31 posts later, I’m at the finish line and here’s what I discovered:

It’s not that hard to blog every day, you have to “just do it.”

Not all blog posts are created equal. Some can be short. Some can simply point to other interesting stuff you’ve found online. Lists are crowd pleasers. Here’s some other great suggestions for types of posts from Problogger, a great source for anything related to blogging.

Regular blogging leads to more readers. Since the blogathon started, traffic to WordCount jumped close to 150 percent. If you blog, they will come. Here’s another great post from Problogger listing 23 ideas for finding new readers for your blog, including persistence.

It’s critical to tag your blogs so they show up when people do keyword searches on Google and other search engines. For a while I did what some search engine optimization experts suggested and only used a few tags per post. But I’m back to putting in about a half dozen or so, and I think it’s working.

Freelancers blog about all kinds of things. Some blog on the same subjects they write about. Jane Boursaw writes about the movies and her Reel Like with Jane Website and blog are full of entertainment industry news. Some, like me, blog about writing. Susan Johnston, The Urban Muse, is in a different place in her career and her take on freelancing is a refreshing change from mine. Other writers’ blogs are very personal, like Claudine Jalajas’ The @$#!% Extension, which chronicles her home addition, or Dawn Weingarten’s blog, where she writes about life after her husband’s organ transplant.

Blogging has been good for my writing. Compared to my other work, my blog posts are pretty chatty. That’s helped the stories I write for a consumer electronics Web site, where adopting a conversational, between-friends tone is a good way to explain tech topics that can sometimes be intimidating for the uninitiated. Here’s one example, this story on encryption I wrote recently for YourSecurityResource.com.

Some fellow blogathoners have been inspired to go after paid blogging gigs. I haven’t got there yet, but I’d consider the right offer.

So thanks to the other freelancers who braved it out. I hope you learned as much from the experience as I did.

The WordCount May blogathon is six days old and I’m excited to say that 22 freelance writers have taken up the challenge of blogging every day this month. A few signed up late, so I’m listing them here, and also to the original list that ran on May 1.

Leah Ingram - The Lean Green Family (formerly Suddenly Frugal), all about living frugally and green.

Dara Chadwick – Fit in Real Life.

In honor of the blogathon, I’ve revamped the links section of this blog. I streamlined the categories, and will be adding names of all the freelance writers participating in the May blogathon, as well as others whose work I know or like.

I also updated the Clips page to include stories that came out this month, including pieces in Oregon Business, IncTechnology.com, and YourSecurityResource.com.

Next on my housekeeping list is a design update – but don’t hold your breath!