Right now, in real time, you are reading the first sentence of the 500th post of this blog. If that doesn’t make you feel damn special, I don’t know what else to tell you. I really enjoy writing stuff, and I enjoy it more when you guys read it. My favorite days are when someone tells me that they can relate to something I wrote, or even (rarely) when someone tells me that something I wrote has helped them in some way.
Now that I made a big deal about it, I should actually qualify that this is only sort of the 500th post. The ‘real 500th’ post happened a few days ago, but because I’ve unpublished and deleted a couple of posts since 2003, this is the 500th published post. Usually I deleted things either because they were horribly bad (although plenty of bad ones survived) or because I said something shitty about someone who might read it and I either didn’t have all the information at the time, or I regretted what I said. Believe me, there’s still a lot of shitty things I kept up because I meant them, or probably because I forgot about them. 500 is a lot of posts to remember what I said about who, when, where, and why.
Marinarosemartinez.com isn’t my first blog. I’ve been writing and posting online since my first Anglefire site back in ’97. Of course, all that stuff has fallen off the Internet, and thank God. Some things should never be found. The current version of my online presence started in October 2003 on a site whose name I have completely forgotten. The next month, it moved to Livejournal. I really wish I remembered the name of the site I moved from, because if it still exists, I think i have some posts there from when I was in high school, and I’d really like to know what they say. Oh well.
In January of this year, I started posting 5 days a week. At first, I just wanted to see how long I could keep it up, then I thought maybe I’d make something out of it, maybe something that could help contribute to my goals on the long term. I signed up to Google Analytics on Feb. 9, and have been checking it 2 or 3 times a month, usually just a cursory look at the numbers overall, checking which posts get the most traffic so I can keep my ‘favorites‘ category up to date. Today, I spent some real time with the analytics, and got some information I thought was interesting. For example, after the homepage, the most popular pages in order are:
- Because Fuck Labor Day – An outfit post where I also talked about the concept of ‘flattering’ clothing, and how it’s bullshit.
- Girls Will Get This – Wherein I attempt to understand the boy/girl joke, and mostly fail.
- Trigger Warnings, How Do They Work? – Where I’m kind of a dick about PTSD
- Weight Loss Anxiety – Trying to focus on health, despite the pressure to focus on weight.
- To Hit or Not To Hit: Is Mass Effect Post-Feminist?– An examination of the Garrus/Shep bro mission in Mass Effect 3.
- Female Masturbation Techniques – NSFW
- Things to do While My Boyfriend’s Away – Activities for the girl who suddenly finds herself with lots of ‘me’ time.
- Real Live Stand-Up Hermosa – Apparently, calling out a comic for talking over another comic’s set brings a girl a lot of attention
- Sock Dreams Extraordinary Thigh High Socks – These are still some of my favorite socks. They seriously rule.
- Hickey Cover Up Tutorial – With pictures!
Numbers 1-4 of the top 10 are up there because I posted them on Reddit, which is my largest source of traffic. After that, my other major source is Facebook. Unlike Reddit, which gives me massive, short-lived spikes, the Facebook crowd is slightly smaller, but much more consistent. Other major traffic comes from Twitter, Google, and Tumblr in that order. Websites GearedforGamers.com and KeithandtheGirl.com come next in line. Below that, participation is negligible.
Recently, I started adding short descriptions to my links on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter haven’t changed their click-rate since then, but Tumblr shot up relative to it’s regular participation. So I’m going to keep playing around with that and see how the different sites respond.
I’m still figuring out how important the numbers are to me. I want people to read this blog, but not only for it’s own sake. I have an idea of the kind of constructive community building that the Internet has made possible, and I I’d really like to be a part of that. We’ve discovered a new dimension, where a lot of the barriers that kept people apart are no longer relevant. I’m still having trouble defining what the blog has become for me, but I feel excited about the future. Even if all I do is maintain this blog, at the end of the day I have something to point to that identifies me as a citizen of the Internet. At the very least, I’m educating myself in this new populace I have so much desire to work with.
So, I Google Image searched “blogging” and found a bunch of cartoons that linked back to gapingvoid.com, where the top of the page featured the following. I’d have to say, that’s pretty much my philosophy in a nutshell.
For better or for worse.
Hey, congrats!
Thanks!