Jake’s Life

Today I decided to check my web hosting stats and truthfully was a bit shocked at what I saw (and what could be seen if it continues).

My last post outlined August’s statistics as around 900 unique visitors accessing my site, besides search engines and the like. While checking today I found the number for September so far to be 180. If this is going to be the trend, projected hits are 1800 for the month…over 100% more than last month. Wow.

My blog is not commercial, does not support any particular cause or political notion, and it doesn’t really do much for anyone but myself and those who read it. I don’t have ads, I don’t ask for donations, and I am not too intertwined with other bloggers in my area or across the nation as much as some others may be. Despite this I still consider it a success.

In looking at these stats I would ideally enjoy more posting on this site from its readers. Who are you and where do you come from? How can I engage you more? What aspects of my life do you want to hear about more? I have bounced around from topic to topic quite a bit, but if there is anything else you readers would like to know more about, don’t hesitate to contact me. Likewise if there is any way I can improve my site, also let me know!

Some of my future plans include my already mentioned life story (which again, should bring the stats up), as well as other photo posts.

Mint, the new player in online personal accounting (one that I have been salivating over for months now) has finally entered into private beta testing. If you signed up before you should already have your invitation e-mail, or you can sign up for the beta at their web site.

I won’t spill any beans, but it’s miles ahead in ease and function that any other similar web site. Check it out.

I have some long days. Even though my work week is only usually four days long, it’s busy for me, and blogging isn’t always on top of my priority list. Earlier this year I just about quit blogging and instead used my server space for storage. I decided to try to use some common sense in networking with other blogs and sites to raise my stats:

• Choose at least one to three blog entries a day which strikes my interest and post a comment to them
• Check the blogs of other bloggers who post on blogs I read to add to Google Reader to apply the above principle
• Add my URL and my RSS feeds to each signature I have (e-mail, web forums, etc.)
• E-mail new visitors and posters to my site

I began doing these things in May and have found a noticeable jump in unique visitors and length of visits.

Before the eyes fool you, the total number of hits for August isn’t that high — about 900 — which puts daily readership at a little more than 30 (and these are unique IP hits which do not count search engines). They have steadily improved since I started. I’ve also looked at hourly, daily, and weekly stats, if not to just look at them then to form my own wild opinions.

Looking at the daily stats I don’t feel so bad to let blog reading and posting sit on the back burner during my work week. There is an average of 160 hits during the week, and 220 on Sunday.

It’s also interesting to see where people usually enter my site from.

All in all I’m fairly happy with the traffic I’ve gained, although lately I have been slacking on commenting as much as I would like to. I read everyone’s posts each day (I don’t go a day without checking Google Reader) and am going to try to set aside a specific time each day to do this stuff.

How do the rest of you guys boost your stats other than simple networking? I know there are several social bookmarking sites, technorati, etc., but I’m not a major commercial blog so I don’t really want to go that route.

Last night I decided to flash the ROM on my T-Mobile Wing to a home cooked version that includes TouchFlo (a la the HTC Touch).

I backup what I need from my PDA to the SD card and install the prep file, then use the desktop installer to install it through USB. During this time an error shows on my PDA screen. When the desktop utility is done the error goes away and I hard reset. It powers back on and hangs at the T-Mobile screen. So I put it into the bootloader and flashed it to the stock T-Mobile ROM that came with the Wing. Disappointing.