Hang in there

Just over a year ago I decided that I had, at best a mediocre online presence, Sure if you search for my handle all sorts of stuff turns up and most of it is me but in this age where the internet is ever lasting I didn’t want my previous 10 years of internet to be the defining pattern I left on the world. So with that I decided to annoying people, originally I planned to do two blogs a week, one techy and one non-techy, well quite frankly that’s hard work but it lasted for several months, now I have a much more leisurely one a week post and that seems to be working out better.

When I first started I remember being relatively happy with a small number of users visiting, well over the last year I have grown my blogging empire quit significantly and the best of all of this is statistics, it is nicely measurable. Having that feedback on what articles work and which ones don’t is handy, it doesn’t stop me writing the ones no one likes but at least i’m aware they will be less liked before I write them.

Statistics

Here’s some numbers to make things more interesting

Visits per month

Up until September I was thinking how the progress was slow but steady, a little disappointed, and then bang, much better! I was talking to my boss a couple of months back and he was mentioning how google seem to sit you in a sandbox for a few months before they really let things go, and that’s sort of what it seems like here, I didn’t write any killer articles that all of a sudden had a spurt, I may have got a link back from Alfresco.com but I didn’t know that, until November, my boss decided to tell everyone, oh well better than employing a marketing person :)

I now hover around 300 visitors a week to the site which is still not a large number but if only 1 percent of those actualy reads an article it maks it worth while!

One of my articles rhn satellite vs puppet, a clear victory? has almost managed 200 views by it’s self. but there’s a few others in there doing okay, and some I thought would do better, so here’s a chance to show some of those that I thought would do better.

The 5 posts that should have done better!

1. Self healing systems
2. What university forgot to mention about programming
3. Cloud deployment 101 – Part3
4. Cloud deployment 101 – Part1
5. Who burnt down the building?

There are quite a few more stats that could be shared but they are not that interesting really… so back to the point of why I started the blog, to leave a bit more of an impression well I think I have done that, I have some godo referrals that make it back to me, here’s a couple that always surprised me

• savannah.gnu.org
• Puppet labs

And one that came up to day is me being quoted! Here. So when I look back over the year and I see what has been achieved, despite a slow start I’m glad I stuck it out, hopefully when I’m doing this next year I’m talking more about the news article I had to write or tv show I appeared on… well We still need to have dreams else what’s the point!

So I wonder what next year will bring if I keep on blogging, and you the people keep on reading, as let’s face it if it wasn’t for you people I would just be watching tv or something, so Thanks!