AlexisIt’s about 7:00 PM here in the south with a cool breeze blowing outside. I’m sitting in my driveway in a jacket watching all the kids play, and I see an occasionally neighbor with a wine glass waking about. Everyone does their best to social distance, but we are a close community and it’s hard to just stay inside all day. At least I have my little dog on my lap to help keep me warm.
While I’m sitting here watching everyone and listening to the cows moo and the it’s chirp, I open up my WordPress app to explore the bloggers realm to see who else I can find to follow that intrigued me. I have found some RV bloggers, travel bloggers, and others just expressing their thoughts about life and philosophy. What I don’t see is a major representation of the nudist community. I do see a lot of blog professing to be “nudist”, but I’m reality there’s some clickbait and embedded porn behind the name. I have found some blogs that appear to be actually nudist friendly, but most of them have not posted in several years. I’m sure some of them were starter blogs from WordPress who have graduated to their own domain name, and have vanished into cyberspace somewhere, but the vast majority seem to be abandoned in every aspect. Kinda saddening or me because I love to see and learn about how others are living their lives naked.
What Caused You to Stop
I sit here and wander to myself, “what would make someone who has started to gain a small amount of followers stop?” I’m sure it has a lot to do with life commitments, maybe they started a family, moved, new job, or any other logical excuses. Maybe they just got bored and didn’t have anything else to say, but what I’m most worried about is bloggers becoming discouraged due to the lack of followers, or the floods of spam and other bots. I have to say, this has been a la or of love for me. I’ve always wanted my own website, but I had no idea how much it would become a part of my life. I may never get 25 or more followers, but at least I have a place to journal my thoughts and share the things I’m interested in. I’m not very good at talking, but I can write like it’s no ones business. What you started years ago but there wasn’t that big of a niche when you started? I would encourage you to restart if you’ve been dormant for a while.
Now is the Time to Start
If you’ve never had a blog, but find them very interesting, then you may have a second calling as a blogger. You don’t have to start out with your own domain or WordPress site, but you can be a guest writer on someone else’s blog. I don’t have a large blog following yet, but I’m open to guest writers if you have the desire. I don’t discriminate against anyone. If you have a thought or idea you’d like to share, then hit me up in the comments or use my contact page to get started.
It can be extremely difficult and discouraging trying to get started with your own blog. I’ve been playing around with them for years testing new things, different venues, and styles. After a couple of years and lots of tears, I finally settled down here to share my thoughts about life and nudism. However, don’t let the work turn you off, because there are much simpler options than what I chose. Most hosting companies, and especially WordPress make getting and started easy, but I’ve always been a DIY and techie person and chose to do it the hard way.
We Need More Real Nudist
To really support the cause and to get the word out about nudism, we need more like you to increase our presence in cyberspace and help advocate for our cause. We need and want everyone to see what it’s like to be a real nudist, and that we aren’t just a bunch of pervs looking to get off or swap partners in some kind of swinging orgy. It’s time we set the record straight about who we really are and what we care about. If you want to guest blog on here, just let me know and I’ll give you a shot at it.
Get Naked, Live Naked
AJ
This is a very good question. I’ve been writing about naturism on the Internet (off and on) since 1996 (and even before that at places you may never have heard of, like “CompuServe”). I’ve also been inactive for various periods of time too, so I can understand why people go on hiatus. In any case, welcome to the naturist “blogosphere”! Your enthusiasm is quite welcome, especially since most female naturist bloggers seem to have given up (for reasons you obviously understand).
I’ve also been puzzled how many naturist bloggers have disappeared recently. Just as a hypothesis, one reason may be that a sense of “community” among naturist bloggers has disappeared in the past several years. The format and appearance of blogs (of all kinds) has changed. It used to be that most blogs had a “blogroll” that listed other blogs on the same topic that the blogger especially liked. That’s mostly gone by the wayside now, so it’s more difficult for people to discover other blogs they might like. Naturist bloggers no longer seem interested in promoting others doing the same thing, and that’s a real shame.
Also, it used to be that blogs had a more standard format, which included good links to archived articles, lists of comments to blog posts, well-defined categories and tags for posts, and so on. Now, it seems to be the style that only a handful of posts show up on the front page, with very little way to explore everything on the blog. The emphasis is on surface aesthetics rather than on content.
Another thing is that along with Twitter and “microblogs” where posts consist of a dozen or so words or less, readers are less interested in longer articles, which seem like just too much effort to bother reading. And then there are things like Instagram, which mainly feature pictures and little else. People, it seems, have mostly lost interest in reading or writing about much of anything in any depth. So perhaps this comment will seem overly long as well. It’s unfortunate.
[…] read over a blog post by NaturistPlace a couple days ago, where my recent blog post of Where are all the Nudist Bloggers was talked about with additional suggestions. NaturistPlace made the following […]
The effort of Blogging springs from within the “Well” of our souls! To blog, a person either need feel a drive to openly express their opinion on a topic, whether wishing to be challenged on that opinion or not is easy, or feel they possess knowledge of a topic they can express purposefully and for the potential benefit of others. These two cases for ‘Why I Blog’, in my case starting as a Naturism blog because that was my entry into clothing-free practices but, eventually developing into a “naked philosophy” Blog (my most often used Hashtag) and lastly encompassing all aspects of social nudism as well, are both true for me! Blogging was quite the challenge at first as I selected ‘worthy’ images on the Tumblr platform and added a sentence or paragraph on WHY it was being included in my Blog, which was NOT the original intent (or style) of Tumblr because it was an image “worship” platform. On Tumblr, users either posted images they created, reblogged ones fitting into the ‘Theme’ of their Blog, or they added a ‘Like’ (Love) vote by clicking a tiny heart icon, and that was it – text additions were NOT seen at all with the early Tumblr! So, much like “learning” to remove my clothing and LOVE being a nudist, I went against the mainstream intents of Tumblr and added those sentences, or paragraphs, or even superimposed brief text captions directly on top of images (which modifies these slightly) and “reclaimed” images for what I believed was a more innocent, joyful, hopeful and purely fun meaning — this “simple” nudity instead of erotically charged-up fantasy type images. Once a person begins Blogging, it is, in essence, similar to painting a room or an entire house in that once the brushstrokes start the “job” is not finished until every square inches has been covered! In this sense, my nudist house is a very big one indeed!
This sounds similar to me in the sense that images were a way to blog. Taking a step back and reevaluating my blogs purpose really helped to give me a new perspective on why and what I blog. Thanks to some veteran nudist bloggers I’m in a better position to provide richer and deeper content that’s more thought provoking and “meaty”…no pun intended. 😂. It’s helped me to be nude more often and to be more connected with the community. I wished I had more time to work on it, but things are crazy right now. Maybe I will work on one of my posts now while I’m sitting here…
I was going through those questions about blogging as well over this festive season. Blogging takes time and requires motivation to keep going. I made the decision to stop using naked pictures on my blog as I don’t think they serve the cause of naturism and nudism. I love the pictures you are using on your blog and I commend you for this. They are always tasteful and serve as a great support for your words.
So I reflected upon the year, my blog, life in general and nudism in particular. I was on the edge to drop the ball and stop the blog. But my true self loves nudism too much to stop writing and talking about it. So 2021 will be another nude year, and I want to make it even nudier with more nude activities and nude ideas I will be sharing on the blog, Brining more people to naturism and nudism is about sharing our experiences with it and showing how great this lifestyle is. We. nudist bloggers, need to continue day in day out to trumpet the beauty, comfort and joy of naturism and nudism!
Keep up the great work Alexis!
I have often contemplated on stopping the use of pictures on my blog, but I think they server an important part when trying to illustrate my thoughts. I try to use as many open, license free pictures as I can, and when I can’t I always ask for permission if the owner is available. Sometimes it’s hard because the same pictures have been traded around so much that it’s nearly impossible to find. I spend more time looking for tasteful pictures than I do actually writing the blog itself. A search for nudist pics just doesn’t turn up family friendly nudity. Man, at the smut people think is “nudist”!! I wish I could find more artistic pictures of nude models with regular everyday bodies, and not the ones with men and women who have the perfect physique. Unfortunately, I have to use what I can find, and sometimes I don’t even use a nude photo. The point is to illustrate what I’m trying to talk about.
I have thought many times about just saying forget it and throwing my hands up, but I think it would leave an empty void because I just like writing my thoughts. They don’t even have to be nudist related, but I still try to tie it in. You’re doing a great job and I don’t think you need to just throw in the towel. Maybe incorporate more things that are not nudist related. Nothing says you can’t talk about your favorite shows talk about your wife making fun of you “letting it all hang out” too often. It’s good she understands or at least tries to understand your thoughts. 🙂
I am thinking about constructing my own blog describing my experiences and how they intertwine with different topics in nudism, and I’ve liked your work so far. What would you recommend as a starter account without the commitment of a domain name? WordPress? Blogger? I’ve even thought about using Substack.
Well, I am partial to WordPress. I have used blogger in the past and tried it out, but the features, style, and the fact it’s controlled by Google bothers me. I have seen substack and I think it could be a good option, but I haven’t dove into it enough to really know. For me, the best part about WordPress is I can take the content anywhere, and if I change hosts, servers, or need to change anything, then it’s a much easier process. Plus, WordPress has so many plugins and support. This could be a good blog post for me to do. I’ve been needing an idea I can get behind and write. I haven’t had much motivation lately, so I will start researching and find out. Who knows, maybe I’ll find something much better out there. 🙂
[…] It started when we stumbled upon this blog post on Naturist Place, which was a response to a blog post on Sensual Nudist about what happened to the nudist bloggers. Alexis, the Sensual Nudist, was asking why there are so […]
[…] four years ago…wow, it’s really been that long…I wrote a blog asking What Happened to All the Nudist Bloggers, and I had asked myself the questions “why are there so few of us? Why is everyone just […]