I’m back! Did you miss me? Wait, don’t answer that. Just let me live a little longer under the illusion that I have a throng of adoring readers that live for my daily postings.
OK, I’m ready.
As any blogger suffering from self esteem issues can tell you, (which is to say EVERY blogger) there’s nothing like Statcounter to bring you down to earth. Don’t let anyone fool you with talk about writing for the pure joy of artistic creation. We are all obsessed with our traffic, and need positive affirmation the way a junkie needs heroin. I am as guilty as anyone of obsessing over visits to my blog.
I can’t help but to open my WordPress dashboard every morning to see how many people came by the front porch. Which is why I installed Statcounter a few years ago, with the hopes of harvesting even more information about how many people read my writing, and how long they spend doing it. And while it doesn’t track every visitor (just the ones that allow tracking cookies) it does provide enough information to excite my OCD tendencies. It can also be demoralizing when you realize that the posts that you put the most work into, and feel proudest about, don’t rank anywhere near the top of the list. No, the most frequently visited posts usually contain obscure pop cultural references and took me 15 minutes or less to toss off. WTF interwebz?
Here’s the statistics for the last 30 days:
Page Views:
1.) I left my voice in San Francisco – 394 views
2.) H.R. Puff ‘n Stuff – 292 views
3.) The Curious Case of Guy Fawkes – 274 views
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35.) Part 3 of last week’s 4 part story. – 26 views
Sigh… Yes, I know that seeking validation from the interwebz is not a healthy way to live. I just can’t help it. So why do I write these stories if no one is reading them?
Cheap therapy.
20 Prospect 
people seemingly only read my posts that mention murder, crustacean shenanigans, sea monkey failure, puppets and mimes and the wooden carved satan monkey that according to some people is “clearly west African in origin” . By the way, my dog spent twenty minutes straight barking at said wooden carved hairy monkey. It’s so clearly harboring unspeakable evil yet it’s still here.
If I had a dime for every wooden carved satan monkey I post I’ve written just to get blog traffic…
What I find strangest about blogging is that it is quite a game, really, of hitting other people’s sites so that they’ll hit yours. I have to keep reminding myself that the reason I started writing in the first place was to get better at it — but I have to admit that I check my stats obsessively…
Pearl
And I’m off to comment on yours…
The sad part about this is that I can’t even write a proper sentence. I threw out all the rules..
End a sentence with a preposition? Go right ahead!
Change tenses, go from first person to third, put semi colons places that would kill creative writing teachers? SURE!
I just don’t care. It’s like I’ve devolved into this lazy half wit who won’t even use grammar or spellcheck. Even wordpress is like “i don’t know about that line, what do you think of taking out that cliche and the redundant crap?” and I’m all like “nah”
What do you care about proper preposition use for?
Why do you want high stats? Whatever, high stats need good “key” words that will get caught in a Google search, and then frequent postings to keep’em coming back. .
Frankly, a lot of strangers (unidentified readers) poking around in my blog is a little creepy. I like commenters.
Well that’s the funny part. I can’t help it. The stats counter is there, therefore I must watch it. This is why I took that damn cycling computer off of my bike. Riding was too stressful with my speed and cadence flashing at me.
Loved the four post retro piece you did… just now commenting cause i feel your pain…. Cheers!
thanks
I wasn’t even aware of that stats thing until last winter. I assumed I had a couple of dozen visirs per day. It turned out it was over 450. That took a lot of the blogging out of me. I laid off a while and pretty much quit real writing. Now it’s a more manageable 200, my blood pressure is 118 over 80, and I’m much more comfortable.
Wow. 450? That’s impressive. I get between 150 – 250 most days. Of course, counting page views as “visits” is like saying all those cars driving by on I-90 are “visiting” Albert Lea. God forbid they actually did pull into the driveway to visit!
The same goes for my blog. I get maybe 10-15 real “visitors” out of a regular group of 25-30 people on any given day. Hell, if I had 400 people stop by I’d have to go out and buy more coffee.
You. Pull into the driveway sometime.
So you know, even sometimes i don’t comment (running around and reading from the phone l admit l love to come here and read some of your stories, Tom…
I’m a new reader of your blog and although you held no pop culture references in this one, I will continue to read in hopes I might stumble across one eventually. 🙂 Seriously though. I’m going to stalk you on twitter.
Awesome! I always wanted a stalker!
Wait. If I’m a willing participant would you still be considered a stalker. Damn, I’m still too new to this.