Virginia Breeze

I recently started using statistics in an attempt to find out how many actual regular readers I have. I have a few courageous regular readers who actually comment here. So I am not talking about them. I am talking about the hypothetical regular readers who are here for the duration but can think of nothing to say.

And I can understand that. I go places and read too. I would like to comment but my mind is not up to it. It’s in surfing mode and you don’t use your rational mind when you surf. You use your relaxed mind. Your bag of tricks is up there and he’s awake. But he’s not working. He’s sitting in one of those chairs you can find at The Sharper Image store. It has ten different vibrators in it plus stereo speakers on each side.

So how does the young blogger who may be 94 years old but has only been blogging for six months deal with this situation without becoming discouraged? Well he or she could hire readers. I do that and presently I am worried because they want to form a union. Clearly they need to use their relaxed minds more and stay away from their rational minds. Or my blogging sisters and brothers could go to Google Analytics and start tracking their visitors and discerning their longterm intentions. In a statistical example from my photoblog PhotoLinkLove.com we will see shortly how this may be working.

I spend very little time on this blog and mainly just post a few of my best photos here every day. And in response maybe ten or fifteen readers come by to look at them. At least that is what I thought was happening. But Google presents a slightly different picture.

And I am not disturbed by this situation or the apparent lack of growth. I don’t have much invested here and am just happy that a few folks are enjoying these photos.

But I am a curious person and so would like to know what is happening here. Is any growth happening? It has only been around for about ten weeks. Can Google tell me something about it? I had a garden as a young boy and would come out every day to see if something had happened. It was like watching grass grow only a little more interesting.

And that is what we will discuss next time since we are just about out of time boys and girls. Didn’t you used to hate it when the guy or girl on the tube used to say that! Captain Kangaroo used to say that and look what happened to him!

Until next time Buckaroos!

And blogging is a long distance race isn’t it? Just about every day for months or years you are going to get up and go to the keyboard. Look at your stuff. Be happy. Be sad. Be indifferent. So many emotions come into play when the blog runner puts on his or her shoes and hits this pixel packed purgatory in full stride. But the WWW will never become the PPP! Believe me I tried it yesterday and all I got was a blog dedicated to a polar bear in a snowstorm.

But that’s not what we want to discuss today. Here are the charts that will help us (I hope) discover how many folks are with us for the long haul. And is their number growing?

Do you like the graduated tint? I have been playing with Google’s photo editor for so long I can’t stop. Be happy there are not little snowmen sliding down the graph on their sleds.

The first graph gives you a summary of what happened in the month of December. And it shows a constant flow of about fifteen visitors except on the day when it wasn’t working. That would have been the day I added a premium template and forgot to do some other things.

I used to assume that these visitors represented maybe 3 or so regulars and 7 or so one time visitors. Notice that the unique visitor count is about two thirds the number of visits. This is a fairly stable ratio. Whenever I look at visits I calculate a number that is one third less in order to try and calculate the actual number of individual readers or visitors . Did anyone say this is an exact science? And here is the second graph.

Here we see how things may really be happening. During this month we see some of these readers moving down the path to become longterm readers. How many? Well there were about 125 visits so I calculate one third less or about 82 actual people came back ten times or more during December. Does that make sense?

I had been assuming that the 3 regulars every day were the same regulars. But what if some of the regular readers were only coming by once or twice per week? Then there would be more of them in total.

That’s a lot different than 3 regular readers and 7 one time visitors. And the graph indicates that a few more are migrating down this pathway all the time. Does that mean that every 10 weeks there will be 85 more longterm readers? In 10 weeks I have not gathered enough statistics to tell but we can revisit this situation in another month. Grab a RSS handle and find out!

In a year could there be 85 times 5 (52 weeks divided by 10 weeks equals approx. 5) readers? Maybe not. Some will fade away. But I spend ten minutes per day on this blog and the idea that it may attract even one hundred regular visitors is surprising. The idea that it could have a thousand regular readers in just two years is simply astounding!

So young blogging grasshopper remember to look deeper into your statistics and see what may be happening there. Someone once said it takes a year or two to build a productive blog. It is clear from this example that it may be so. And imagine what could happen if you spend more than ten minutes per day on your blog! Isn’t that exciting!

Here is a suggestion that may help someone be more satisfied about their blogging progress. It has helped me a great deal in the past week. It is probably the reason why you are still able to click on here and read these words. I have often read that bloggers consult their statistics for important information about their blogs. And I do this too. But I take it a step further on a regular basis.

Basically I just start at today’s date and skim through the posts going back towards the beginning of it all. I look at the photos. I read a few lines. I make some connections with the thoughts and feelings of past days. Maybe I see a misspelled word or a phrase that can be improved a little. But the overall sensation is one of satisfaction. This is something I worked on day in and day out for a long period of time. It was a labor of love for the most part. Some parts will actually amaze me. Did I think of that? Did someone actually respond in such a positive way to what I wrote here?

All of this has a very important purpose. Blogging can be a brutal sport. We are all caught up in our own worlds for the most part. We bump into each other now and then but most of what we do is geared to our own survival and the well being of those we love. And there are so many blogs to fill up the limited time we have to share. It is extremely competitive in my opinion. Before you even consider the challenges of hardware and software. Or feelings. We get our feelings hurt. Or we have different ideas about raising children or politics. It is all just a minefield that the blogger plods through every day.

These are just my feelings about it. Yours might be different. But this is why I suggest taking a walk through your blog on a regular basis and just enjoying what you have done. Spend some time with a picture that makes you happy. Remember the moment when you met someone who has become your friend. Lose yourself in this home you have created in the vast spaces of the internet.

Sometimes I make it all the way back to the beginning in my first blog. That would be last June. There is a picture there of a boy and a girl on a beach. You cannot see their faces. They are looking out over the wide Atlantic Ocean. When I look at that photo I appreciate everything.

It is the best photo I have ever taken. And it makes me do that.

Here it is.

http://myidol.americanidol.com/blogs/Davidlind/2007/06/03/Courage