Tag Archive: Blog views


Why bother to blog?

leapThis blog is in need of a reboot.

I’ve been writing it for almost ten years now and find myself increasingly facing a writer’s block.

For a couple of years I managed to write something every single day but recently the average number of posts has fallen to around four a month.

I feel better about myself when I do manage to get something down and it’s also useful to look back and gauge my changing moods and interests over the years.

But the devil in my head continues to whisper ‘Why bother?’ and directs my gaze to the steady fall in the number of views in the last few years. Despite having almost a thousand followers, it’s hard to ignore this inner negativity and to shake the feeling that my words simply get sucked into the void of cyberspace.

Still, whenever I have to think about a good personal quality I normally opt for perseverance. I’m not a smooth talker or a particularly fast learner and tend to distrust those who are skilled in these two fields.

What is a handicap in social settings can be an advantage when writing. Blogging fits my character because it gives me time to think before expressing myself even though this also means I too often keep well within my comfort zone.

So the next time the little demonic mind fucker asks ‘Why bother?’ I will reply that writing for the sake of it is a goal in itself and remind myself that looking before leaping doesn’t always save you from falling.

dieyoungToday is my birthday and , having taken a very big breath and blown out all my candles, my wish is for a surge in blog views.

Since the beginning of 2013 the number of views to this blog has halved.

Rather than being a sign that the quality of posts has declined (perish the thought!), this seems to be the result of Google’s revamped image search engine. Continue reading

REDUCTION IN BLOG VIEWS

Even a flashy splatter rainbow image like this won't increase my views.

Even a flashy splatter rainbow image like this won’t increase my views.

Site Stats fluctuate all the time but I doubt that I am alone in noticing how the number of views of my blog posts has plummeted over the past week or so. In fact I know I am not alone because other bloggers have raised the issue on the WordPress forums.

Responses from the WP team suggest possible reasons are:

The first two do not apply to this blog but the third sounds like a probable reason. Google’s old interface meant that you saw where the image was imbedded but this is no longer the case. I used to get a lot of hits simply because people were searching for a picture and chanced upon my blog. My most popular post, for example, is still a short poem by Ivor Cutler that generated a lot of traffic simply because I used a photograph of a brick wall. (Why so many surfers are looking for photos of bricks and mortar is an intriguing mystery in itself!)

It’s a shock it see my stats looking so sad but , upon reflection,  think this is quite a postive thing. It means that more people are viewing posts because they want to read what I’ve written rather than stumbling upon me by chance.

It also means I have to attract readers by good writing rather than depending on flashy images. That’s the challenge I have to rise to.