1095 Days And Counting

Three years ago to the day, I created the first post in this weblog.

In those three years, this website has gone through many growing pains, and many redesigns.

Each year a posted an image similar to this and would discuss how a bright(er) future for my little corner of cyberspace existed just around the corner.

Ok. So I'm no market analyst. But I have seen trends develop over the three years. And one of the apparent trends is the slump in visitors during the summer. July always seems to be the low point of the year with the fewest number of visits. Everything seems to turn around, with March and April being very strong months.

I would like to think my readership is getting stronger. My argument for this, is that even though this year's traffic is comparable to last year's, I have written far fewer posts. I would consider myself lucky if I write three posts a month.

In another respect, because of the diversification of the site, news related to the Savoys or Tung N' Groove is now posted on their respective webpages instead of here. I think this negatively affects traffic to this particular site, however increasing overall traffic. I however, do not compare and contrast the web traffic between the other sites.

The upgrade to Blogger Beta (which is the new Blogger now) is apparently beneficial. Those who query search engines such as Yahoo! or Google with specific keywords are flocking to my site. The meta-tags built into the new blogger is assisting in this. Popular keywords in the past few weeks have been Tongue N Groove and Canwood. This is adding to increased traffic I otherwise would not have received. I could only expect that once I go through the archives and add the proper tags, I may just as well increase my traffic in that respect. In those three years I have written about nearly everything under the sun.

If you examine the market, the number of weblogs available to the public has grown exponentially. I do not have the exact numbers, nor to I care to look for them at this moment, but I would not be surprised if the number of weblogs have increased tenfold since I began writing in 2004. It also occurs to me that the traffic to blogs have diminished, given the rise in popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and FaceBook.

No I do not have a MySpace account, and I don't plan on making one in the foreseeable future. It's just another website to maintain, and it seems to me, it's merely a popularity contest, with little substance. I can't afford to waste my time sending instant messages to people I do not know, just because I linked to them, or they linked to me and call me "friend". I have a full-time job, I have a fledging musical career that I consider a full-time job. I have far too many hobbies and interests than available free time.

In three years, one would think that I have finally "found" my voice. I really can't agree with this. I think one's voice and opinion -- especially with respect to personal journals -- is a constantly growing and changing thing. I really believe that this is a personal journey, and given such, in a years' time, this blog may be completely different than what it is today. It certainly is much different than what it was in years past.

Overall, I still think that it is worth my time to continue to write. Like music, any level of creativity is good for the mind, and the soul. That being said, I believe I will continue to blog throughout the year, even if it may only be 2-3 times per month.