Okay, I'll fess up. I am a shameless self-promoter. Yes, I blog for the writing and for you, my Gentle Readers, but it's also nice to get feedback and see real-world data that makes the feedback … um … exciting.

So, some time back I nominated my own site, yes this site right here, in the "Religion" category at the Blogger's Choice Awards (I waited till now to mention it because Alexa, which generates the thumbnails for the contest, kept pulling in a screenshot for my site that was showing a brain-dead URL.) I am sure this self-nomination is a mark of my own immaturity. And I'm okay with that — while also recognizing there's probably something there worth analyzing … someday.

Do I think I have a lollipop's chance in kindergarten of actually

Here are some tips I've learned from nearly two years of blogging and consistently raising my site's traffic from month to month, often doubling it from previous months. Compared to some, I'm a rank newbie and have no business offering you any sort of pseudo-sage advice, but whatever I have to say below has already been said by others smarter than me. Most of it is hard-won insight that has worked for somebody somewhere, sometimes even me.

Updated 01/09/2006: See my reference to Dan Edelen’s recent post, below.

Last Tuesday, I was asleep at the wheel when Eric Reed over at Out of Ur invited Dr. Craig L. Blomberg to post a thoughtful article on blogging and the Evangelical blogosphere. I finally saw the post today, and thought it worth sharing.

It’s easy to read Blomberg’s post as entirely critical. It’s not. But he does ask some hard questions worthy of consideration. His post, indeed, may be a sort of litmus test for motives: if you see it as overly critical, perhaps you’re the inspiration for his questions? I quote, below, a few excerpts, but the whole post is worth reading. My response, posted to the site, follows.

If Marshall McLuhan was even partly right that “the medium is the message,” then what message does the medium of blogging send?