Black Witch turns 7 years old today. This is very nifty. Tiring and nifty. It’s been a long thing, frankly.

BW started because there was no content for Black Pagans at all back in 2010. The most anyone was going to find was White Pagans making columns and posts about race that were well meaning but super short-falling.

The column has changed obviously over time, I still talk about Black Pagan issues but I also added in gender and mental health because they’re just as important. That and they’re things that affect me, a Black Pagan person. That and there’s only but so many columns you can write about the meaning of stones and divination before it starts to sound rehashed and a total broken record.

Even if it has been seven years, I still feel like I’m learning how to blog and maintain digital content. For example, I used to do livestreaming via Ustream but that became too much of a headache, Ustream would delete videos after a set amount of time (unless you fork up cash) and I didn’t know. Then Facebook opened up the ability to livestream on fan pages, Facebook Live. Once that happened, I am able to live stream a little more than on BW anniversaries and Halloween. I mainly livestreamed bookbinding for journals being sold on the BW Shoppe. It’s not must-see-tv but I kind of didn’t want the ability to livestream sit around.

With the constant changing nature that is the internet and social media sites changing their ways of operations – from chronological posting to algorithms – it can be a bit tough to keep a readerbase. An example is how Facebook actively throttles organic reach in exchange for money. When you like a page, it generally means that you want to see the page’s content. Facebook doesn’t feel the same way. Facebook believes that unless the page you like has shelled out some money (I believe the smallest amount is $5/day), you really don’t need to see their content that badly. And if it isn’t clickbait or fake news, it’s not really going to be viral. And Facebook likes viral because viral = money for Facebook. Basically, if you like a page for kitten paws, unless “Kitten Jellybeans” has forked over any money to Facebook, you’re going to nearly never see them…but you’ll get plenty of clickbait and nonsense that you never wanted to see.

What I would like to see in the future for BW is to be more persistent with posting. While I feel like I haven’t missed nearly as many Fridays as I did in the past couple years, I can still do better. I want to be a lot more steady in posting.

I also would like to make for more reader interaction since there aren’t physical spaces where Black Pagans meet. I already have the Discord server so I’ll probably start there. Doing the livestreams seem to be not a bad option, either. I’ve tried to tweet more but it’s not the most fun of habits to learn. Unless I am going to write in other languages, I’m just too long winded for 140 characters.

I do sometimes wonder about creating a bigger pull but, frankly, I don’t want to start making crap content just for clicks and views. I mean, this is a Pagan site, I could easily start posting fake positivity, pop astrology, new age treatment and random spells that sound legit but only to idiots. This is a Black site, I could post only about police killings and echo whatever Shaun King and Cornel West says. These and more can boost my site’s visibility and notoriety (even start bringing in money), buuuuut I simply wouldn’t like anything. I don’t really read sites like these so I don’t want to mimic them.

Instead, I rather try to monetize the blog with Ko-Fi and the BW Shoppe. Speaking of the BW Shoppe, there will be a 50% discount with the coupon code: BWAnni17. Expires June 16, 2017.

So, BW is turning seven years old, huzzah. I’ll be doing a livestream about it on the FB page at 8 PM EST.