Just a short post this particular wee hour because I'm really tired and not feeling it.
Here is a graphic for your perusal:
This is a chart of my hits from the last month. I'm pretty lax on following my blog stats. I mean, I'll check them a lot, but as for scouring every number, looking for insight, that doesn't interest me. No one's paying me for this, you know.
What I have noticed -- only because it's difficult to ignore -- are the rhythmic spikes in the graph. Once a week, with disturbing regularity, the graph spikes. After digging around for -- oh, 30 seconds -- I figured out the reason for the spikes. Those are the times when I publish the Cardboard Appreciation posts.
Now, I enjoy the Cardboard Appreciation posts -- when I can figure out a reason to write about a card. But I have to admit, the series is a hit-and-miss exercise for me. Some of the posts I like. Others are giant, noisy, please-God-make-it-stop clunkers. I have to exercise every lesson in restraint that I know in order to not hit the "delete" key like 90,000 times.
So, I don't understand why so many people would be clicking on these posts every week, over and over. The thought of someone saying "oooh, a Cardboard Appreciation post" confuses me. But this has been going on for months and months -- for as long as the new blog stats have been out.
It's possible that people like them better than anything I write. That's cool. I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm happy there's something here people like. But it's also possible that each Cardboard Appreciation post triggers some bot-like entity that clicks on it over and over again. It's obvious I know nothing about this stuff -- but all you have to do is look at your blog stats to see that there are all kinds of sneaky websites trying to get you to click on their links under the guise of being "readers."
So, I don't get it. Is the Cardboard Appreciation post something that people look forward to more than other stuff? Because if it is, I can do one of those things like five times a week. Heck, I'll have more "readers" than one of them fancy baseball statistical sites.
(Just kidding about the five times a week thing. Once a week is plenty).
Here is a graphic for your perusal:
This is a chart of my hits from the last month. I'm pretty lax on following my blog stats. I mean, I'll check them a lot, but as for scouring every number, looking for insight, that doesn't interest me. No one's paying me for this, you know.
What I have noticed -- only because it's difficult to ignore -- are the rhythmic spikes in the graph. Once a week, with disturbing regularity, the graph spikes. After digging around for -- oh, 30 seconds -- I figured out the reason for the spikes. Those are the times when I publish the Cardboard Appreciation posts.
Now, I enjoy the Cardboard Appreciation posts -- when I can figure out a reason to write about a card. But I have to admit, the series is a hit-and-miss exercise for me. Some of the posts I like. Others are giant, noisy, please-God-make-it-stop clunkers. I have to exercise every lesson in restraint that I know in order to not hit the "delete" key like 90,000 times.
So, I don't understand why so many people would be clicking on these posts every week, over and over. The thought of someone saying "oooh, a Cardboard Appreciation post" confuses me. But this has been going on for months and months -- for as long as the new blog stats have been out.
It's possible that people like them better than anything I write. That's cool. I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm happy there's something here people like. But it's also possible that each Cardboard Appreciation post triggers some bot-like entity that clicks on it over and over again. It's obvious I know nothing about this stuff -- but all you have to do is look at your blog stats to see that there are all kinds of sneaky websites trying to get you to click on their links under the guise of being "readers."
So, I don't get it. Is the Cardboard Appreciation post something that people look forward to more than other stuff? Because if it is, I can do one of those things like five times a week. Heck, I'll have more "readers" than one of them fancy baseball statistical sites.
(Just kidding about the five times a week thing. Once a week is plenty).
Comments
Maybe it's the attachment to a series? I went and looked at my stats and oddly enough I see a similar spike at about the same time (Tuesdays), with much less hits of course! Since you're my number one traffic source, I wonder if if my stats have a correlation to yours. Or if Tuesday is a day when lots of people turn to blog reading, after the hectic weekend, catching up on missed posts.
The Cardboard Appreciation posts are great, though, as a whole, and people look for that. Granted, I read everything you write, but when time is limited I pick and choose what I really read vs. what I just skim over, and posts like CA get more attention.
I think manf CA. We could have look at that same card 1,000 times (like a random 1988 Score), but you find a new twist to put on it and shed some new perspective. I always check them out for this reason.
The spikes in my blog posts are when some random goth site links to it for whatever reason. I also get the most hits every week for my "10 cents? Brilliant!" post on some Fleer Brilliant cards I bought. However, it's always just people looking for the Guinness guys and wrongly sent my way.