Whoever claims that all people should write blogs should closely analyze their current commitments. Writing a blog is time-consuming and demanding.
With the billions of people on the internet you might assume that you will have widespread viewership, yet you will probably only have 9 daily views – 8 of which are you re-reading your posts.
I have currently written 20 posts and accumulated 60 comments. 3 comments per post isn’t too bad, but I have also had 314 spam comments and 30 malicious login attempts. Yeah, writing a blog can be fun, but having spammers constantly linking to pornography websites is not so fun.
Therefore, I am opening up the books to display the Quarter 1 numbers for this blog – OK people with an MBA, these are actually stats from February 1 until today.
The above graphic shows users to this website between February 1 and today. On February 1, I was averaging 11 views per day. The breakdown was usually comprised of my Grandma, me re-reading my latest post 7 times, and 3 views from Sau Paulo, Brazil. The peak in the graphic (1,131 views) is where Bob Borson accidentally added me to his annual Best Architectural Websites list.
If you quickly looked at the above graphic you might assume that people in the Congo are my biggest fans. Unfortunately, I am still the number 1 reader of my blog.
I hate how disparagingly large Alaska looks on the United States map – especially when only 1 person from Alaska has ever viewed my blog.
At first you might assume that nobody in Wyoming must care about architecture. But then a quick population search reveals nobody actually lives in Wyoming – and wolves do not yet have access to broadband internet.
I don’t actually know what bounce rate means. But I do know that I have completed zero goals and accumulated zero dollars in revenue.
Apparently the greatest readers of my blog are Technophiles, TV Lovers, and Movie Lovers. I will now stop writing about architecture and change every blog post to how I hate the TV show LOST.
My primary website referall source is: lifeofanarchitect.com
The next 8 most popular sources: referral spam.
The number 1 keyword used to access my blog is (not provided). Hmmm…. I would’ve assumed it might’ve been soapbox architect or the greatest writing ever on architecture.
But don’t give up!
I had been planning on starting a blog and follow the likes of lifeofanarchitect, but yours is one of the one’s that inspired me to start writing! I get even less hits (bizarrely, Scandinavia seem very interested in what I have to say) but want to keep it up; it helps me to maintain an interest in what’s going on, but it takes a lot of effort.
So please keep going, as an inspirational figure! (yeah, you read that right)
Thanks Dan! And please keep up your Malarkytect Blog!
I like reading about “foreign” perspectives on architecture.
Also, I have a slight fascination with London, Dr. Who, and prefer the English spelling of the word colour. (Or perhaps I feel embarrassed that nobody in my firm knew who Thomas Heatherwick was.)
Thanks!
I will try to keep the blogging up. It has certainly been an interesting experience. Some days I feel like I have several thought chains being processed at once that I need to write about, and other days I get home and try to start writing and realise none of them are that interesting to write about. But those boring, geeky issues are typically what I’m about – I just need to get better at writing about them!
I like the weird English spellings too. Not just because they’re what I’m used to, but because there is some quaint Olde Englishe style about the spelling differences between American and UK English. Ours looks wrong, like the s’s we have instead of z’s in words like specialise and maximise etc, and I swear nobody else spells aluminium like we do. Plus we Londoners seem to deliberately pronounce words wrong as well, like castle (cah-sel) and bath (bah-ff) and mate (me old China).
I meant to say above that I especially like the comedic style you use in your writing. We Brits love a bit of self-deprecation, so the article above rang home nicely. As did your earlier one about receiving a nice “FAIL” letter in enormous cyan letters. But blending it in with intellectual content is a real skill and you do it really well. Just like that guy Thomas Heatherwick does.
Love this stuff. Keep it up!