Blogging Tips Archives | Tales from Absurdia

Blogger burnout is real — especially for book bloggers who lean heavily on writing book reviews.

After all, reading is time consuming, and if you pick the wrong books, or put undue pressure on yourself to crank out content, you’re going to burn out pretty fast.

This is compounded further when you have a pile of ARCs to read, not to mention your own backlog of purchases that, somehow, only ever seems to get bigger.

But fear not — I come with advice. I’ve put many of these tips into practice myself, and as a result, Tales from Absurdia is still operating many years later.

1) Do not compare and despair

Try not to compare your success to others.

It’s so easy to do, but if you succumb to what Cathy Rentzenbrink calls ‘compare and despair,’ you’ll feel rubbish about yourself and your writing.

Whether it’s pageviews, social media followers, the number of comments on your blog, or your success rate at scoring ARCs — others’ successes are not your failures. Maybe you can learn something from another blogger, but do not judge your own performance against others.

You may have less free time than others, or perhaps blogging, or promoting your content on social media, doesn’t come naturally to you. And that’s okay.

It’s hard not to compare yourself against your peers. I still find myself doing it weekly.

But when those intrusive thoughts rear their ugly heads, knock ‘em back down and remember you’re running your own race.

2) Remember why you're blogging

Take a moment and have a think about why you started blogging. Perhaps even write down a couple of sentences on the topic.

It could be that you wanted to chronicle your thoughts, or perhaps you wanted to join a community of readers. You may have started blogging for more self-indulgent reasons (and that’s fine — even Orwell claimed that some writers write for ‘sheer egoism!’)

Are these reasons still valid? Have they evolved in any kind of way? This writing exercise is a great way to focus yourself back on why you began spending your time talking about books to strangers on the internet.

3) Stop requesting ARCs

Right. It’s time for an intervention. Gather round closely for one moment, and repeat after me — Stop. Requesting. ARCs.

Seriously, if fear is the mind-killer, ARCs are the blog killer. This may sound counterintuitive, but when you’re under pressure to read for a deadline — and then you’re suddenly approved for five more books — reading can become a chore. If you’re not enjoying reading, you’re probably not enjoying blogging.

Those impulsive requests because you liked the cover or the blurb will chew up your time, prevent you from reading what you actually want to read, and sap your motivation.

I’ve stopped requesting ARCs altogether, but you needn’t do this. Simply reign those impulses in a little.

4) Be realistic

Let’s be real — there are only 24 hours in a day. If you work, that’s at least 8-10 hours.

You may be a parent, or have a dependent. You may also want to get some sleep too.

Some days and weeks, you just can’t get things done. Be realistic about this, and manage your own expectations. It’s easy to berate yourself for not publishing anything, or not getting to the book festivals you really want to visit, but as I wrote earlier — you’re running your own race.

Be kind to yourself, accept that you won’t always be able to work on your blog.

5) Take a break

I don’t know a single blogger who hasn’t considered packing the whole thing in — myself included, sometimes weekly — but more often than not, a break is just the thing you need.

This could be a week, a month, or even a year.

Take as long as you need and the answer will come to you. And if you’re sure you want to quit blogging, that’s okay!

But give yourself the space to think about it first. A break is always better than a knee-jerk decision.

Got any more tips? Post them in the comments below and support a fellow blogger!

How do you pick the perfect blog name? Deciding on your name is the first major challenge for any budding blogger.

And it’s a pretty big deal.

Then again, I’m the kind of person who sits in character creator screens in role-playing games for hours upon hours so…

But really, how do you pick the perfect blog name?

It’s complicated, and there are a fair few more aspects to it than you might have first thought.

Pick something unique to you

This is super important. There are over 600 million blogs on the internet, so you want to differentiate yourself from everyone else.

It doesn’t mean you need to come up with something entirely unique – largely because you’ll be there for weeks trying to do so – however, your blog name will require something that makes it uniquely yours.

Do you have a favourite novel you could pick a motif from? For example, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston uses a machine called a ‘speakwrite’ – in which case your writing, news, or current affairs blog could be called ‘The Speakwrite’ – or a variation on that.

To further differentiate your blog, you could use keywords from your niche as a prefix or suffix. Take a look at booksnest.co.uk for example.

Beth is a book blogger, so she simply stuck books at the beginning of next to create ‘booksnest’. It’s a simple name that just works.

Alex at Spells & Spaceships is an excellent science fiction & fantasy book blogger. He picked one motif from each of his genres – spells from fantasy, spaceships from sci-fi, and created Spells & Spaceships which, again, is simple and works well.

These are both fine examples of simplicity and originality done well, which is important because of the next tip…

Check if the domain is available

A domain is simply your website address.

What may happen (multiple times) is that you come up with a killer name, but the website domain is already taken. This happened a fair few times with the creation of Tales from Absurdia, which required me to think outside the box.

Ideally, come up with a handful of unique names (including variations on those names) and run them through a domain checker. There are loads out there, but let’s use WordPress for this example. Type in your desired domain (e.g. talesfromabsurdia.com) to see whether it’s available.

In this case, talesfromabsurdia.com is taken (well, you are here!) but other alternatives may be available such as .net, .co.uk, or .org. You may also see some alternative root domain suggestions such as ‘Tales of Absurdia’ or ‘The Absurdia Tales’, to continue with the example of this blog.

There’s a lot of debate over the pros and cons of .com, .co.uk, and .net domains – but in an ideal world, you’ll want a .com domain. .com is the most widely known internet domain, with more people globally using that address.

So, if you’re looking to attract an audience outside of your own country, people are simply more likely to type in .com domains than your own country-specific one. It is admittedly slightly more complicated than this, but if you’re able to get a .com domain, go for that.

If you’re faced with a situation where your domain is already taken, you have two choices:

Pick a variation on the taken domain
Just choose a new name

The dangers of picking minor variations on an existing domain is that you may end up losing traffic to that other website (or vice versa) due to readers becoming confused and going to the wrong site.

Upon realising they’re on the wrong site, the user will leave which will increase your bounce rate (where users leave your site after visiting only one page). This tells Google’s ranking algorithm that your site is not as credible, and will make it harder for people to find your site.

I’d always recommend going back to the start and choosing a new name, over picking minor variations. It’ll only harm your blog in the long run.

Once you’ve chosen a domain, you can either purchase it to guarantee it’s yours, or wait until you’ve chosen a hosting provider (GoDaddy, IONOS, Dreamhost, etc.).

Incidentally, if you’re not sure which domain provider to choose, Digital.com has put together a brilliant hosting guide, with price and feature breakdowns.

If you’re not self-hosting your website, and instead opt to do it for free through WordPress/Wix/your website builder of choice, then simply select your desired domain name. Keep in mind the following point, however…

Are the social media handles available?

If you’re simply going to share your blog via your personal social channels, then this isn’t much of an issue. However, if you want to gain the widest possible reach, you’ll want blog-specific social accounts so that your audience can follow your content without the noise of personal posts.

You’ll want to base your social handles on your website’s name to make it easier for people to find you. Again, you’ll need to run your name through a name checker. The aptly named namechekr.com is a perfect place to do this.

Simply enter your name into namecheckr.com and it’ll show all of the social networks (and websites!) where your domain is available – and highlight the ones that are not.

If you see ‘error!’ in your search, then go to the social media website in question to double-check whether your name is available.

As you can see, I don’t use most of these social networks. This is largely because I don’t have time for more than a couple of social media accounts at one time.

And that’s the next point – social media (done properly) is time consuming. If you use too many, you won’t actually have time to blog!

You could arguably sign up to all of the networks you reckon you’ll use – just in case – but that’s up to you.

Say your blog name out loud

This might sound like odd advice, but there are a few good reasons to say your name out loud.

For a start, does it sound as good being verbalised as it does on the page? Is it simple to say?

Are you proud of that name, or does it secretly make you wince?

Remember – this is your identity on the internet. If you’re not able to say it out loud, with confidence, then it’s probably not the name for you.

Will my blog name impact SEO?

This is probably worth a whole series of blog posts itself, but I’ll try to condense things down.

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimisation, is the practice of tailoring your content so that it appears higher in Google’s search results (you can read more about SEO at Backlinko.com).

In a nutshell, Google ranks a website based on its perceived value. Value is determined by a range of factors.

Good SEO practices, such as keyword-focused blog posts (don’t forget those alt descriptions) will result in your blog posts appearing near the top of the page on Google. This will significantly increase your organic traffic in the process.

But back to blog names.

A more unique name will be more likely to get a spot near the top of Google’s search rankings due to there being less competition.

However, there’s a trade-off here. A more unique name is less likely to be searched for. This isn’t a huge problem, as provided that your blog name is related to your blogging niche..

A more derivative name, picked with SEO in mind, may rank better for general keywords. However, if it doesn’t stand out, it’s inherently less appealing, and people are less likely to click and visit your site.

Despite this section, try not to obsess over SEO.

It’s very complicated, mostly a long game, and your blog name is not the most important factor in determining whether you gain organic web traffic or not. It’s far more important to ensure that the blog posts you write are SEO-friendly. But, I’ve included this section because it’s worth keeping in mind at an early stage.

For example:

John’s Bookish Book Blog will have high search volume because it contains general keywords relating to book blogging – people typically search for ‘book blogs’ or ‘bookish blogs’. However… this blog will be directly competing for web traffic with loads of other book blogs, and even newspaper book blogs.

Tales from Absurdia, however, is far more niche. Sure, it’s less likely to drive direct searches – however, using a keyword strategy targeting book-related phrases, I am able to drive a decent amount of monthly organic Google traffic.

Despite this section, try not to obsess over SEO.

Finally... Once you’ve Picked the perfect blog name... stick with it!

Once you’ve managed to pick the perfect blog name, try not to chop and change it. This will only confuse your audience and worse – it will severely impact your SEO gains.

It’s best to go through this process one time, so take a steady approach in your quest to pick the perfect blog name. It isn’t easy, but you will get there eventually.

How did you pick your blog name? Was this guide helpful? Leave me a comment below and let me know!

How to Avoid Book Blogger Burnout