Blogging Success

I've always found myself wishing for blogging success, but I'm beginning to realize that there isn't really a definition of that. Is it 1000 or 5000 followers? Twenty comments on every post? More page views than the New York Times? And then I started to think, does blogging success really even need to depend so heavily on how many people read and respond to what you write?

I mean, of course I would like to have more followers and more comments and more page views - anyone would. But does that mean that what I have now - 350 followers and 5 comments on a good post - isn't success?

Maybe blogging success is really just about putting forth what you think and getting any amount of feedback. I certainly have more people responding to my posts than I did a year ago, but maybe I've achieved blogging success a long time ago, when I got my first comment and my first follower.

There have been people who've commented on a review and told me that they didn't want to read that book before, but now they do after reading my words. There have been people who've told me they agree with what I said or they disagree, and that's started a conversation. I've met people through blogging and made friends, and my way of thinking has changed. I have different opinions and different views, and that's all stemmed from reading and conversing and interacting through the blogosphere.

So, sure, I don't have followers in the four digits or so many comments that Blogspot crashes, but I'm a part of a flow of ideas, and I've influenced and been influenced. I'm a successful blogger, and you are too.