This blogging thing is a curious activity.
Not being a professional blogger or even a particularly aggressive one, I still enjoy looking at my stat report to see how much activity a particular blog may have generated.
After blogging for well over a year now, I proudly passed the 15,000 hit mark a short while back and then on November 21st, I experienced my busiest single day ever … 132 hits!
I realize this is peanuts in the grand scope of the world-wide blogosphere, but for little old me, it provided a much needed injection of enthusiasm that I hadn’t had for a while.
Then it struck me.
I actually had not posted a new blog in over two weeks, and yet, my very busiest day ever took place during this period of inactivity! I studied this situation for a while and even did some research to try to figure it out.
What I noticed quickly was that many, if not most of my hits were coming from innocuous posts I’d made months ago on such esoteric topics as the mental condition of Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of the novel “Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole, the sometimes less than flattering story behind the Pilgrims and the “Mayflower”, and a brief throw-away quickie that I hacked out called “Pondering the Meaning of Life” … in which I really did very little actual pondering.
What the …. !?!
Actually, nothing I’d written lately was producing hits!
Why??
I dunno, but I still wanted to take advantage of the jolt of adrenaline I got when I first looked at the stats, so I jumped right into a creative rant about today’s Christmas decorating and shopping rituals.
Timely, seasonal, broadly appealing … everything that I supposed a blog should be.
If material I wrote months ago still had legs, then this thing was bound to knock’em dead!
Well, “dead” would be a pretty apt description of the response.
Since writing my “sure thing” blog, my hits per day has dropped steadily from the dizzying heights of November 21, down to the current average of about 25 per day.
Don’t get me wrong, there was a time over a year ago, when I finally reached the level of averaging 25 hits per day and I thought that was pretty good. But, not now.
Hah!! Now, I’m a seasoned blogger!
And by blessing my audience with a snappy well thought out seasonal blog, I figured to reach even new heights!
NOT happening! Go figure.
In what appears to be a classic illustration of LESS is MORE, if I’m to believe my dashboard, statistically I’m better off not to write more than once or twice a month. Maybe even less often!
Of course, I’m being facetious … sort of … but not entirely.
Like I say … this blogging is a curious activity.
Post Script: When I pressed the “publish” button, I got a message that contained a series hints for driving more people to your blog. Hint #7 … Blog More Often. So there ya go! Intuitively, that makes perfect sense. In reality, I still wonder …
Footprints in the Sand ... 
I wish I knew the secret, but I don’t. One of the most common Google searches that lands people on my blog? 80 year old sex. (!?!?)
After several years of blogging, I’ve finally realized that what is most satisfying to me is when something I’ve written feels right and good to me. Of course, lots of comments are nice too, but I’ve got little control over that!
Terri … so far, that’s about the only “tag” I haven’t used. Maybe that’s the key, LOL. You’ve obviously developed a loyal following. You do good stuff. 🙂
I write when I have something I want to say . . . rather than when I want to say something. As a result SLTW is a series of posts written by ME for ME . . . that often resonate with others.
When I have something I would rather do than blog . . . I do it. No rules, just write.
BTW: Sometimes spikes in activity are the result of “spammers” honing in on a post for a period of time. When we don’t take the bait (or when WP slams the door in their face) . . . they go away.
Whenever I make a post that I think will get lots of hits, it hardly gets any, but when I make a post that I think nobody’s going to read, it always gets a lot of hits. Oh, well. One of those mysteries of blogging, I suppose. Congratulations on your 15k hits!
Somehow that does seem to be the trend doesn’t it. Thanks … not sure if 15 in a year+ is all that great, but it seems like a lot.
I still read your posts when they come into my inbox – not sure whether they get counted as hits though.
As for getting hits – When I had the first herby blog I got lots of hits from some ‘free marijuana’ site and for search terms for ‘hippy drugs’. And my blog had NOTHING to do with drugs at all. Haha.
Well hi stranger! Good to hear from you again. Hope all is well with you.
🙂 Yeah – all is well with me. Got through some stuff and am back in action.