One of the truly worrisome aspects of blogging is having lofty expectations for your success as a blogger. Here are five expectations that could cause the casual blogger to become discouraged and quit the whole idea of blogging.

1. High Volume of Traffic: Every fledgling blogger thinks that they can start a blog and, like in that Kevin Costner film, the people will come flocking to read whatever the blogger feels like throwing out into the World Wide Web. If only that were true. This blog has a rather low readership, averaging around four hits per day since migrating to it’s current server. That does not mean there are never more than that, on occasion traffic will spike to as many as 60 hits. Realistically, the chances that a blog will go viral are about as good as hitting the lottery. Blogging for fame should not be goal of any blogger.
2. Earning Money from Blogging: We’ve seen all sorts of claims that there are ways of making money from your blog; the problem again is hitting that magical state where you have a popular blog that people will actually visit and feel like clicking on an advertisement banner or two are about as likely as hitting the lottery. Blogging purely to make money is a fiasco from the get go.Some experts suggest not monitizing you blog until you have a large following, others will tell you to begin using ads from the beginning. This blog does not make much from the advertisements it displays. In fact, most of the ads you see are displayed gratis and mostly just links to things that the authors find interesting. Can you make money blogging?, yes. Will you make money blogging?, most likely no. You might want to read a previous post on this topic.
3. Repeat Visitors: Chances are that your blogging attempts will only garner a low audience, hardly ever will you have repeat visitors (if you disregard your friends and family coming by to see your blog). Until you gain more traffic, your blog will most likely fly well below the radar of most of the Blogosphere’s trending sites such as digg, Technorati, etc. There are, however, exceptions to this, see next point.
4. Real Comments: About the only repeat visitors you will receive, this goes for popular and under the radar blogs, are a horde of spam cementers. Finding comments to your blog posts that contain any real meat will be hard for quite some time. Unless you have a few points that no one has written before on a subject or have something to add to those ideas already out there, you will most likely get no comments at all on your blog. Unless your brother or best friend cruise by and want to add their three cents worth, that is. Just don’t sweat it, even the mightiest blogger has posts that barely get a whisper.
5. Referrals: Wouldn’t it be great to have links to your blog all over the Internet? Of course it would, that is why there are services that make it so you can generate links on other blogs and web sites to hopefully enhance your Search Engine Rank. A lot of these referral sites are either too complicated to work or do not provide an ethical way of generating traffic. If the referrals come, let them. Just don’t try and force them.

When it comes to blogging, just one word of advice. Blog for the pure enjoyment of blogging, don’t worry how popular your blog is. If you enjoy blogging, then keep at it. If you don’t, then bale out while you can.

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Here is some tech tips and advice you can use or ignore, either way, check it out.

1. Don’t be a social network junkie, instead use that time and energy for something else such as calling up an old friend, reading a book, or just taking the time to see the world around you.
2. Sooner or later, your hard drive will crash. Why experience the trouble of losing all that data when you can create regular backups? Today, external USB or FIREWIRE drives are becoming more and more affordable. Schedule a day each month to back up your drive’s data onto an external hard drive or even CD/DVD-ROMs. If you can, store your backup off-site.
3. If you have an old computer laying around, you can put new life into and take Linux for a spin.
4. If you are the type that never shuts down their computer, consider setting up your computer to go into suspend mode and shut off your hard drive and monitor when not in use. You still get to go instantly to work when you sit down in front of your computer and still reduce your energy usage.
5. When using a search engine, your first few results are most likely pre-paid ads or “lure” sites.  Instead, take a few moments to read the summaries and most search egines will tell you when a link is a paid advert or not.
6. If you don’t have an old-school CRT monitor, using a screensaver doesn’t do much for you; instead set your monitor to auto-off after XX amount of in-use.
7. If you really need to print something out, most of the time you don’t need to use high color. Invest in a printer that allows for a black ink cartridge then be sure to make two printer setups for it; one for color and one for b&w.
8. If you are thinking about buying a portable computer and are not going to use it for more than surfing the web and checking your e-mail, consider buying a Netbook. Aside from being cheaper they are much smaller and lighter than a standard, fully loaded laptop. The only drawback is the lack of a full-sized keyboard and no DVD, but if you really want these, there are USB alternative that can help.
9. If you are a Windows user, remember to keep it up to date. MOst new major updates are posted in the middle of the week. Most of these updates help protect your computer from potential harm.
10. It may seem like a lot of hassle, but take the time to read that End User Liscense Agreement or Terms of Use when installing and new software. There is a lot to read in those things, but you might be violating those terms and conditions without even knowing it.

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