Today is the last day of 2009 and in some hours, we are not only plunging into the next year but also the next decade. How exciting is that? The year 2009 has been wonderful to me, especially since the second half of the year. Not only this blog has picked up new audience and interests from companies, my life has also changed. The moment I am writing this entry, I am no longer a student (at least for a short while.) Finally, I graduated. My Makeup Blog was born because of my passion to makeup, that part we all know. However, there is another part most people don't know about it: it was born when its creator (that's me) was in the abyss of difficulties. At the time I created this blog, I went through hell and back. To say I was between a rock and a hard place was an understatement. There were so many difficulties and uncertainties played in my life at that time that I just wanted to pack my bags and left.
However, there's a little voice inside my head that told me if this blog worked, my life is going to be OK. A few friends who knew about this little blog told me it was a silly idea and I would be much better off concentrating on my project, etc. It was a lot of hurt but somehow, I managed to sit and blog almost every day for the first three months since most blogs out there do not survive that long. And that was a year and a half ago!
At the beginning, I remember having about 30 page views and a handful of readers a day. Now, the number has grown maybe 20 more times but if you compare to other blogs, it's still a banana. Having a blog brought a lot of perspectives to my life. Now, I have friends and readers who are so intelligent and interested in makeup as much as I do.
The three things I've learned about blogging are:
1. Be persistent in writing: there's a reason for me to blog most days of the week. The more I blog, the better I become in writing. You can't learn writing by not writing. The only way to learn is to write. Blogging is not a time-consuming habit at all! It also teaches me to be organized in my thoughts.
I did not know how well my writing has become until a committee member told me he could understand my thesis crystal clear. And I thought my draft was messy!
2. Be up to date with information: like science, makeup and beauty trends change constantly. The only way to follow them is to read. I did not read as many makeup books in the beginning but the more I blog, the more I find myself reading them. Heck, I even have a segment called Beauty Literotica on my blog for that!
3. Be yourself: I can't pretend I'm someone else, can I? This blog is not about me pretending to be someone. It's about me being myself with a lot more makeup than usual :) Also, during the process of blogging, I learned a lot of things. Nobody taught me how to blog or write codes, I just explored them myself. It's the same spirit that eventually helped me through my master's thesis, as nobody taught me how to use SAS, the statistics software, either!
As a statistics lover, I decided to gather my blog stats and cranked up Excel a little bit.
The year in number. I can't believe I wrote 219 posts this year!
Gotta have a chart
I was very productive in the second half of 2009
At this time, I would like to thank all of you who have been reading, supporting, subscribing, and being my friends throughout the year. Believing this blog to work makes it work. I also would like to thank various publicists and companies who took interests in my blog and offer me review and giveaway materials. I appreciate your relationship with My Makeup Blog. Last but not least, I want to thank the few people who found this blog interesting and started your subscriptions very early on. You know who you are and I can't thank you enough!
Let's look forward to a bigger and better blog in the year 2010!
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