Things that make me leave your blog even if I like the content...

I'm not a blog snob at all (is that even a phrase!?). I love blogs. Especially homeschooling blogs. Small blogs, big blogs, medium sized blogs, if you are interesting, I'll follow. I've been going through this extremely long, but interesting (!), blog roll lately, and have found a bunch of homeschooling blogs that interest me. But, I've only followed a few of them. Why?

Here are some things that make me leave your blog and not return, even if I like your content:

1. Black screen, white or bright (think neon) words OR using italics or some other crazy font for every post. My eyes can't take it.

2. Follower button is not there or is far down on the page. I don't want to have to search for a way to follow you. Put it at the top, please!

3. Too many reviews and no personal content. I may be guilty of this at times due to being on a review team. But I really try to intersperse personal content with reviews. The reviews may help some people too, but a blog that is all reviews on the first page will not prompt me to look at older posts.

4. Showing only 1 post per page. Whose idea was this?! Yes, your pages will load faster, but I have to click through six pages to get an idea of what you post about.

5. No search option combined with no labels. It's not helpful to me to see how many posts you've done each month if I don't know what the posts were about. I want to ideally be able to read what kind of topics you post about AND be able to search for particular topics.

6. Slow loading pages because you have a bazillion buttons in your side bar. My laptop is newish, but it is tempermental. Don't make it or me work harder than necessary to view your content. Pare down the side bar.

7. Avoiding "real" blogging. If you have something on your heart, don't be afraid to write about it. I like seeing some "real person behind the computer screen" posts once in a while. I don't always want to read about craft projects and book reviews. I want to know who you are too! :)

And here are some things I think newer bloggers worry about that aren't all that important (to me at least) for gaining readers:

1. Being like the "big" bloggers. If you've been lurking on homeschooling blogs for a while you know there are a few big name bloggers who everyone knows about. You don't have to write like them, use their curriculum choices, or be like them in order to be interesting. Be yourself.

2. Perhaps the biggest one is an obsession with getting followers. If you are interesting and relatively active on your blog, you will slowly but surely gain followers who actually care about what you write about. I'll read your blog whether you have 10 followers or 8,000 if I like your content.

3. Providing something for free (printables, pdfs, etc etc). This is not important to me. I want people to read my blog because they like it and are interested in it, not just because they can get something for free. If you want to share, please do, that's wonderful! But if you don't know how to share pdfs and you don't write your own curriculum, that's perfectly okay too!

4. Super fancy blogs. You don't have to have a drop down menu and a custom header and discus comments and be a part of every social media site out there to be interesting. Just be you!

5. Worrying about blogging every.single.day. You don't have to. I used to think I'd lose readers when I didn't find something to write about at least 5 times a week. Not so. I have lots of long time readers who come back. And it holds true for me too; I visit the same blogs over and over even if they don't write alot because I know their content when they do write is always interesting to me.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. What about you? Do you have pet peeves when it comes to reading blogs? Do you have certain things you wish every blogger would incorporate? Do you have blogging anxiety (lol) about your own growing blog?

I'd love to hear from you!