Whicken's Greatest Hits

From time to time, I check Google Analytics for the blog here. It's not too exciting, typically sitting around 20 visitors per day.

Although there aren't tons of posts here to wade through, there are a few posts which do attract the lion's share of traffic. Under the assumption that those are the subjects people are most interested in hearing about, I will dedicate the next several posts to further exploration of what I call my Greatest Hits.

Which is appropriate, since one of the most popular blog posts I've ever done was actually over on the Hear Here blog, back in December of 2006. This post covers the top 100 Christmas songs. Every year, right around Thanksgiving, traffic starts going up for this page - getting stronger and stronger until December 24th. On the 26th of December, the traffic goes back to zero.

In 2006, that page got 355 hits.
In 2007, that page got 4,095 hits.
In 2008, that page got 6,669 hits.

On this blog, the most similar item comes in ranked at number 7, my Valentine's Day playlist from Feb 2006. Although not nearly as popular, it does get a small spike every February (and here's a hint - don't play it for your Valentine's sweetheart unless you're breaking up).

So, what are the other Greatest Hits for Whicken's Blog? Stay tuned and find out. And just maybe I'll create some new favorites...

Blogging About Blogging

In talking to a few people reading this blog, it appears my new update schedule may be generating a bit too much content. So, rather than shooting for my twice per day update schedule, I'll slow it down to once per day. If there's a second post, I'll try to keep it to something fairly terse, like this one.

As part of the ongoing blog overhaul, I've added a custom Google Search box to this site - this lets you easily find old posts or related posts if you are only interested in a specific subject. I've indexed my friend Richard's blog as well, since our topics often overlap. If you know of any other sympathetic blogs which might be useful in the custom search engine, let me know, and I'll consider adding it.

A New Look

I decided to celebrate the digital publication of my short story with an updated theme for my blog. If you're reading this on RSS, you might want to stop by and take a look, and let me know what you think.

This particular theme is by Todd Dominey, and I chose it because it has more of an old-fashioned parchment feel. Something to get me in the mood to write.

I'm not totally sold on the complete presentation yet - you'll see that a few of the elements on the left sidebar are truncated. I did some fiddling to get the sizes to work out better, though, and overall think it's a nice change of pace from the old white-on-black design.

With the new look, I'm also in the mood for a new name. "Whicken's Blog" has the advantage of being completely unpretentious, but is a bit dull and doesn't communicate much. If nothing else, I would like this blog to communicate. If you have suggestions for a new name, drop a line in the comments.

Welcome to my Blog

One nice thing about having a blog is that you can do pretty much whatever you want with it - as long as you aren't trying to make a living off it, you don't need to get too hung up on how often you post, whether you're rambling, or how much traffic you get.

I've been pondering posting more, with a corresponding increase in the randomness of what I post about... (I know, hard to believe that's possible). If past trends bear relevance, this little experiment should last until about Christmas, when I can finally open the nifty new Rock Band game, and start my own virtual band.

So, what's on my head as I ponder my blog? According to Google Analytics, this blog has had about 243 visits over the last month, which doesn't include any RSS syndication, just people visiting the page directly. The average user spends a whopping 90 seconds on my blog before seeking greener pastures (I bet I've lost most of you by now...)

Something I've also found fascinating about blogs, is the fact that some people actually make money from their blogs. Some people disparage those people making money as selling out, or being inauthentic. To those people, I say... how about spending a little money at Amazon this Black Friday? (Yes, that's an affiliate link.) In fact, I stuck an Amazon tag cloud widget over to the right - it's fascinating to see what comes up. As I write this, it's busy selling Zunes and Cookbooks. The former, I suppose, because I've talking about them on occasion (although not generally favorably, alas), and the latter no doubt because of my fondness for cocoa. If I get bored of the widget it will come down - I doubt it will make me any money, but I certainly won't complain if it does.

And here's one other tidbit to experiment with... if you find my writing entertaining, and you want to drop a dime in the hat, feel free to use this spiffy little PayPal widget: