154 Days of Blogging

It has been 154 days since I started publishing posts on The ValleyScott Blog. A lot has happened over the last five months.

My first post (“FOSTA part 1”) published on April 9th to a whopping 6 views. And I was thrilled by the fact that 6 people decided to take a look. Since then I’ve had posts that started with 50 views, and now have many posts and pages that have been viewed over 20 times a piece.

I went from averaging 6 visitors a day to averaging over 40, with some days seeing well over 100 people visit my little website. I never expected my blog to have this kind of growth.

When I first hit 1,000 page views back in the beginning of May I was ecstatic. Figured that if I could have a thousand views a month I was going to have a successful blog. Some other people I know who have blogs only get a couple hundred views a month. So a thousand was a pretty big deal. Little could I expect that in May I would get a total of 2,892 views. And in June it was 3,638! July shocked me with growth to 6,224 total views.

And then came August. This little blog of mine passed the 20,000 view mark on August 21st. And then kept going. As the month closed we are over 23,000 views, with an August total of 9,540 views! And 2,111 visitors! That’s just insane to me!

That brings my overall totals to 4,093 visitors and 23,328 views as of this writing. I am humbled by these numbers.

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of all of this. I’m certainly no expert on Internet site usage. But most blogs are really only read by a handful of people. Friends and family of the writer for the most part. Perhaps they get a small following. I do know there are those blogs that do go crazy and have thousands and thousands of followers generating millions of page views. This blog obviously falls in between those. But I can’t help but feel that I have achieved a certain level of success. And that feels good. I have exceeded my goals tremendously. Even when I changed my goals for the month of August, those goals were smashed.

So where do I go from here?

I really don’t know. I have been taking a hard look at the plans that I had been making. And while some are still valid, others just don’t seem the right path any longer. This blog has changed from what I originally intended. And that is good, because it has changed for the better. So I need new goals and new plans. I don’t have them yet.

I am going to say that I am dropping my plans for a second, members-only companion site to this blog. Not only was there not much interest in such a site, but I feel as though creating a members-only site is contrary to the openness and inclusiveness that I feel are hallmarks of The ValleyScott Blog. So that idea is now dead. Thankfully I had not invested any money in it yet (that was going to happen today!).

I do plan to continue to offer advertising space. At this point it has not been something that anyone has expressed more than a passing interest in. In the next couple of weeks you will see some announcements about a “Services” advertising section. This will be for people to advertise websites for any persona business they might have that could benefit members of our community, such as photographers, stylists, hairdressers, website designers, etc. I am also offering space for anyone to advertise their personal website. Women and men. Providers and clients. People who are just supporters of our community. If you have your own personal website, you can advertise it on the Blog. I don’t know how much interest there will be in this, but I hope it can be another place for our community to connect.

I am still hoping that more people will want to get involved in supporting this site as patrons. To date I only have 2 financial supporters. The Blog brings in $18 a month in support. This means that everything I do for this site that costs money is coming out of pocket. This is a “labor of love” as they say, so I don’t mind. But it does limit what I can do. Hopefully with some advertising and some addition support I can be able to travel more and bring some more variety to the material I present.

I truly hope that people enjoy this blog. I do not get that much feedback. Out of over 4,000 visits, there have only been 89 comments left by those visitors, and only 38 “likes” of any content. I do receive other comments through direct messages and emails, but these are also very rare. It can be difficult to tell that people are thinking about the content on the blog.

I want to encourage people to participate here on The ValleyScott Blog. Give me your feedback. I want to know what you are thinking. Ask questions. I love questions! Like and share posts. I am continually working to try and make this site better, but it is really YOU who can make the most difference. Talk to me, tell me what you want from The ValleyScott Blog.

I want to thank all of you who visit this website. You’ve made it a success. I also want to thank the small band of supporters I have that have given, shared, and provided input—you are my greatest asset.

—ValleyScott
Sept. 1, 2018