Blog Tour Stops:
Today I'm visiting Elizabeth Seckman - Battle of the First Paragraphs
And I'm sharing odd facts about me at Michelle Athy's blog.
Yesterday I did an interview at Cathrina Constance's blog.
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For everyone who did the A to Z Challenge
last month, you should know Arlee Bird. He is one of our celebrities in the
blogosphere. And I am happy to bring you an exclusive interview with him. (I
feel important saying it like that. *wink*)1. For those who don’t know the story behind the April A to Z Challenge, can you tell us how it started?
In
short, when I first started blogging in September of 2009 I had no idea how it
all worked. Hardly anyone ever commented
on my posts except for a few people whom I had asked to visit my blog. After a few weeks I caught on to the idea
that I needed to visit other blogs and leave comments. As I watched the traffic pick up in my
comment section, I began to grasp the effectiveness of community building
techniques such as blogfests, awards, and giveaways.
When
I reached 100 followers on January, 6th of 2010 I was ecstatic. I saw many of the author bloggers giving
away one of their books when they reached 100, but I didn’t have any book. I decided to come up with something to do
when I reached 200.
That
200 follower date began closing in as the middle of March approached. Since I had nothing to giveaway I decided
that I would do some sort of attention-getting blog stunt that I could invite
others to join me. On a morning walk I
pondered the concept. I was going to
reach 200 followers right at the end of March so April would be my celebratory
month. I’d do these special posts every
day except Sundays. That gave me 26
days of posting. I didn’t have to be a
genius to make the alphabet correlation.
On
the Saturday March 27th I announced my intentions with my invitation
for others to join me. I saw immediate
interest and knew I was onto something that would interest others so I began
pushing the Challenge on my blog that week and leaving more comments on other
blogs than I usually did. Over those
next few days nearly 100 bloggers signed up.
By the end of April most of those who signed up had finished and the A
to Z Challenge was born!
2. What
were the themes for your past Challenges?
Since
I have four blogs that I’ve participated in most of the Challenges my themes
have been many.
On Tossing It Out my thematic focus has
been on marketing and promoting with one year devoted to movie sub-genres.
I
also have a memoir blog Wrote By Rote where
my themes have been related stories about my life and sentiments to which we
can all relate.
My
dream blog A Faraway View has explored movies and music that evoke dreams as well as a year of exploring
some of the things we might commonly dream about.
The
there is A Few Words which is my blog dealing with spiritual issues and the A to Z theme topics have
related to that.
3. That is a lot of blogs! Tell
us about your blog Tossing it Out.
My
blog Tossing It Out began as a
Halloween blog since I had just ended an 18 year stint as manager of a larger
wholesale costume company and that’s where my mind was focused at the time. After
not too many weeks blogging about Halloween, I decided that I’d rather not be
constrained to writing about just a single topic (and Halloween would be soon
come and gone anyway) and returned to my first passion of writing. Now I’m not stuck on any single topic, but
I’m just tossing out all kinds of ideas that strike my fancy.
4. What
does Tossing it Out mean?
Since
for many years I worked professionally as a juggler and came from a juggling
family I wanted to use a title that related to that as well as the idea of the
blog content I would be presenting. Tossing It Out incorporates the idea of tossing objects into the air to other
jugglers who then return them to you in the same fashion. On the blog I toss out my ideas to the
readers and invite them to toss me back their comments and maybe even have an
ongoing discussion. I almost always
respond to the comments I receive.
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5. What
are the top 5 most-viewed posts on your blog?
My
all time highest viewed post was the announcement for the first collaborative A to Z sign-up in 2010 at 21,429 page views. But this was such an anomaly that maybe I shouldn’t count this one.
The
next five are:
5/13/2010—How Important Are Music Programs in Schools? (6644 page views)
11/21/12—My Thankfulness to Bloggers Post (2565 page views)
5/16/2010—Using Your God-given Talents to Serve God (1954 page views)
2/8/2012—This Is Not My Most Important Post Today (1900 page views) I wanted to include this one because I find
the correlation of the title to the post ranking among my most viewed to be
somewhat humorous. If it wasn’t
important then why so many views? The
power of the title?
6. What
do you love most about blogging?
Expressing
myself in a forum where I can get exposure without having the fear that my work
will be rejected so that it doesn’t get published.
7. Share
your number one tip to bloggers just starting out.
If
we are assuming the blogger has reasonable content to share, then it’s
imperative to reach out, visit other blogs, leave comments, and establish good
relationships within the blogging community. That’s what the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is
about!
Hyper
Round:
1. Favorite
time to post blogs?
5 AM Eastern Time
2. Blogger
or Wordpress?
Blogger, but I don’t mind WP
3. Blog
Hops: Yay or Nay?
Yay if topic intrigues me.
4. Do
you host guests?
Yes, especially during summer!
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| Doesn't he look like a cool dude? ;P |
BIO:
A juggler of words and phrases. My main
blog is Tossing It Out. The focus blog for the Blogging from A to Z April
Challenge can now be found at a-to-zchallenge.com where updates will be posted
until the event in April begins. Wrote By Rote is about memoir writing. A Few
Words is my Sunday contemplation blog. A Faraway View is about dreams. Pick
what you like or look at them all. I love blogging!
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| A baby picture of Arlee trying to juggle. He dropped the clubs. :( |
Thank you Arlee for taking the time to
do this interview!
Please leave a comment for Arlee! J
