Thursday, February 17, 2011

Thinking about those red pins


Folks from all over seem to visit my blog. This is just "recent" visitors. There seems to be two clusters of what are probably my regular readers, those on the East Coast of the US and those in Northern Europe & UK. I've always found it interesting that I don't have more readers on the West Coast. 

Out of the last 500 visits, roughly since sometime in January, about 85% are from the US. No surprise. Then in descending order: United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, India, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Luxembourg, Italy, Peru, Croatia, Switzerland, Morocco, Czech Republic, Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Columbia, Chile, Japan, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Spain, Portugal, Malaysia, Belgium, and Indonesia. (Note: I'm not sure of the timeframe of the above map, but it sure doesn't reflect my last 500 visitors.)

Over the past couple of years of doing this, I've probably been missed by a few countries (don't think I've had any hits from Antarctica), but not many. I've not kept track of the states, I'm sure that I've had at least one visit from each of the 50. 

I know who some folks are, since they leave comments and I can match them up, but most visitors are unknowns. I often wonder if they like my blog, or find it so-so, or find it a complete and total disappointment because they were looking for porn, and did not find it here. I even recently wrote a search word poem using the most common search words. 

In the past year, I haven't worked that hard at promoting my blog. Not sure why. Maybe because I'm happy with it being somewhat small and intimate. Not sure I'd want an insanely popular blog. I know I could do things to make mine more popular, but that's never been my aim. Though I admit that I've always liked seeing the numbers of visitors creep up at times. 

But more than that, I like it when someone "discovers" my blog, and reads back in it, comments, and keeps coming back. I've made "friends" that way. Connections with other writers. Probably because it's other writers who connect with what I write here. 

Sometimes I feel guilty because I haven't been able to keep up with other's blogs. Blogs written by friends that I enjoy when I do have the time. I wonder if they think the same things I do as they type away: Who the hell is going to read this and will they care? 

But, that's not why I do this. Yes, it is, but not completely. I do this because I have that writerly compulsion to "not shut up." Even when the greek chorus of voices is telling me to stop. Stop writing, stop sharing, stop going on and on when nobody is listening (that's the evil voice that I listen to far too often).

I do this because I have to.


2 comments:

Craig Sorensen said...

I can relate to many of your thoughts here, Robin.

I wrestled with the notion of trying to grow my blog in popularity, use it as a promotional tool, but I can't bring myself to do it. Part of it is time, though. I have limited time, and I want to spend as much time as I can writing.

More and more, my blog is where I share other facets of my life that wouldn't make it in stories that I write. It gives me a chance to experiment with writing ideas, and hopefully not bore those who take the time to read it.

Nice post.

Erobintica said...

Yeah, I like the idea of using a blog to share "other facets," stuff that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else. And since I don't have much to promote, LOL, it seems silly to me to keep this blog just for that. And now that I have another outlet (WWAATD) that lends itself to posts that don't fit here, I'm rethinking what I do here. This is my "home" so to speak, and I've grown quite fond of it. So, should be interesting this year.

Thanks for commenting Craig. :)