Thanks . . . and a bleg
It’s the time of year when people take stock. One of the things I did today was to review the traffic to my blog–something I don’t do very often, probably because I don’t know what to do with the information.
I learned that from February through December of 2008 (January’s data looks like it has already been purged) this website received 1,580,340 page views. I don’t know how many of those are repeat visitors, but in the site’s busiest month there were over 50,000 unique visitors.
This brings up two points:
First: THANKS! I don’t know who all you people are, but thanks for stopping by to view my ramblings. Don’t let my increasingly infrequent posting give you the mistaken impression that I don’t appreciate you being out there. I do. But as you all know, sometimes life gets in the way. And sometimes you just don’t feel like posting–like after an overly long election season, that quite frankly even though my guy lost, I’m just relieved is finally over. Thank you all.
Thanks especially to folks like Glenn Reynolds, K-Lo and J-Go, and James Taranto, who are probably responsible for most of the traffic here. But equal thanks also goes out to all the other bloggers who have linked here in the past year including Ace, ACK, The Anchoress, Bill Hobbs, Clint Brewer, Dean Esmay, Digital Nicotine, Don Surber, K-Co, MCO, Michael Silence, Michelle Malkin, The Moores, Phil Carter, PowerLine, RedState, Roger Abramson, SayUncle, Sean Braisted, Snowflakes in Hell, Tom Maguire, VolAbroad, Webutante, and my Lib Dem Councillor friend, as well as many, many others.
Second: The bleg: Is this a lot of blog traffic? A little? Is there any money in this sort of thing? If so, what next?
UPDATE:
Thanks again to Glenn for the link, and thanks for coming over from Instapundit if that’s how you got here. Check out the rest of the site to see if it’s something you like. Thanks also for the comments I’m getting on this question.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
[...] BOB KRUMM has had a lot of traffic in the past year, and asks for advice on what to do with it. [...]
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
“Is there any money in this sort of thing?”
Certainly. The easiest thing to do is to sign up for Google Adsense. When you sign up you’ll receive some JavaScript code to copy and paste into your templates. Nothing to it. Google pays per click and you receive a check every month your balance is above a certain minimum ($75, I think).
Your level of traffic would probably generate somewhere between 200 to 300 dollars per month in ad revenue. Maybe more.
The best Adsense advice I got was to put a wide ad between the end of the post and the beginning of the comments section. Lots of people stop reading at that point and are ready to click on an ad and go somewhere else.
Google has done a study correlating ad position and click-through rates that you can see in the Google Adsense “heatmap”.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:43 pm
A lot or moderate depends on your point of view. To me the numbers are unimaginable – then again I am not blogging at this level. (nor do I try to do so)
Compared to the highest drawing bloggers, I would suppose it falls in the upper mid-level range of traffic from some of the things I’ve seen written on the subject.
Still, it’s quite an audience and well deserved.
As for what to “do” with the numbers… Unless you plan on selling ads, the best thing to do is enjoy. :-)
January 14th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I’d pay good folding money to read you, Bob!
January 20th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Greetings from across the Atlantic, and the political divide…!