Friday, October 12, 2007

A milestone for this Second Effort -- and some sobering perspective

According to the not-always-reliable Sitemeter, sometime today -- maybe even this morning -- this blog will receive its 20,000th visitor.

This is exciting for me, anyway: Among other things 20,000 visits is roughly 19,950 more visits than were made to my original, long since discontinued first blogging effort. And my family knew about that one.

But the number of daily visitors ebbs and flows -- 60 one day, 40 on too many others. This is both good and bad -- it's a lot better than I was doing a year ago -- but Ken Levine gets roughly 4,290 visits per day. His blog started at the end of November 2005 and this one started about 10 days later so they are of roughly the same vintage. Yet, here I am, giddy as a schoolgirl to welcome my 20,000th visitor -- and he's had about 1.25 million.

Of course, it's not a fair comparison: He's funny.

And Levine is also an Emmy-winning writer, director and producer who's worked on some of the biggest hits in American television ever (M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, The Simpsons, Wings, Everybody Loves Raymond, and other popular shows including Becker and Dharma & Greg). I've watched M*A*S*H, Wings and Cheers -- and I remember when Shelley Long was doing local commercials in Chicago -- but somehow it's not the same thing, is it? And did I mention he's also a former major league baseball announcer? Did I mention I can keep score?

But, I consoled myself, even though this blog has not yet begun to compete effectively with Mr. Levine's, my "public" blog -- as I mentioned here recently -- has begun to attract some actual traffic. Yesterday, for most of the day, my "public" blog was actually running ahead of this one in terms of visits.

That other blog is narrowly focused, both in terms of topics and geographically. So one shouldn't expect that a purely local blog would get Ken Levine-esque type numbers, right?

Ah, but then I found another purely local blog, Second City Cop, by an anonymous Chicago police officer written for other Chicago police officers. Sitemeter says Second City Cop is drawing an average of 4,630 visitors per day -- over 1.63 million since the site was launched at the end of May 2005. And this despite the fact that, according to this story in the Daily Southtown, the blog is "banned from police computers."

So I guess I won't start crowing about 20 hits a day, huh?

Well, anyway, welcome 20,000th visitor, whoever you are. Come back 4,000 times a day, OK?

6 comments:

msb said...

Well, there I am as the 1952 visiter, the year I was born. Only took 5 tries. I just adore small milestones of dubious distinction.

Mother Jones RN said...

The web traffic isn't important, it's the quality of the blog that counts. I love visiting you. Don't ever stop writing.
MJ

Cliff said...

Depending on what your aim is, sometimes hits aren't all that important.

My biggest visitor day since I installed my site meter was when I blasted a radio personality in Cleveland after I called his show and he was rude to me.

I received several hits and a few comments from the Clear Channel Cleveland cluster.

That was fun, but it wasn't in the spirit of my blog.

I'd rather have fewer hits and more favorable comments.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

Is it me? Is it me?

katherine. said...

lately I have only had a little bit of time to read around...did I miss where you mention your other one...or should I sherlock it out somehow...smile.

The Curmudgeon said...

msb -- it doesn't get much more dubious than this blog.

MJ -- thanks.

74WIXYgrad -- That's my problem: I'm greedy. I want more hits and more favorable comments.

Jean Luc -- no, it wasn't you -- and while I don't know who it was, I do know what he wanted and I did a post about it.

Katherine -- No, my "public" blog and this one are entirely separate -- can't stay anonymous long if you send people over to a blog with your name on it, can you?