Sunday, December 27, 2009

Re: Seasonal Traffic Suckage Syndrome

Stacy McCain posted an entertaining piece yesterday about holiday traffic suckage, and if his theory is correct, you didn't read it.

I've been lamenting, in stoic silence, the lack of traffic for the past week. Compounding the holiday traffic suckage has been my inability to post regularly over the past two weeks because of a mental disconnect caused by teenager issues. Anyone who blogs knows that if you don't post regularly, and often, you don't get hits, well, unless someone big like Professor Jacobson, Stacy, or Insty links you. Or Malkin! Lately, I've been lucky to post once a day. Bah.

Because of this, I've fallen off the Memeorandum radar. This has happened before, and it'll come back around, but they're always decent for traffic for me.

Stacy complained about getting "less than 200 hits an hour" while I'd be happy to be back at 200 hits per day. I haven't broken a hundred in over a week. It's depressing. Blog hits are our capital! I'm not making any money from this! Oh, I get the occasional drop in the tip jar, which is GREAT! No, mostly I blog for fun, as we all do, and because I enjoy it. Well, Stacy blogs for money. But the hits are rewarding. It lets you know someone is reading. You get a little interaction going in the comments. You make friends. And enemies.

I guess I could go back to posting the occasional beefcake pictures of Russell Crowe from Gladiator or Matthew McConaughey in his swim trunks. Rule Five seems to work for some people. Stir up some traffic.

I've noticed whenever I post about Gitmo I don't get as much traffic. Is this a subject nobody cares about? Or do I just suck at writing about it? I post on Guantanamo a lot because I've read a lot about it and have a great concern for what happens there. Under the Guantanamo label I have 66 posts. Not so good for traffic, though.

Good for traffic? Sarah Palin. Anything Palin - the hits come in.

Ah well. Life goes on. The holidays will pass. I'm on vacation until after the first of the year. I'll keep blogging, even if there are only five people hitting me a day. Because I like to. I'll just quit checking my site meter.

5 comments:

Chris M. said...

Regarding your posts about Gitmo, I do not always read them> But I think it might be a bad idea to to quit writing about a subject that appeals to you so much. Public interest might wax and wane but your expertise will grow as long as you stick with the subject. And a subject like Gitmo will keep returning to the forefront of peoples's attention for a few more years. Yours was the only blog that wrote much about the Uyghurs before they were a subject of great interest for about a week. But I felt that because of your long time familiarity with the subject you were the best source of information.
One area that I feel is lacking from most discussions of Gitmo I hear from talking heads is a history of how the US has treated military prisoners in our history. I think that if there was more discussion of this that Americans would be more prone to realizing just how stupid Holder and Obama's approach is. As it is I think that the majority are fed up with the novel and foolish path they are going down.

Anonymous said...

Pat! Seasons Greetings! I think there is more going on "behind the blogging scene" than we know. what might I add to the discussion? Inaccurate counters, renegade widgets. Curiously, my post about the Hero of Flight 253 (despite qualifying under a few different 'hot' topics categories on Google trends) only pulled in about 100 extra visitors, which meakes me wonder if Google might be regionalizing or otherwise reducing the number of internetters who see any particular blog appear in search results. For example: once when my blog was unknown and getting 30 hits a day if I was lucky, an old post I wrote about a local woman got 19-THOUSAND hits in a single day from Google when the woman made national headlines. I would think that my Flight post should have pulled in AT LEAST bare minimum 500 visitors. Something doesn't add up!

Chris M. said...

Google is a big problem. They are plainly lefty biased. Because of that bias I have cut back my use of Google. There are some areas where they are irreplaceable like maps and images. But for many searchs AltaVista, Dogpile or any one of a number of other engines serve the purpose well enough. I think conservatives should avoid Google as much as they can until Google realizes that their biased practices are not in their own best interest.

Donna B. said...

I read your blog because you are Shreveport/Bossier based. I could not care less what any aggregator tells me I *should* read.

Do I look like a sheep to you?

Anonymous said...

Pat, please don't get discouraged. Shreveport has become a daily visit for me, along with Hot Air, Pajamas Media, Big Government and Black & Right.