This year was full of blog-related news. Early on, I had to migrate my site from one hosting provider, VPS Farm, to another, RootBSD. VPS Farm offered wonderful service and had tools built to allow me to maintain my site anytime I wanted. RootBSD has been a good hosting provider as well, with near-rock-solid performance and a friendly, knowledgeable staff. Most of this transition was behind the scenes for most of my MT.Net readers, thankfully.
My blog showed up in a number of places. Earlier this summer, my friend Scott Huler linked to a post I wrote about our solar PV installation (more on that in a minute). The post brought quite a bit of traffic to my site and made me think of ways I might make money with my blogging. I approached Salon regarding a blogging position they had and reactivated the dormant Google AdSense ads I once had on my blog. Now the advertising revenue pays for about half of my hosting fees. I’m not living large but it’s better than nothing!
When the Color Run tore through a nearby neighborhood like a multi-colored powder tornado, I began to dig into the particulars of this company. My resulting blog post went viral in the Raleigh area, garnering far more hits than my usual drivel. Soon the TV stations were doing a story on the run as was the local paper. None were as comprehensive as my posts, though. It made me proud.
I have a feed reader full of dead or dying blogs, killed by the mesmerizing walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter. In spite of the microblogging sites I continue to enjoy having my own Internet soapbox here at MT.Net.