Back from Florida :: Bad News from Blog Home Office :: Article

So I’m back from my Florida vacation. More on that when I get a chance to upload my pictures of gators and beaches and such. Soon, I promise. In the meantime, some bad news from Blog HQ. The first round of numbers are in and they aren’t all that good. Here are my stats:

67 Visits
148 Pageviews
2.21 Pages/Visit
53.73% Bounce Rate
00:02:08 Avg. Time on Site
71.64% % New Visits

Not only have a mere 67 people dropped by, but apparently my 10 days away killed the blog. Basically nobody came. Blog HQ has told me that if I ever want an audience for my blog I better either 1) learn to blog all the time no matter where I am or 2) store up blog posts that automatically publish while I’m away in order to create the illusion that I am always blogging all the time.

So there you go. Hopefully now that I am back and blogging everyday again you, my readers, will return and grow. And to Blog HQ I say this: I’ve learned my lesson. Silence is death. I won’t disappear again!

Also, in my defence, I haven’t really been doing much to promote the blog. It’s not even listed on my home site. I’m going to see what I can do to let more people know it’s out there. Suggestions are, of course, welcome.

(1.)

Well, having been in the blogging trenches for a little while now, I can only offer this sage advice: hide the word “panties” somewhere in your posts. The bots will beat a path to your door.

Truly though, if you want to build the traffic of legend, it’s partly about appealing to the majority (that means posting about timely topics so searches return your results) and partly about specificity (the more micro-focused your subject matter, it seems, the better). Running a broad-swath blog and relying solely on scintillating content and loyal readership, sadly, doesn’t compete in a numbers sense…but that’s what I do and I’m happy with it! And so are my readers. Hey, you have people reading more than one page when they visit and that’s a good number, if one is to live and die by numbers. I thought we were writers though??

(2.)

or console yourself with this:
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/webstats/

for me, i carry a card with me with my blog url. when someone asks what i am doing these days i explain the project and give em the card. often i receive comments from these people, because they feel like they have a personal invitation to participate. there is a threshold potential commenters have to cross… you can help them by writing in an open way, too… which I think you do already.

About the Peep Diaries:

Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki.

I’m a 37 year-old writer/thinker. I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and two-and-a-half year-old daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’m going to try it too. I’m starting this blog to tell the world about my private, everyday life. ... more

The Peep Diaries