Don't Back Down

With all the attention I've been paying to statistics, I thought I'd take a look and see where traffic has been headed lately, which of course raises the question of whether to look at current content (in other words, posts I made this month) or total content (posts that have been made since the site was started). I have to say that I still haven't decided, but for the moment, I'm leaning towards the latter. After all, if a post was written years ago, and it's still more popular than a post that was written a week ago, then there's probably a reason for it.

I'd like to think that I'm keeping things current, but maybe I'm just not. So I'd like to start off by looking at the posts that have been the most popular overall. I'm interested to hear your feedback, however - if you are more interested in a monthly recap, then perhaps I can do separate posts, or even combine them into one. I'm not a huge fan of metrics (that's really my wife's thing), but I do like to see what is getting people's attention. Let me know what you think.

Read "Most Popular Ten Posts During August" »

Last night, as the clock neared midnight, the streak of 109 consecutive football victories was snapped. Whether it was the fact that the Cincinnati Elder Panthers (that name just doesn't flow off the tongue) out-played or out-coached the Independence Patriots, or whether the fact that the players from the Big I had to travel much of the day Friday and face another team while they were so far away from home is irrelevant. The streak is over. For now, at least.

While this streak ends, another is still alive, for the Patriots have at least a passing chance at securing their eighth straight state championship this year, and after all, coach Tom Knotts wasn't wearing a shirt in summer practice that read 120 (or something similar) - it had a big, fat 8 on it. Though it would have been nice for the tradition to continue, it would have been another two years after this one for the Patriots to even challenge the Concord de la Salle record of 151 straight wins.

And by all accounts, it was a good game.

Read "Independence Loses to Cincinnati Elder in Overtime" »

After one year of advertising, I was seeing AdSense at about 80% of the income from the site. This month, that figure went back up a bit - to about 85% - which is not as high as it has been, but still the wrong direction. Mostly this is due to a largish return on one of the other affiliate programs, which reduced that percentage by a bit. Everything else held fairly steady for the month - traffic, income and page views were remarkably... even.

The interesting thing about this was that, even though you will find content for August at this point, it wasn't actually posted during August. As I mentioned in What Affects My Advertising Revenue? I was on a bit of a self-imposed sabbatical for the month, and that meant that I didn't really write. Well, I did write - but I didn't post the writings when they happened. Instead I hid in my cave and just sort of watched to see what happened. In reality, not much happened - traffic stayed fairly steady, and so did the income. It's almost like I didn't have to be here. Which is nice. But now I'm back (though I'm still catching up, so I'm a little behind - that will be rectified in the next couple days).

Read "August Review, New Layout and Ad Plans, Thanks Sponsors" »