What is the name of your Blog?JGDS series
What is your name?
Elysabeth Eldering
Where are you from? (include country, state and/or city)
USA, South Carolina, Honea Path (yeah we get all kinds of funky pronounciations and the locals have been known to even call the town Honkey Path)
What is your current age or age range?
um let's see - if my math is correct - I will be 47 this summer
Please describe your blog
This is a place where my 50-state, mystery, trivia series will be updated as well as hosting other children's authors who are doing blog tours, and just having fun with learning some geography.
Describe the main purpose of your blogging, what are you trying to accomplish?
To get my books in the schools - to supplement the curriculum with a bit of ELA, science and mostly social studies.
What blogging platform do you do and why?
Blogger - it's free and fairly straight forward to use and I've not had any trouble with it since I started blogging.
What do you blog the most about?
On this blog, my books or my publisher or other children's authors.
What kind of blogs make you angry?
not sure I've really come across any blogs that make me angre.
Give five of your best blogging tips.
- Stay in the public eye by posting more than once a year (once a month sometimes is even too long to go between posts). Blogging really can be effective with one posting a week. - Write relevant blog postings - don't put a bunch of junk that no one seems to care about. - Tag everything - the more keywords you put in your tags, the more your site gets put near the top of the search lists. - Keep the blogs smut free and family friendly - no one really wants to read about porn, and we are not about doing that on educational and book sites.
What are some things you would NEVER blog about?
On this particular blog - I won't really blog about anything adult in nature (I'm trying to keep my adult and family stuff on my other blog).
Did you start blogging for the purpose of making money and if so, are you making enough money?
lol - I started my first blog for the purpose of just to keep up with my family and writing stuff. When my series was contracted, I started a blog just for it to keep folks involved and informed about my books. Not really with the goal of making money in mind, but more as an information source about me and my books.
How long have you been blogging?
Maybe three years, maybe four - I don't have a clue. I know it's been a while.
About how many hours per day do you spend blogging?
lol - depends on my mood. Like today for example, I have a ton of work and really am not wanting to do it so I've been reading stuff all over the internet and listening to the video of the CPSC public meeting last week about book publishing and how books are really stupid to be included in the new CPSIA. This law affects everyone whether or not you see it but long-term it will hit your wallets like a, dare I say it, lead hammer. CPSIA needs to be repealed and totally reworked and target the manufacturers overseas who caused the problem in 2007 to begin with. Books are totally lead free and even in making a book from printing to offsetting or gluing or other methods of putting it together, there is no way lead can be transferred and cause the levels to be as high as the minimum standards set forth. This law will also destroy most small and mid sized businesses as they will not be able to afford the testing and they will have to shut down. And since the lawmakers only think one way, they can't see the forest for the trees due to the fact that they think resellers (second stores) should be involved by saying you don't have to have your items tested, it's okay to sell items through your store but you better be 100% positive that everything you sell is lead-free and if any item you sold is found to contain lead at higher levels than set forth in this law, then you will be fined up to $100,000 and/or spend up to five years in jail. Sorry, the resellers have nothing to do with the production of the items they sell and have no control over what is there in those products.
Sorry - that didn't answer the question really. I probably spend more hours than I really should or at the very least, spend hours I should be working reading and blogging - lol.
Do you track RSS feeds and if so, how many do you usually track daily?
Probably not because I don't understand how they work.
Do you use Digg, and why or why not?
Nope - never heard of it or haven't seen much about it.
Do you use Stumbleupon, and why or why not?
Again, same thing as the Digg question -
What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
Not sure since I really don't see that much traffic on any given day. I'm hoping as more books come out that more traffice will come to my blog but not sure what the best promotional techniques are to get people there yet.
If you could post a blog on any blog in the world, which one would it be and why?
Thats a weird question to ask. I wouldn't even know what to post on any one else's blog.
What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?
Life is a trial and error format anyway so I'm sure I've made mistakes but not sure that they have been that noticable or what they are really.
What are your top five blogging site picks and why?
my two of course. (http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com and http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com).
I used to check other friends' blogs out on an almost daily basis but have gotten away from that and so visit some blogs pretty much once or twice a week - so don't really have five top sites.
Have you met anyone offline as a result of your blog?
Not sure it's really because of my blog but I have met folks from chats and forum discussions for real. Doubt my blogs have anything to do with it.
Enter your own question here
No question so no answer - I'm drawing a blank - lol
What is the url of your blog?
JGDS series
