Wednesday, January 02, 2008

I get lonely

I like to imagine I have a big readership. You’re just quiet. It’s not like I say anything controversial – what’s to argue with? And everybody knows how tiresome chirpy DITTO!s get.

Since I added the stats service to the blog I can’t delude myself as much. I see that few people are visiting and most of those who do are popping by to find a picture of Hagrid (it’s just a link!) or cat pee solutions (go here).

I’ve been keeping this blog since December 2002, which means it slipped past the five year mark last month. Currently I get about ten visitors a day. There are maybe 3 people who subscribe to the RSS feed. LuvSet ain’t burnin’ up the web.

I don’t obsess about these numbers. Like the poetry I write the blogging I do is primarily for me, to keep the me of me alive. I’m not, in other words, writing for an audience. So not getting what I’m not working for is no great surprise?

There are things one can do to improve a blog’s visibility, I know. But marketing bores me; it takes an energy I tend to have little of. I would rather put the energy into the writing. What I write I write carefully. I strive to be clear in my prose, to burnish the poems until they reflect light. I don’t bother to say the same thing everybody else has said already, unless it’s got a Glenn Ingersoll variation.

I imagine a larger, talkier audience would raise my enthusiasm. I would feel seen rather than overlooked. I would be able to earn money with blog ads! But perhaps I’m wrong. A thousand and two more of you rummaging through my daily (semi-daily?) thoughts would be NO GOOD? Well, whatever. I imagine myself developing strategies to cope. At worst one could wait out that excess, right? I’m sure you’d be able to swing with it, my core ten, of all the millions those who truly care what Glenn thinks about hahoo.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Glenn, thanks heaps for contributing to the Price on Life discussion on my blog!

I'm looking forward to browsing your posts, and hopefully finding some of your poetry? :)

ps( don't be discouraged re. the blog traffic, it tends to take a while to build up a regular readership)

David Lee Ingersoll said...

My free counter widget doesn't provide much in the way of daily stats. It just counts up visitors as they arrive. I got curious what my daily average is, did some calculations and now it appears that I've gotten an average of less than a dozen people a day since the widget started counting back in September 2003. Huh.

That's a comfortable number to have at a party.

Glenn Ingersoll said...

hi Kat,

Thanks for visiting. You can find poems through the LoveSettlement-the-Poems link on the sidebar. Or the blog archives. Or just scroll down for the latest.

David,

Par-Tay!

LKD said...

It must me a male thing.

Seems like the guys are always obsessed with (or saying they're not obsessed with) the numbers.

How many visitors, average length of time visited, blah blah blah.

Me? I don't care and never have. It makes me tense to think that people keep track of how many hits their blog is accumulating or how many people have visited in a single day and to which post. Freaks me out that people know I've cruised their blogs and left without saying anything.

If your blog makes you happy, and the blogs that you read make you happy, and maybe sometimes you say something on one of those blogs and maybe sometimes someone from one of those blogs says something here, that's enough, isn't it?

Delete the stats service.

Sit back.

Relax.

Enjoy the ride.

Happy new year, sir.

Glenn Ingersoll said...

What? You're saying I'm a size queen?

I've had the stats for about 6 1/2 months. I've been keeping the blog for five years (do you count the months I didn't post anything?) ... when I added the stats service I resolved not to get obsessed with the numbers (I did once for another website and what did it get me?). It's just that it's quiet around here. For most of the life of the blog the comments weren't even allowed! But now that they are it's rare that I get them.

Yes, it's a little bit of a mopey post and I get clues that there are people who do read, comment or no, so I'm not saying NOBODY READS MY BLOG WAAAH! But it's no lie to say I get lonely whether here or other places. I had a version of this post in the working file for the blog and I looked at it and didn't post it for two months.

What's enough?

Happy new year to you, Laurel. I read your blog, too.

LKD said...

Mopey. (grin)

I dunno.

These blogs, and the stats service, remind me of those poetry boards I used to post on that would record the number of times a poem had been read. I just never really cared how high or low that number was.

I remember when you didn't allow comments. Used to drive me crazy. I think I almost enjoy commenting on other folks blogs than I do maintaining my own blog. And I've often toyed with the idea of changing the content of my blog to consisting solely of comments I make on other blogs, since I tend to actually WRITE on other peoples' blogs. On my own, I just post my mopey poetry (mopey is the word of the day, man--) and the occasional photo or painting.

Hmmmm.

I've also toyed with the idea of not allowing comments--but I really enjoy the back and forth of comments when they are posted on my blog. The comment box has become my way of keeping in touch with people and "talking" to them since I email almost nobody now.

Off to work.

Sigh.

Glenn Ingersoll said...

As you may have noticed I will occasionally repost on LuvSet comments I've written on others' blogs. I figure if I've gone to the trouble of writing an extended argument I ought to post it on my own damn blog. So, yeah, do that.

Amy D. Unsworth said...

Oh Glenn,

You're the visitor who stops by the most to my blog. I'm trying to do better about actually talking back.

This post made me laugh. I too, get about 10-12 per day. Mostly because they are looking for "Things taken for Granted" which happened to be one of my early blog posts.

And I miss keeping up with "everyone" who used to post in all those fine poetry workshops once upon a time (long ago) in the wildes of the web.

I have stats, but I like to see WHERE people are logging in from. I get hits from the strangest places.

And it's funny around finals time, I get hits from university ip's. I guess they're looking for help on those final papers.

:o)

Stay Cheery, sir.

Glenn Ingersoll said...

hi Amy,

Yeah, the WHERE of it is interesting. I mean, it's fun to see somebody dropping by from India or Kentucky, especially when they stay and read (spend a minute or two, that is, one never knows what exactly is going on during that time, could be they got a phone call or had to go pee so left the LuvSet up).

Anonymous said...

HELLO!

New Visitor Who Does Not Care About Blog Traffic (actually my visitors are selected).

Glenn Ingersoll said...

Hello to you, May (NVWDNCABT(amvas))!

Anonymous said...

Hi Glenn,
Checking your site meter, looks like you have had readers in Bangkok, Qatar, Korea, Moscow, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Uk and Ireland as well as USA...Love, Sis

Glenn Ingersoll said...

The world beats a path to (or through) the Settlement.