I never thought about joining LinkedIn because I didn’t feel like I was enough of a “professional” to have a profile there, because I haven’t had a paid position in any professional field since the 1990s. I used to be a book review writer for Publishers Weekly and editor/writer for two medical journals, but that was a long time ago. I wrote book reviews and also did some proofreading/freelance editing for several years after I moved to North Carolina. (I’m not writing a resume here, mmmkay?)
Due to narcissistic abuse at the hands of those closest to me, I lost all my self esteem and all my motivation due to severe PTSD. Being an Aspie too certainly doesn’t help.
I also spent most of the 1990s and early 2000s as a stay at home wife and mother.
I had the confidence today to go ahead and set myself up on LinkedIn and found several people I know there who read this blog. It’s another way to get this blog out there to an even wider audience. Unfortunately I did have to use my real name there, but I can live with that.
The main reason I’m doing this right now though is so I can link my articles to that as well as Twitter and StumbleUpon. (I only rarely connect my articles to Facebook as too many people from my past know me there, including my FOO).
If any of you have a LinkedIn account or want to make one, please follow me there:
Lucky Otters Haven 
I too have a LinkedIn page and I find it useful to network professionally. I do keep it separate from my blog. I very much keep my personal and professional life separate.
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Always wise to keep those separate. I also very much try to keep my online life separate from my personal life. Not many people I know IRL know I write a blog about narcissism.
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I understand using article archive sites like ezine and goarticles is a way to not only get links back to your site but also other publishers will go there seeking out articles for particular subjects. They use your article giving you credit and link back to your blog.
You need to wait until your article/post is indexed in the search engines, then put the exact same article at one or all of those article sites. If you continue to do this, you might get some of your stuff used in a plagiarizing situation, but you’re not safe from that anyway on the internet. However it’s a great way to become syndicated.
And I don’t know, you may already know all this. lol
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I didn’t know that Thanks for the advice, I might try that sometime.
I have noticed a significant increase in search engine hits, which is heartening, and I’m beginning to see other search engines now besides Google–Yahoo, dogpile.com, Bing, and even AOL. (do people still use AOL?!?) I’ve also noticed some of my articles are now on page 1 or 2 of Google instead of page 87.
I never purchased SEO–OM ar Harsh Reality always said that isn’t necessary;if you keep plugging away and doing whatever you can to get your articles seen, and don’t give up, eventually the search engines will catch up.
I was also shocked to find this blog has already been archived at The Wayback Machine (which crawls across the web and takes pictures of any websites it finds on random dates and saves the cached copy). It’s such a cool service.
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Yeah I didn’t think you bought any SEO. lol. Congratulations on your success with the blog.
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I wouldn’t say it’s that successful yet. I would like it to be. My main focus though is helping myself and maybe other people too, not Internet fame. I’m not doing this for some sort of narcissistic rush (although blogging *is* a little narcissistic if we go public with it); I don’t ever want to lose the focus of what my main purpose here is–recovery and helping others.
But I won’t lie–I want this to become my job. I want to quit my day job which I hate. I don’t know how to parlay all this into a career, but I’m considering switching over to wordpress.org to get my own domain and run a few ads for possible revenue (only ads I approve of, and I would never want to clutter this blog up with annoying ads).
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No more replies allowed to the thread, so I’m replying here.
I understand. Still it seems to have hit a success point so to speak. You’ve only just started this a couple months ago right? Most bloggers don’t see such a readership so quickly. I think wordpress.com is a great way to get read since it is rather community-like.
Going with your own domain is a good idea though. Not only can you run ads, but you can also do affiliate marketing, create and sell your own product, etc. I find nothing wrong with doing this as a job/career. A lot of people out here wanting to help others battle with that I think. But healers need to eat and pay the electric bill too.
There’s a difference between just running a site to make money with no care to the readers and customers/clients and running one with integrity. And that really is the way things are moving with internet business. You write well and with your knowledge and credentials, why not.
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I’m surprised you weren’t able to comment any more on the other post. I didn’t know there was a limit. Well, anyhoo….(no pun intended there) I have had this blog 3 1/2 months but I write so often in it that it might be the equivalent of 6 months to a year for people who don’t write as many posts. i had no idea I’d get this much into it. At the beginning, writing every day was a chore. Nano Poblano helped a lot and by the end of November I couldn’t stop writing. I rushed home every day to write and wouldn’t stop until I went to bed. I wasn’t even trying to meet that challenge, I just wanted to do it!
I do like the community atmosphere here at WP, even though there’s no way to send private messages.
I do struggle with the idea of running ads on this blog. I feel in some ways it might lose its integrity and I really hate seeing ads on other people’s blogs because they clutter up the look and slow things down. But maybe one or two…and they would have to be companies I approve of or have something to do with my blog’s focus.
I don’t know about credentials, but I know I can write, that’s one thing I always knew I could do well.
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The credentials I was referring to were the ones you wrote about in your (non) resume’ post. LoL. 🙂 I don’t know, they seem to be things that would make a good blogger.
I can understand that struggle on the ads. Thing is, and I’m probably not telling you anything new, we can’t choose our ads here on .com.
But on your own domain, you can rent out ad space and then you CAN choose whose ads if at all.
Have you looked into it yet at all? Like priced the url you want and/or the hosting?
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I know what you mean–as far as having LIVED it I am definitely qualified.
I never see any ads showing up on my .com profile. Can other people see them?
I haven’t really looked into pricing or renting space yet — there’s a lot I still have to find out. It will probably not be something I do right away, maybe in a few months when i start running out of space (at the rate I’m writing that will probably happen in the not too distant future!) .
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Again…no more reply option.
I don’t think I’ve seen ads on your blog here. Some blogs I see videos at the end of the posts. But you have to set that somewhere in your dashboard.
I’ve seen lots of ads on LadywithaTruck’s blog…more than just the vids, but I’m not sure if they are google ads or not. Not sure how that works. But if I’m not mistaken I think you can apply to have ads on wordpress.com but again not sure how. When I read about it in the “help” section somewhere someone commented that it takes quite a bit of time to get the approval.
But what the heck…the time’s gonna pass anyway.
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I’m on linked in…..
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