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Thursday, September 29, 2016

It's not a numbers game, honest, it really isn't

The meaning will come clear in the links at the end. (See how you generate hits?)
Years ago a newspaper editor said she didn't encourage columnists because all she ever had seen were
three columns and then a column whining about how difficult it is to write a column.

That comment came to mind when I was considering starting this blog. I guess with almost 900 posts now, over eight years without writing about a blog, that wasn't a problem. I've said before I don't write here to make money, nor do I write to generate an audience. The main reason I chose to write a blog was I wasn't accomplishing much in traditional writing but almost daily I dealt with the guilt of not writing and the urge to write but very hesitant to dive into a major project or go that discouraging route of free- lancing. A blog looked like the perfect solution to satisfy the demand without committing to a major project. Think of it as a pianist doing scales for practice. I did promise myself if I ever started writing about writing a blog I would quit right there.

As a result of that, numbers of readers don't mean a lot to me. I belong to a couple of bloggers' groups though I seldom participate. But I see a lot of their conversations revolve around gaining readers, blog hits, a lot of it to make money. I saw one person in a group say the main reason for writing a blog was to make money. Of course if you are advertising something you are paid according to the number of hits your blog or a particular page receive. There are several applications available for recording blog hits. Though I say it doesn't matter, I watch them and my mood can go up or down with the number of hits so it apparently does mean something. My numbers do not begin to challenge Lady Gaga, let alone a local news columnist, so apparently my disregard for  audience is working.

That said over the past couple of days I have seen record numbers. Since noon the day before yesterday one post generated 2,664 individual hits along with 220 shares on facebook. That is the most hits ever in a single day and the most for any post on the blog in about eight years of posting. And, at this writing the number is still rising. It eventually made this month the one with the most page hits ever.

To be correct, this was not a straight-up post. First of all it was posted more than two years ago. The other day I attached it as a comment to a facebook post, because it directly related to the subject of the main post and adds something on the same subject. I've done things like that before, when a post fit a subject, but something different happened this time. Facebook has a feature where if you open some posts, it will promote three additional related posts displayed right below the main one. My post was this second of the three and I am sure that's what led to all the hits. Just to keep my feet on the ground, the main post received more than 15,000 hits and more than a thousand shares, so my numbers pale by comparison.

Still given my usual audience it's gratifying. Most of my posts don't draw 220 views, let alone 220 shares, so it's all to the good.  And it certainly confirms and condemns me to my status as a minor regional author. And, no, I am not going to quit just because once I wrote about writing a blog.

THIS WAS THE MAIN POST I ATTACHED TO
THIS IS THE ORIGINAL BLOG POST

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