Thanks for your patronage!
Every once in a great while, it’s time for me to have some humble pie and realize that people keep visiting this blog like clockwork. When I started the blog in August of 2009, I had absolutely no idea what was coming, nor did I ever think I would learn how to make websites and forums and even help others with theirs. Its been a RODEO, since then, but somehow things kept on going. Today my visitor counter rolled over the 20,000 which marks exactly 10,000 visitors in the last 6 months.
Like every blogger, I monitor where these visitors come from which comes with the convenient feature of being told when people find the blog based on something they typed in the search bar of Google or Bing or all the many others. Some blogs are focused on Superstars (which generally get a lot of searches) and the length of Venus Williams skirt during one of her last matches brings hundreds of thousands of visitors to all kinds of blogs. Please don’t ask me why and what exactly the audience may be looking for. If you can swim with the masses, engage in hearsay or wildly speculate about the sexual escapades of some starlet, you are guaranteed to be picked up by some major outlet, which will push your blog into public spotlight. If WordPress itself picks you up and decides your blog is worthy of being featured, your traffic count explodes overnight. It’s a fast paced world out there with Twitter and Fakebook and all the other Social Media outlets. Suddenly hundreds of people feel like commenting on something you wrote, and it’s mainly a result of a very simple principle:
Monkey want Banana, too!
If you’re in the spotlight, because you wrote something totally hilarious, everyone and their grandma gets excited: “I agree! Yes, you’re so right, wonderfully written, a pristine example of online penmanship, hilarious, excellent, I wish you *was* my grandson, I wish you *wasn’t* my daughter, Nuff said!, Are you taken? Can I rent you to be the clown on my next wedding? “ you get the drift. A whole armada of blogging experts swarms out to scan the world wide webs to find their next victim to sell a “SEO Optimization Package” to, or to advise you on the latest and greatest of how to get as many idiots on your page as possible. Fact: The more off the wall your writings are, the more people read them.
These days, any type of controversy sells. It sells a lot better than any information ever could. Example: A priest threatening to light another religious groups instruction manual on fire causes international upset, all the way to protesters setting their own mother on fire, screaming Achmachal Baddekap louder than your good old Ayatollah Khomeini could have ever done. These are the crazy days, for sure and if you’re one of the lucky bastards who get to mess with people’s minds and emotions, your wallet will explode in a hurry. If you keep it politically correct, your house may not.
For any self-respecting professional blogger, this blog is a menace, peanuts, a dusting… nuttin! Who the hell cares for small airplanes, or some little guy in Maine and his ramblings or that little seaplane forum? Is there a picture that shows Venus Williams half naked? Ah, where is the picture that shows Oprah, drugged up and passed out on the rear seat of her Limousine? What?! How about a first hand count on Tiger Woods last fallout with the female kind? What did he do with that Golf Club? Nothing of the like? What a shame! OK! At least speculate wildly about why a democratic Congress Woman was shot in the head. Everybody does it, not because they give a crap, nope – it brings traffic and advertising dollars. And it keeps the masses entertained and distracted from the atrocities going on behind the curtain.
20,000 visitors is not all that much. The Seaplaneforum.com site had almost double that count over the last 9 months. Its nice to get “Keep doing what you’re doing” emails and its nice to see people becoming part of a little community that deals with what they love. It’s nice to see an article on Weight & Balance get linked to, a long time after I wrote it, and it’s a good feeling to see that “How to become a CFI” is still being read by those who search for information on it. It certainly does not pay the bills, and it’s far from affording me that Mansion in Beverly Hills, and nope, the bank recently turned down my try to get them to finance the Bentley. There are much bigger fish in the sea and they do their best to stay big and fat. In order to do so, they often eat smaller fish.
Lets see where this goes this year. I’ll stick to my little exclusive group of readers. Thanks to those who keep reading and thanks to those who keep sharing what goes on. Your comments and critique is welcome and if you have ideas, please let me know. I am always one mouse click away.
Honey Nut & Cheerio!
I appreciate your ability to keep yourself from jumping onto some little bandwagon that could up your stats. I started my blog a few months after yours with the idea that we are approaching safety with band-aids and not surgery! I have gained a lot of positive reinforcement from you personally over the last few months and a few visitors for my blog as well.
Keep on keepin’ on, you make a difference my friend!
Oh Wow! Thanks Keith! This is much appreciated! Thanks for the nice comment!