February 2, 2022 | Awake & Dreaming

1. EASY TO NAVIGATE

Keep it streamlined and simple. You want to make sure your blog is easy to navigate so people can find what they are looking for, subscribe, follow, and stick around. If it is easy to navigate then your readers will want to stick around and read more content, thus creating a loyal reader. Creating categories on your sidebar is a good example of making it easy to navigate.

2. BRANDED THEME

When someone lands on your blog the theme and layout is what they first see and that’s their first impression of what your blog is about. Even if you have the best written articles in the whole world it simply won’t matter if your blog design is clunky and hard to read. A beautiful design is great, but remember you can find this for the right price. My theme is simple yet elegant, predominantly white with sparks of colour here and there. I use biscuit-lite by Pankogut.com but you can easily find some beautiful themes out there.

3. SEARCH FUNCTION

I think this is a given for any website and that ofcourse includes blogs. Make it easy for me to find what I’m looking for on your blog! Chances are, if I’m reading something on your blog I might want to read something else. So make your search function easy to find.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOW

You want your readers and followers to connect with you on other social medial platforms. Facebook might be a bit too personal but you can create a page or account just for your blog. Do not forget to add something as simple as your Instagram link and display it on your sidebar or the header/footer. If you have quite a few links than create a separate block or page just for that. Just so people have every option to follow you.

5. CONTACT YOU

It is very important to create a way for people to contact you. A contact us page is essential for an agency or business who are new to your blog and while perusing around they suddenly have a great, paid collaboration idea for you. But wait! There’s no way to contact you. This can lead to many missed opportunities. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Just a simple way to email you works fine. I recommend having a contact page – I use – WPForms Lite connected to my Gmail account so I receive each submission as an email and if I choose to reply to them, then my email takes over.

6. SHARE BUTTONS

What if you reader enjoys your post or feels that your post is really important and has relevant information and wants to share it with their followers? They go to share but there are no share buttons! That is an opportunity missed! We want to make it as simple and easy as possible for people to share our stuff. I use the Simple Social Buttons plugins free options which I think is one of the best.

7. COMMENTING

This one is a given and I find it silly mentioning it here but…..Set up your comment system so that the majority of your readers can comment. A great option? Disqus. or Brian’s Threaded Comments.This is a simple, easy to use tool that allows comments and also helps you avoid spam.

8. ABOUT ME PAGE

And if your readers wants to know more about you? An About Me Page is a very essential part of your blog. Infact whenever I visit a new blog and enjoy a couple of the posts, then next thing I look for is to find out more about the blogger(s). If that is not available I am left wanting as will your readers. Create a page with information about, a photo or two and anything else you’d like to share.

I am not planning on spending much money other than on food, some snacks, medicine and the essentials like toiletries this month. Most of what I used to make online via sponsored posts have dried up and what I do make I add to my monthly bills. And I am keeping the rest for anything that may cross up from time to time like the handkerchief set that bought, the kitchen towels, the mosquito repellents and stuff. These aren’t things I buy that often so it’s mostly once in a while.

I do want to buy a shirt or two and I might. There is also a need to buy a replacement body trimmer since the one that I had stopped getting charged several months ago. And I need to trim the bushes, so to speak. So I am not planning on spending that much this month and even I balance things out I can get 2 shirts and get the trimmer. But if I had a little extra cash the thing that I would buy would be this set that you see over here. It costs Rs. 6,619.00 and is the boxset of all 23 stories in The Adventures of Tintin series that Herge released. The hours and hours of enjoyment that I had as a kid is priceless when it comes to Tintin. The Adventures of Tintin has always been one of my favourite childhood comics. A few of my cousins & I being engrossed in reading and discussing the series is definitely a treasured childhood memory.

Even though I have PDF scanned copies of all the books, it would have nice to have the entire set in book format. The main cast of the comic book series is as follows: Captain Haddock, Tintin, Snowy the dog, Professor Cuthbert Calculus and the mumbling police detectives Thomson & Thompson. Pictured & certainly an essential supporting cast of the series includes Nestor, Captain Haddock’s butler, famed opera singer Bianca Castafiore & her maid Irma. Incidentally, although they are remarkably alike in appearance and mannerisms, the detectives are not actually twins or even brothers! Which explains why they are called Thompson & Thomson (Thompson with a ‘P’ & Thomson without a ‘P’). They are always a hoot and manage to get themselves in trouble a lot.