I launched this Leonberger dog blog in March of 2022. The purpose of the blog was to promote my upcoming book “The Life and Times of Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle, stories and tips from thirteen years with a Leonberger” and to spread the word about Leonbergers, a rare but very special breed of dog. They are very large, friendly, unafraid but sensitive and loving, protective and strong, energetic and funny, especially when they are young.
In addition, Bronco was a very special Leonberger. Purebred Leonbergers typically live 8-10 years, but Bronco lived almost 13 years. He was two weeks short of 13 when he died from heart failure. Therefore, he received an award for longevity from the Leonberger Health Foundation International and we donated his DNA for research. I can add that I donate all royalties from sales of my book to the Leonberger Health Foundation International. It is a great organization that has improved the health of Leonbergers and other giant dog breeds substantially.
My on-line friend Alex Diaz-Granados, who is an experienced blogger (see “A certain point of view”) helped me get started. He suggested that I use wordpress.com, and here we are. I can add that Alex and I have been on-line friends for a long time. It started with epinions.com, a review site that paid reviewers for writing reviews. I joined epinions.com in 2008. He had joined a few years before that. I focused on software, travel, books, computer hardware and electronics. He focused on books, film, travel, and I think on-line stores and a few more topics. He can fill me in. I can add that sometimes epinions.com paid pretty well, so after a while it became more than a hobby for me. It became a source of supplementary income. I joined twitter and Facebook in 2010 and he was already there, and we both eventually joined Instagram. Unfortunately, epinions.com went belly up in 2014.
In March of 2022 I invited friends and Facebook friends to visit and follow my blog if they wished to do so, and many did. I had some traffic and comments in the beginning but then it died down, and it didn’t seem like search engines picked up my blog. In July of 2022 I released my book in honor of Bronco’s birthday on July 3rd. In the beginning I sold many books, well for a Leonberger book anyway, and I also had more visitors to my blog, but after a while the activity on my blog as well as book sales died down.
Alex suggested that I visit, comment and like the posts of other bloggers and in August I started doing that using Alex’ blog as a starting point and now I was getting more visitors and a lot more comments and likes, and search engines started to pick up my blog a lot more. Lately I even had a couple of posts go sort of viral with thousands of visitors in a couple of days. Those unknown visitors tend not to leave comments (or likes) but other wordpress bloggers do. That was not the best part though. The best part was meeting other bloggers and authors on-line, reading their blogs, reading their books, typically great books. This was fun. Blog visits and book sales became secondary. Blogging is now a hobby.
So, what are my goals for my Leonberger blog in 2023?
- Continue my Leonberger blog and keep promoting my book on the blog for at least six more months.
- Virtual Book Blast For Natural Selection with Jacqui Murray on February 13 2023.
- I still have a lot to learn more about wordpress.com. I don’t know how to do inline images, I don’t know how to store images for later use, I don’t know how to make those little icons, hearts and clover, etc., that people put in comments, I only know the basics of the 20/20 template, I don’t know other templates. I have a wordpress book that I am planning to read. I need to learn more.
- I will read more books by authors I know online. Knowing an author and reading their book(s) is a completely different feeling compared to reading someone you’ve never talked to (I have a long TBR list).
- Post 20-30 book reviews on my blog. I don’t post all my book reviews on my blog. Most of my book reviews are only for Amazon (or Goodreads). On my blog I just post reviews for Leonberger books and reviews for books by fellow bloggers that I love and want to promote.
- I want to start a second blog that is about facts and insights that could have a high impact on someone’s worldview and yet may not be well known, understood, believed or are controversial, yet are fully backed by the expertise in that field. As someone who have studied modern physics, loves gapminder, and have read a ton of books on all kinds of topics, I’ve come across quite a few, and I have radically changed my view of the world several times. However, I am hoping for good suggestions from visitors so I can expand the collection. I can be in charge of the fact checking, at least to begin with.
I wish you all a Happy New Year and a Great 2023!
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Finally, if you would like to learn about more about my book and find out where to buy it, click here or here. You can also click the image below to buy it from Amazon.
Leonberger Life 