A Year in Review or How to Become a Writer, Maybe
Posted on 03. Aug, 2009 by dewde in General
On July 30th I celebrated the 1 year anniversary of my return to blogging. My goal was to increase readership from 2 to 4. According to my feedburner statistics page, I have 143 subscribers. Determining subscribers is not an exact science and I don’t believe that number for a moment. If I had to guess I would say half that. Maybe 70 or 80 tops.
I published 49 posts (this one will make 50) and I have 47 unpublished drafts. Here are my top 5 most-viewed posts:
1. Me and My Freakish Uvula – 858 views
2. The Child Brothels of Svay Pak – 711 views
3. Inauguration Day, Expletives, and Racial Slurs – 517 views
4. Hiding My Shame – 430 views
5. That Day I Exorcised Demons. At Burger King. – 384 views
The first one brings in views via google searches from my fellow freakish uvula bearing brethren. The second and third bring in views from individuals who are googling for “child brothels” and “f*cking nigers” respectively. I hope the first lot take the time to listen to the IJM letter. I hope the second lot never realize they are very nearly functionally illiterate. Or I hope that they do, and it causes them a terrific amount of mental anguish on a routine basis.
Here are my top 5 personal favorite posts:
1. Rerun: God and Darwin and Me on One Knee – 53 views
2. A Question Twice The Size Of My Large Intestine – 173 views
3. An Unconscionable Addiction Part 4 – 183 views
4. Rape and Coffee – 103 views
5. Keeping Your Privates, Private – 127 views
I did a series of parenting tip videos that are consistently my lowest viewed posts. So I stopped doing them after episode #5. I can’t see how they would be useful to my kids in the future, if they aren’t useful to you in the present.
I have a grand total of 13,735 views. That’s more than a bit nutty to me. Here is a break-down by month:
As expected, the more posts I write in a month, the more views I get. Also, controversial posts spark comments. And comments drive more page views because each person engaged in the conversation comes back a few times to see if anyone responded to them. On a high viewing day, a single person can represent many of the “page views” for the day in question. So if you want traffic on your blog here is what you do. Post a lot and occasionally say outlandish things. That’s not my strategy because I don’t have one. I say what I want to say when I want to say it, always considering that my daughters, and now my son, may one day read these words.
This blog has generated 584 legitimate comments and 2,573 spam comments. And while some of those are me showing appreciation to you, for your kind or insightful words, most are not me at all. When I started, I hoped that blogging publicly, as opposed to journaling privately, would generate conversations and that these conversations would help validate some of my views, fill in gaps in others, deconstruct others still, and help me grow as a person all around. Trust me when I say that I have not been disappointed in this area.
I don’t know if this means I have a successful blog. I do know that I have benefitted from this transaction considerably. I’ve always been a reader and that hasn’t changed. But now I feel myself becoming a writer. I’ve started to read books and blogs on writing. And sure, this may all be flights of passing fancy, but also, it may not.
About 4 years ago I revealed to my wife a growing desire to become a licensed marriage and family therapist. It was late at night, before bed. A fire had been unexpectedly lit within me and I explained it to her with an impressive, albeit false, nonchalance. When I was finished talking she looked at me with a contemplative-but-perplexed look and said, with less reservation than I would have preferred, “Aren’t you supposed to have a marriage worth emulating before becoming one of those?” Now, my wife is not always right about everything, but she was right in this moment and today I am thankful for her frankness in a way that my wounded pride would not permit at the time.
I tell you this story because the other day I asked my wife if she thought I could be a successful writer. She cocked her head to one side, grinned mischievously, and replied, “We’ll see.”
human3rror
Aug 3rd, 2009
haha. best /pwn ever by a wife on marriage counseling.
dewde
Aug 3rd, 2009
haha that hurt.
peace | dewde
human3rror
Aug 3rd, 2009
haha.
4get2remember
Aug 3rd, 2009
Happy blog anniversary!
I would LOVE some info about your tracking methods. I'm a bit of a doofus with that part of the internet…or is that technology? I'm so lost that I don't even know.
Congrats on your readership!
Chris F.
Aug 3rd, 2009
I'll go out on a limb and say Dewdette's claim is off the mark. It's entirely plausible that a person can provide helpful and insightful counseling services without leading an exemplary life. It's often tons easier to objectively see problems and corresponding solutions as an impartial observer than it is to see them in yourself, but that doesn't necessarily diminish the value of the service. I'd wager that very few effective counselors are truly model citizens in this regard.
Maybe what Dewdette was really trying to say in a nicer way was "please don't give up the day job"?
dewde
Aug 3rd, 2009
She wasn't judging me as a person or the exemplariness of my life as a whole. She was judging the quality of our marriage at the time.
I'm not going to a marriage counselor if he has a shishty marriage. It is too easy for me to conclude that either his advice doesn't work or he doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
The same philosophy goes for finances. I don't take financial advice from broke people.
peace | dewde
Chris F.
Aug 3rd, 2009
I think you have no way of knowing the "quality" of the counselor's marriage. I think at best you just have to hope that you can distinguish good advice from bad advice. Similarly, I think lots of financial advisors with poor skills had been riding the wave of economic success with few skills of their own, but most people wouldn't have been able to call them out. Sure, you'd be able to recognize any totally over the top stuff, like if the person was under indictment for spousal abuse, or if they advised you do do something ridiculous, but in general, I doubt you'd be able to recognize that gray area. But I just don't think that's a big deal, since people in the gray area can offer good advice that's indistinguishable from advice given by people solidly in the non-gray area.
FWIW, I'd consider you a good source for family counseling in the current state of your marriage, and I certainly don't know any more than you've posted here or revealed in a couple casual lines of online chat. Does that make me an uncritical schmuck?
SCBubba
Aug 3rd, 2009
Happy Anniversary!
Sounds like you got a smart wife there my friend! I'm with you on the eating your own dogfood approach. A marriage counselor with a crappy marriage might be able to give good advice, but that won't make him a good counselor because the advice will probably not be taken by the clients.
Anyway, I just realized that I didn't have you in my Google Reader and was just hoping over here when I saw links from you on twitter or facebook. I've resolved that issue and will now be among your subscriber counts.
Thanks for the great posts over the year and keep up the good work.
- Bubba
Miki
Aug 3rd, 2009
Congrats on all your current achievements! Hopefully I will get to see you soon! I do disagree, however, on the parenting blogs. I loved reading them. The one I most enjoyed was on self esteem. How to talk to your child. I learned a lot from that and from the comments posted afterwards. I passed it on to several friends/family members. I will also remember those lessons when I reach that stage of life. I have been missing the posts and wish you would write more. Love ya!
Chris F.
Aug 3rd, 2009
i also agree on the parenting tips. They were pretty good on a couple levels… both parenting suggestions and production value. I guess they wouldn't drive the same return traffic that a comment-eliciting discussion might, but they were still interesting. And I think it might be very fun, educational, and enlightening for your kids to see that kind of thing 10 years from now.
dewde
Aug 3rd, 2009
Thanks guys. I think I was letting the stats blind me to 2 other important goals.
1. I get positive reenforcement from writing/recording/editing them.
2. Family video projects are fun family together time.
peace | dewde
Jim
Aug 3rd, 2009
keep posting…don't stop…don't let the numbers fool you too much they are just a yardstick and though i used to think the numbers don't lie…i think they do deceive…
Jim
Aug 3rd, 2009
and can you get a Share this or Tweet this button so I can share your posts?
Kathy Vega
Aug 8th, 2009
Well Mr! Just know that when you started doing this, you encouraged and inspired me to do the same. So thank you very much!
Archiemck
Aug 11th, 2009
1. Happy Anniversary Chris
2. You have a great blog, as your executive summary would suggest.
3. I'm Glad that you're better (by far) at blogging than I (and due in part to this I shall continue to "blog" vicariously through you)
You had me at Uvula.
Ashton Swarthout
May 1st, 2010
Hi! Just wanted to leave a comment. I thoroughly loved this blog. Keep up the outstanding work.