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I don't get it

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).

Comments

Ryan G said…
The label "your strange internet ways confuse and frighten me" makes me laugh. I clicked, hoping to find more such, and was thoroughly disappointed.

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.
BullSchmidt said…
I read them all, but often like the "CA" best...but why not just title every post as cardboard appreciation...
Johngy said…
I like the Cardboard Appreciation posts, but I like all of your posts, so that cancels that out. What I have noticed in my spikes is that they usually have a player's name in the title, which your CA posts also do. Those show up in searches better, so more people re coming to my site based on a search for that player. How this all works and if it is really relevant is beyond me, but it is consistent on my site. Not sure if that helps.
A clunker for you would be a Pulitzer Prize winning piece from me.

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.
Matthew Glidden said…
Google blog stats do weird things, that's for sure. A bunch of my "visits" come from .TK domains, which means what you named, web bots out looking for keywords. Mayhaps "cardboard" or "appreciation" triggers more bots than average?
Anonymous said…
For me, when I see a blog post titled "Cardboard Appreciation", I just know it's going to be good. I automatically assume "I'm going to like this because it's going to go on and on with some unique thoughts about why he likes this card and not just a list of stats about the guy". So when I see "cardboard appreciation", it just says "this will make my day" and it usually does.
I have given up trying to decipher the numbers on my four blogs. Even the one where I only post once a week...where there was once a spike every week when I posted, now the hits have evened themselves out. I guess the only comfort I take is that the overall numbers all trend upward.
Anthony Hughes said…
I read your posts because you always put yourself completely in to them. Like a blog should be. It's all you, all your opinion. I don't always agree with you, but it's generally a good read. I have no idea what days I read you, and I have your page bookmarked, so I don't even know what content you will have on any given day. Plus we both like the Dodgers, and you seem to get as excited as I do just opening a pack of cards and that's what it's all about.
Ryan G said…
I wonder if there's a large group of very dimwitted yet loyal cardboarders out there looking for their version of a Furry video. They see your post title and come running, thinking some guy has invented a new cardboard lego or transformers costume, and yet again find themselves looking at baseball cards!