Making The Blogathon Challenge

I have been participating in a blogathon during May. Michelle Rafter, who blogs at Word Count, is the person who began the Blogathon. She says that the blogathon is an annual event that brings people together for the purpose of becoming better bloggers by posting to their respective blogs every day during the month of May.

This is the 5th year, and the number of participants has grown from 30 the initial year to about 250 in 2012.. Posting 31 consecutive days is not easy. Some bloggers normally  post pretty sporadically, some once a week, others five days a week, which is what I have chosen to do. The ones who post once every few months lose readers faster than a jackrabbit can run through the desert.

So, why did I join the blogathon this year? A writer friend suggested I try it. She'd done it last year and found she enjoyed interacting with other bloggers, had increased traffic to her blog and liked reading other blogs. I figured I had nothing to lose so why not?

It's been fun to check other blogs to see the many different themes, how the blogs are set up, the quality of wriitng and the number of Followers they have. It's obvious that some are quite new to the blogging world while others are old pros. Some have very few readers while others number in the thousands for hits. Raising numbers is a slow process for most bloggers. 

I've seen the number of hits on my blog posts increase this month, and that was my main goal. The big question is whether that will continue, or will these blogathon readers slip off into the night, never to be seen again? 

I enjoyed the challenge, stayed interested and will probably sign up again next year. My thanks to Michelle Rafter for organizing and offering the blogathon. 

Tomorrow, there is a wrap-up party via twitter. The bloggers who managed to meet the challenge and post 31 days in a rwo will be eligible for a drawing with several prizes to be awarded. It would be nice to win a prize, but if not, I can say that I've been rewarded in other ways while meeting the blogathon challenge.