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.

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.

This morning I met up with someone for quasi-breakfast at Starbucks. We both work nights and were chatting on the evil entity known as Gay.com beforehand. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment type thing, definitely not planned. He seems like a cool guy, definitely seems well adjusted for our age, very similar views on certain things that I hold near and dear to my life. We know a few people in common, but nothing that can’t be worked through (j/k).

I updated Wordpress to 2.1, and I’ve started using Windows Live Writer for my blog. I used to use w. Bloggar to post from Windows. For a Microsoft program it’s pretty feature rich, although one thing I would love to see is a way to use password protection through Wordpress (currently I have to either write it through the Wordpress dashboard or publish it in WLW then change it). I’ve also started using Box.net, an online file storage service.

Well, I’m back at work tonight, so off to bed I go.