Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Blogging milestones

This is the 500th post I've written for this blog since I began publishing it on December 27, 2004. And sometime this week, the SiteMeter odometer in my sidebar will turn over to 50,000. That number represents actual visits, not "visitors", as the graphic claims, although I do have the counter configured so that you won't be counted more than once in any 24-hour period. (My own visits are never logged.)

Fifty thousand visits isn't a terribly meaningful number. It could indicate that one person has visited on that many separate days. Except that I haven't been blogging for 50,000 days. It might mean that 50,000 people have come here one time each. Except that I know my sister stops by fairly often. So the number of actual warm bodies that have clicked over to this blog lies somewhere between one and 50,000. Too bad we can't know where in between.

Now I suppose you're wondering why I bother posting the visitors total since it's an essentially meaningless number. Well, I'm hoping you'll see "50,000 visitors" in just over a year's time and be like, Wow. She's clearly a popular blogger. I should tell my friends about her.

At least, I hope you'll be like, Wow. But maybe you won't, now that I've explained all this. Still, 500 posts and 50,000 visits impresses me. Which is why I'm blogging about this today.

The blogisphere is a big place, and I'm very much aware that there are myriad bloggers out there who are smarter and funnier and prettier than me. But not one of them appreciates their readers more than I appreciate mine. Trust me on that.

So thanks, everybody, for reading No rules. Just write. You make blogging fun.

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14 comments:

Neal said...

49,643 - F5 - 49,644 - F5 - 49,645 ...

:-)

More seriously, I'll have to look into how you configure sitemeter to not count your visits. Didn't know you could do that.

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks for the thought, Neal, but you can't make the counter move faster by refreshing the page. You're counted just once every 24 hours.
;-)

Here's the page where you can set SiteMeter to ignore clicks from your own computer(s).

Anonymous said...

I knew you could do that, I didn't know that you could set it to only count folks once a day.

I read your blog every day. And I tend to like repeat readers, since it means that they like what I write well enough to come back!

;-)

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks, Ellen. Somebody else asked about counting the visits only once every 24 hours, so I just clicked back over to SiteMeter to find the page to tweak those settings--and it appears that option is no longer available. What's the default now, I'm wondering? Twelve hours? Twenty-four?

If any of you are curious, my SiteMeter pages are always open to the public.

jel said...

Woo Hoo, if I had know this was a big day I would have bake a cake! :)


way to go. may you have that many more!!!!

Bonnie S. Calhoun said...

Congrats, Brenda..i come once a day, so count back to August ,,that many is mine.

I use StatCounter, they break the totals down to return visitors, repeat daily visitors and they don't count your own clicks either!

Shelley L. MacKenzie said...

I come here pretty much every day as well...but it's only been the last month or so since I discovered your blog.

I enjoy when people stop by my blogs (yes, I have 3 lol) and I especially like comments - though don't often get many. Oh well, I'm just not one of those popular bloggers I guess.

Anonymous said...

Brenda,

Great to hear you've reached the big "500"!! Awesome. I'm a faithful reader, though I only just got into the whole blogging world. I don't have my own, but enjoy reading others and leaving comments. I visit yours daily. I'm a huge fan of your blog, website and, of course, your books! Keep up the great work.

Blessings and much laughter,
Shauna

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks Shauna, Shelley, Bonnie, and Janice. You nice people are going to spoil me.

Bonnie, I use StatCounter, too. That's the one I check every day. SiteMeter is just for show, because so many people were asking about traffic to my blog.

Anonymous said...

I'll have to check out StatCounter. Now I'm curious as to how many posts I've made on each of my blogs. Hmmm.

Anonymous said...

Ok, I checked my blog post count and lets just say, it's unimpressive lol. I think I need to blog more. ;)

Julie Carobini said...

50K! Congrats...I'll start posting my numbers when they get up over, um, something close to that--lol.

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks, Julie.

Audra, it's taken me a year and a half to log 500 posts. Hang in there. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Sounds rather like "over 2 Billion sold" doesn't it? I haven't visited much over the past month, but hope to make it up soon. As you can tell by the late post date, I am trying to catch up. Hope you are feeling better.

yfs