Catch Me If You Can…

My life is a bit hectic these days, not that you’d know it from reading my blog. On the blog, it’s all been a duck swimming on a lake – all the mad paddling has been going on under the surface.

To open a window of insight for regular readers, last week I flew to Nebraska for a few days (for work) and this week I’ll be flying to Arizona and California (for work) and next week I might have to fly to Texas (for work) … and you can pretty much tell I’m here, there and everywhere (for work,) but nowhere when it comes to updating my blog or writing new stories. (Unfortunately though it has not stopped rejection slips from arriving in my email in-box for pieces submitted many months ago…)

This level of travel probably won’t be the norm – although I haven’t quite figured that out yet given the exciting new stuff I am working on (for work) these days. I’d like to imagine things will settle down to a dull roar eventually, at some point in the mythical future I envision myself  jogging through airports with ease, doing all my work (for work) and writing stories in my leisure time (I know, I know. Tell me when you stop laughing.)

I think about the blog more than you might imagine. I know when my blogger friends get submerged into their lives I also wonder where they are and what they’re doing, and then when they post about where they are and what they’re doing I’m always interested. That doesn’t mean you are necessarily interested in hearing about my domestic wanderings, but perhaps it is enough to say I would like to think you could be interested in my momentary lapse of blog communication, regular reader.

My bags may be packed and ready to go, but I’ve learned that hotel internet connections are a wonderful thing (see my earlier post about Shrinkage, for example) … so I can reply to comments and engage with you all if you are still listening (I think you are… and thanks for your patience.)

Blog Stats Update: A New Milestone!

Hi everyone in reader-land,

This week my blog hit the 100 reader milestone, and exceeded it! I now have 101 regular subscribed readers to my blog. There has been a slow and steady climb in readership since I began the blog in March 2011, and now after 16 months I’m excited to report readership is in the 3 digits.

Of course I’d like to welcome any new regular readers to the blog, and thank you for signing up for my writerly ramblings, it’s appreciated!

Who are these elusive 101 readers out there in the murky twilight of blog-land?

Most likely they are writers, but all are artistic creative types from what I know.

We have George, my very good friend, a novelist; and Wren my sister in arms who just signed a publishing contract.  There’s Patrick, a sports blogger; and Louise the budding poet from Australia who just had her work in the local newspaper.

Of course there is Hannah, who writes a great blog about breaking into publishing; and Doug, who posts flash fiction to his Hawaii based blog like clockwork (when he’s not sitting atop a mountain gazing at the stars)…and of course Court, a fellow short story writer and PANK staff member, and Harry who has published two novels and whose work I adore. When he’s around Mike Reverb adds his colorful commentary; and more rarely now Scribbla might show up from Namibia to say a word or two. But it’s also Munchow, the professional photographer from Europe, and Veeh, a writer from Africa who pops by now and again. And my new friend Sean who is a short story writer in California. Oh and my new pal Peter, a sometime writer currently living in Turkey, is coming to read the blog too.

As much as I’d like to say this is my blog and I’m the one who writes it, I know that’s not really true. Not entirely, anyway. My blog would be severely diminished as a place to discuss writing and creating without all the people I just mentioned and many, many more.

Who are YOU dear reader? Come and make comment here, all are welcome… storytellers and writers, readers and artists, photographers and creative types of all walks of life.

Identify yourself and say hello to everyone else here in this collaborative circle.

As always, I thank all of my readers for their ongoing support and commentary, their thoughts and their participation.

I truly look forward to entertaining you, but more importantly getting to know you and interacting with you here, and in blog-land.

My Worldly Readers

WordPress recently added a new feature to the Statistics / Dashboard area where the blog owner can see what countries readers are coming from to look at the blog.

 

 

I am BLOWN AWAY by how many readers come to my blog from other countries. It’s astounding.

HELLO WORLD!

IF you are coming from outside the United States, AND you read my blog I would LOVE if you could identify your country of origin and say Hello in your language.

Just for fun – in “# of page views order” here is the list of reader’s countries that visited my blog in the last 30 days.

BLOG READERS COME FROM:

• United States – How ya doin’?!
• Netherlands – Hallo!
• Canada – Hello Ay!
• UK – Hello mate!
• Australia – G’day!
• Kenya – (Veeh taught me ”Habari!” Thanks Veeh!)
• Spain – Hola!
• Norway – Hallo!
• India – Namaste!
• Philippines
• Mexico – Hola!
• Republic of Korea -An-nyong Ha-se-yo
• Italy – Ciao!
• Germany – Guten Tag!
• France – Bonjour!
• Indonesia – Halo!
• Guinea-Bissau
• Turkey – Merhaba!
• Brazil – Ola!
• United Arab Emirates – Merhaban!
• New Zealand – Hello!
• Czech Republic – Dobry den!
• Lithuania
• Bahrain – Merhaban!
• Slovenia
• Singapore
• Ecuador – Hola!
• Israel – Shalom!
• Argentina – Hola!
• Sweden – Hej!
• Romania – Buna ziua!
• Bangladesh
• Iceland – Hallo!
• Japan – Kon Nichiwa!

Improving Blog Stats Pt 3: Revealing The Results

In early October, I decided to undertake an experiment to improve the total hits to my blog. Did it work? YES! Actually, it worked much better than I ever thought it would. I want to share what happened in the few weeks since I started my new blog regimen.

First, I posted: Just the Stats Ma’am: Improving Blog Stats on October 9th and I put out a list of activities I was currently doing, and asked my readers and blog visitors to comment on how to make improvements. I got a ton of great suggestions to choose from!

People suggested everything from re-tweeting blog links to Twitter, to writing more blog posts each week, to doing tag surfing on WordPress and commenting on blog posts I liked, to many other things. As I write this, there are 17 comments in that post, check them out for tips.

Next, I posted an update to my readers on how things were going: It’s Official: My Best Month Ever for Blog Hits to let everyone know that by October 22nd, I had just passed my prior number for most hits, which was 329 hits to my blog.

So, here we are, one day before the end of this month:

I don’t know if you can see it clearly, but since I started my blog back in March, this is clearly the best month ever with a current total of 549 blog hits for the month. In October, I’ve thusfar averaged 19 hits a day, handily beating all previous months I’ve been blogging.

So what is the secret to this success? What have I done differently?

There is primarily only one thing I’ve done this month that is a big change from previous months: I’ve posted many more times this month than any prior month. I’ve tried to maintain a (difficult) posting schedule of five times a week and that has seemed to make a HUGE difference.

Other things I’ve done this month to help ‘nudge’ my stats along include trying to post humor more frequently, and spending more time reading other people’s blogs and “Liking” posts I liked, and commenting on posts I enjoyed.

If I were even more saavy about this, I’d install some fancy stats package to look at my numbers in more granular detail and try to figure out what time of the day is best for me to post, what day of the week, blah blah blah.

I don’t think I’ll do that, but I do enjoy posting with greater frequency because I realized (only after having done it) that it creates a much more active conversation with the blog audience (that’d be you, dear readers.) You post comments more, you Like my stuff more, and I can chat with you more on the blog. Thanks again for all your support too.

The number one tip I’d recommend for anyone who wants more visitors to their blog is post more frequently and give the reader ideas and humor they’ll enjoy. I wish you the best of luck on your blog adventure too!

Random Insomnia Post – Who are you people?

WordPress Site Statistics for this blog: 342 “clicks” as of this writing. I started the blog around March 26th or so this year.

342 clicks.  Is that good? Average? Horrible? How many unique visitors does that make? 

In short: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

What’s amazing to me about this blog (for me) is that I write, send my words out to cyber-space, and I see the clicks piling up but I really have no clue who is dropping by (other than known friends who do drop by and support on a regular basis and I thank you, thank you, thank you!)

It would be fantastic if you could take a moment and enter a comment below, if you’ve gotten this far into this post.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, and what made you pop over here into my blog-o-world. If you are a brand new visitor, please call that out too!

Thanks!!