James Earl Jones once told me "If you build it, they will come." Except he didn't actually say that to me, and I'm pretty sure that he doesn't even say that at all in the movie Field of Dreams. In that movie, he just plays a writer who is grumpy for most of the time and in the end he disappears into the corn in the outfield. That man must really love corn. Post-spoiler spoiler-alert!
I have been at this blog thing for almost exactly one month now. In that time, including these thoughts here, I have posted exactly 30 times - which I'd like to think is halfway decent for a team of 1 when the guy writing the things also has a full-time job. Also thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I have a small program called Google Analytics that is embedded into the site that keeps meticulous track of things like # of unique visitors in a day, time each visitor spends on the site, and even the browser each reader is using. Google Analytics is informative, insightful, and depressing.
As a newbie to this whole "make your own website" thing, it is impossible to tell how a typical blog grows, how many readers a standard blog has, and whether or not you want tomato and mayo with your blog. Over the past month, I have been fortunate enough to have 125 unique visitors and 623 pageviews. It is exciting to have any readers at all because as of one month ago, I had ZERO unique visitors and ZERO pageviews, and the outlet for my thoughts was pretty much entirely limited to my puppy, Echo. I guess any progress is good progress.
On the depressing end of the spectrum: only 125 unique visitors? I could make more of a difference using my time recycling pop cans that I find in the garbage. Plus, I'm pretty sure that 25 of those unique viewers were me as I periodically need to use a different IP address. On top of that, yesterday I pore some decent time and emotional energy into my thoughts regarding how hard but necessary it is to admit that we care about our home, and I can clearly see (again thanks to Google Analytics) that 299,999,991 people in the United States don't care, and 300,000,000 don't care enough to leave a comment. For all the case-study fans out there, this assumes a US population of 300M (M stands for million for all those numerically disinclined).
For all those who have read my blog before, are reading it now, and will continue to check in from time-to-time in the future, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking a few minutes of your time. For the 299,999,875 who haven't - if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
My guess is yes and that the tree is insulting you for not being around to hear it. Please tell a friend if you find anything here remotely interesting.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Ken, Congratulations on 125 unique visitors - you probably have 124 more than me, and I've been blogging for a few years. I read a book last year called 'Blogging Heroes' which consisted of interviews of some of the most read bloggers, and one of the points I remember is that there are millions of blogs out there with a readership of 1. So I'm looking at this like a journal I'm sharing if anyone cares to look at it. One thing I can tell you -- I found I received a lot more readership by importing my blog directly onto my Facebook page (using the Notes app). Anyway, I consider 125 unique visitors a rousing success!
Kenny don't worry the Big D is reading but from the same IP so I don't know if it will make you go up to 126 or not.
Post a Comment