mcfro.blogspot.com turned 4 yesterday.

1442 days ago, I created this website. Some 418 postings later, I continue to write on here when spare time and my urges permit me.

The fourth year was somewhat of an average year, I have been getting, on average, about 120 hits per month -- which is about what I was getting the year prior.

The visits I mostly get are from Google searches. Surprisingly, I get a lot of queries regarding drum restoration, and Canwood drums. Of course I began fielding these site visits when I first began blogging about my drum restoration project last April.

There are surprisingly, a few repeat visitors that come back again and again. Most of those are from my neck of the woods, however it's nice to see that I get a few international visitors. Yes, I check my web hits.

June 2007 ended up being the most successful month for the blog -- ever, largely due to the post: "All it Means is I'm Earning Less and Less". Much thanks and love goes to the medhatblog for providing a link to the article, which increased my readership, and provided my little site a lot more traffic than what I was used to. Of course, things have settled back down, but a few come by now and again from the medhatblog.

No projections for the future of the site this year. Blogging seems to have become passe, which is not at all unwelcome. I'm somewhat happy that every eighth grader no longer has their own website, where they can vent about how much they hate their parents, and try out every new four-letter word they learned in the cafeteria. Still, there will always be a place for blogs and blogging; it's just not going to be everyone's claim to fame. Very few people write well; and even fewer attain their success by blogging. Those who have managed to rise above the ranks have used gimmicks -- usually their looks to build and maintain their reader-base. I find posting scantily-clad photos of myself on the web to obtain traffic quite low. But I digress. To each his own, or "to each a zone".

Of course, you can rely on me to write on here a few times per month, about some strange geekdom that I am raving about at the moment. I have a live recording that is 75% finished, and I can't wait to bring it to everyone. I may even post a link here.

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.

Precautionary Measures

This site has been operational for nearly eleven months. Some of the interesting things that have transpired over this time, is that I have likely written enough words to encompass a few novels by now, I have managed to obtain a few loyal readers, I have learned a few things about writing, a few things about programming, and a few things about myself. I am equally surprised that I have continued blogging over the course of this entire year. When I created this page, I would have bet that I would have quit blogging after a month or two. But here I am, nearly one year later, still writing away.

One thing that has been long overdue, is that I created a backup of this webpage, and saved it on my computer. I should have known well enough by now, given the fact that I have had computer troubles and loss of data over the past year. Even in years past, I have lost gigabytes of data due to computer crashes, bad hard drives, and operating system upgrades. After investing countless hours into the development of this site, and writing tens of thousands of words, I would hate to have all my thoughts disappear into oblivion if (and when) Blogger crashes. Even Matthew Good has not been immune to the wrath of computer failure, as he has mentioned in more than a few posts that he has lost months of writing. He has been lucky that his readership is large enough that a few good Samaritans were able to provide archives of Matt's entries. My readership is by many factors smaller than Matt's (he has claimed to get up to one million hits per month on his blog; I'm lucky to get 100), so statistically speaking, relying on the generosity of others to provide me with an archive of my writing is extremely remote.

While conducting the backup of this site, I made the innocent mistake of reading a few entries. I ended up being quite proud of the entries of the first few months. I felt my writing was objective, intelligent, detailed and overall enthralling. I was discussing many themes that were occupying my mind, and many of them had a philosophical twist to the writing. I think it is obvious that my writing has changed over the course of the year -- I hope it has changed for the better. I have found my early entries had little to do with recent events of my life, while recent entries are accounts of daily occurrences, as well as odd tidbits of product releases, etc. As of late, I am writing less, and less often. That being said, I am not sure if I am writing more concisely or not.

I was hoping to wait until the first anniversary of this site to discuss my future vision for this page, but perhaps this time is as good as any to reflect on the last year and plan for the future.

For the next year, like every other blogger, I want to increase my readership. Some bloggers, like Raymi, have been blogging for four or more years, and it has taken them as long to develop a dedicated following. Relatively speaking, this page is in its' infancy. I still don't even feel like I have found my voice, or the proper gimmick to allow this site to rise above the average weblog (a quick search for 'blog' has netted some 182 million webpages). I consider the best advice given to bloggers by fellow bloggers is to write well, and write often, if you wish to increase your readership. People will spread good writing by word of mouth (or word of hyperlink, in the 21st Century).

This year, I hope to include more images. People love pictures, myself included. Some of the best blogs I have read have included wondrous images either pulled from the web, or taken and modified themselves. I have dire need of a digital camera, and perhaps even a webcam. Voyeurism is a huge influence on web traffic; those who publish lots of photos of themselves (especially risqué images) get huge amounts of traffic. I will not resort to nudity or otherwise suggestive / pornographic material in order to increase my web traffic. But once I have a digital camera, the frequency of images will increase on this site. The other issue I am facing with images, is the problem of hosting. My "free" solution is not as successful as I had hoped. I have lost a great many images in cyberspace, and I would like a bit more stability in order to preserve the integrity of my entries. I am currently getting into the habit of storing backups of all my images on my computer in the event that subsequent images go AWOL.

A facelift may occur in the coming months. I am convinced that the background image is too bright, and makes the journal entries difficult to read. I have been really happy with the Blogger template provided in this page, including the color scheme. It will only be a matter of time that I will grow tired of this look, and desire something different.

I feel that "MC Fro's Top 5 Tunes" as well as the "Recently Read" sections of the sidebar may meet an untimely end. They are time-consuming to maintain, and I doubt that many of you are interested in those aspects of my interests. It may be difficult to let go of the Top 5 songs, mainly because I am passionate about the music I listen to, even though I feel that the list is not representative of my current musical tastes.

I fully expect that my writing style will evolve over the course of the next year. I hope to be blogging more about my personal life, as well as the depraved thoughts that plague my mind on a daily basis. I love the idea of publishing how incredibly messed-up I am on here. Even more so, I love the idea that people would read my thoughts and say "Wow, is that MC Fro ever fucked-up! I'm glad I'm not as crazy as he."

In the future, I believe that profanity will be within these entries in higher frequency. This was a difficult decision to make. Actually, it wasn't as much an intellectual decision as it was an emotional one. The truth be known, is that I don't like writing profanity. I think it tarnishes good writing, but in the blogging element, profanity tends to increase traffic. To further reinforce this point, I would like my writing to come a little more from the heart, rather than from the brain. Obviously, if I feel like swearing, I'm going to swear, rather than find some other creative way to be crude. It's not like anybody is censoring my entries anyway. Who the fuck did that? Damn you, guilty conscience!

I hope you return to see what will be new and exciting during the second season of mcfro.blogspot.com.