the post I wrote at my 2 year blog anniversary and that happened to be my 200th blog post on here as well.
Looking back I am amazed and how much better my writing has come along over 3 years. I mean 3 years isn't that long when you think about writing, but in internet time that marks a lifetime basically. Ironically it doesn't feel quite as long as I thought it does, but having a blog anniversary really makes you look back.
Some cool features I did on this blog was attending the GM Baltimore operations event for the Spark EV. I got drive the Spark EV, which not a lot of people have, around the a closed course. In addition I toured the plant and got to talk with engineers who designed the Spark EV and Chevy Volt. Another cool event I attended was the Consumer Reports Top 10 Picks announcement at the National Press Club in Washington DC. I also got some slick vertical business cards made off of Fiverr but I might need to change the design soon since I am shifting my focus to new projects.
In the 3 years since I started this blog social media has become huge part of the internet. I joined Twitter and I am still learning and getting better with Facebook. (Although I still don't get it!) I am more active on Google+ and try to stay active on there since Google clearly is putting a lot of importance on Google Authorship profiles. As far as I can tell they really only want to highlight people that are active and legit writers AND are interacting on Google+ a little bit. Pinterest exploded this year, and while I think it is really cool, I still need to master that and figure out how to market myself and my other sites I have on there in the best way possible.
With the explosion of social media, the blogging field in general has grown a lot too. I remember hearing a statistic by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress (the blogging software that this site runs on), that WordPress was downloaded over 430+ million time in 2012. While not every download meant someone was using WordPress for a blog and people could use those installation files multiple times for different sites, that still shows the rapid growth of the internet as a whole. (That statistic doesn't include automatic script install of WordPress by the way.)
New blogs and sites are popping up all the time, making it harder and harder to compete in the online world. Some of my fans have probably noticed that I haven't contributed as much on this auto blog as I would have liked. The main reason is I have done a lot more paid writing gigs. Some were better than others and some paid pretty decently too, making me feel like the road I choose to be an auto journalist/blogger wasn't a wrong choice. (Even though I know deep down it probably was.) Honestly this field doesn't pay as much, unless you get crazy traffic, which is unlikely even if you know a lot about SEO (search engine optimization).
I think once you start writing you can't really stop though. That's why I started a new online auto magazine, CarNewsCafe, with some auto journalist friends. You can read my post about it here. Starting another site, while challenging, actually has a lot of advantages when you do it with other people. There are other writers are creating content, making it is easier to compete against larger sites. In addition I can bounce ideas off of someone else if it doesn't work. As well this makes you look more professional and you can network with others and create better more engaging stories.
While I will continue to write on this blog and write about cars, I am facing the harsh reality that this is a difficult market. I have decided to slow down writing about cars for a little while, but won't stop. I am going to be shifting my focus to some new site ventures, which will I will be very excited about when they launches. The main one I am working on, HostTribe, will have tutorials about hosting and information for people that want to get started with their own sites.
I also want to wish everyone a Happy Earth Day. Not sure what you are supposed to do on Earth Day, but I guess you should “Be Green” whatever that means. If you want learn about Furoshiki, a Japanese gift-cloth wrapping technique, checkout the Fursohiki Forum. If you use cloth, instead of paper, you can save $100's and even $1000's of dollars over the years.
I am glad that I could share this blog anniversary and milestone with all of you, and I look forward to writing and creating more websites that people can enjoy in the future.
