Wow! That truly was a November to remember!
Our third highest traffic month of all time! Tons of traffic at our sister sites like Super Bowl-Bound Bears and Holiday Steals & Deals! Lots of happy stories from folks who have saved real money on holiday shopping.
And we're just weeks away from crowning Mr./Ms./Mrs. 10,000!
Thanks to everyone who continues to make Mark's World a destination on their Internet travels. To be honest, the past month was part of an on-going experiment that I conducted for a chapter in my forthcoming book. The experiment began back in September when circumstances and lethargy and my inquisitive nature conspired to cause me to see what would happen if I posted the fewest number of times in a month thus far this year.
Traffic dropped. Big time.
In October, I posted the average number of times from the previous nine months of the year. Traffic came back. In November, I posted the highest number of times in the history of Mark's World and the result is one of the best all-time traffic months in the history of the site.
Obvious? Perhaps, but I needed the actual data. More importantly, as I mentioned to some friends in the past week, I was struck the other day as I was cleaning out my bookmarks and noting the number of blogs that I once followed that have simply disappeared in the past two years.
This is hard work. Like you, I have a job, a home life and various responsibilities. Having authored columns for about 30 years since high school including a 10-year stint while editor of the Northwest Herald, I might have a bit of an advantage over the average blogger-wannabe. Plus, I have an enormous ego.
Whatever the reason, updating Mark's World is often a welcome diversion. But it is hard work, nonetheless.
The problem with many blogs is that they eventually read like they have become a chore. It has been increasingly popular in recent years for newspapers and other media information providers to assign blogs as part of a writer's job. These things are NOT fun to read and eventually, as the writer's enthusiasm wanes, so does reader interest. As reader interest wanes, the interactions dry up and so does whatever remains of the writer's interest.
The third time I go to my once-favorite blog and it is not updated, it just becomes a forgotten bookmark that I eventually eliminate.
When I first started this blog in 2005, I was in between gigs. I had a few friends and mentors who told me in no uncertain terms that posting my views in this manner was a bad idea if I ever hoped to land a meaningful job among Masters of Printing Mechanisms again. They were just being helpful in their own way. Now, many of them have watched their own jobs change through mergers, new owners and the general boomerang effect of ad revenue that has been siphoned away creating a new urgency toward a digital, interactive future.
In truth, I really had no interest in a typical MPM's gig. And it's not that I am psychic: I just have always viewed the future of newspapers differently than many of my contemporaries. I sought ways to seek more reader-driven content at a time when others were busy telling readers what it was they wanted to read. I sought innovative newsroom training when others marginalized such efforts. I sought reader advisory boards, consumed market studies and applied market-driven changes while other drank from the fountain of industry-driven drivel.
And I always surrounded myself with an innovative team smarter and more capable than I. I guess once you flourish in that kind of environment, you end up only interested in working at companies fueled by innovation and a creative zeal for excellence (which is how I landed a gig in Florida 18 months ago working for Hometown News).
If you want some blogging tips, I've discovered a no-nonsense site that lays it on the line:
If Your Blog Disappeared Who Would Miss It? Meanwhile, thanks again to all of you for stopping by Mark's World! The future is bright! There is much more fun to come!
More later,
Mark
