Fink Blog is *Three* Years Old!

Wow, another year is gone(!) well almost...my first post was actually on the 21st of March back in 2005, I'm posting this a bit early as the run up to the impending wedding (29th March) means I'll almost certainly miss the date, and this kind of post takes a little while to compile... ;)

First off, I can't fail to mention that this third "birthday" post marks the occasion of mission:"smell the roses" being accomplished for another 12 months. It's far too easy to just put your head down and get on with life (as I wrote about previously in some detail, not that I can find the post as my titles and tagging were *terrible* for the first year) but thanks to being a blogger I pretty much know, not only exactly what I have been doing (day-to-day) since I started, I have pictures of much of it, and have also succeeded in forcing time to slow down around me (to an acceptable degree) rather than running away with itself in gay abandon, as it had been doing (wasting several years as a virtual blur)...naughty continuum! To your bed!

Now, some statistics (feel free to switch off here) - traffic-wise, there has been (unexpectedly) amazing growth - looking at "all time" (well, when sitemeter isn't down, as it sometimes is for days at a time), this blog has entertained 83,626 visitors (37,486 last year, just for reference), so that's almost double(!) and equates to an average of 293 visitors each and every day (equalling, year-on-year, a 42% increase)...! Oh and this is despite Google slapping down almost every blogger's page rank in punishment for a naughty minority prostituting their writing talents (paid to hype up products or movies)...I wasn't involved, those miserable few that *were* mostly (as the bottom fell out of their world) fell to a page rank zero - mine slipped by one point - which wasn't a disaster (as I'm not in this game for money, just my own amusement), but if you check the graph, I bet you can guess when it happened ;) -

- anyway, these visitors (yourself included) have come from 83 different countries -

- the vast majority are from the UK and US (as you would imagine), then other bits of the Americas and Australia, followed by the EU and ROW (although I'm clearly now completely blocked in China and still terribly unpopular in Africa)... ;)

This traffic comes from various sources, breaking down (roughly) as follows -

- 57.47% comes from search engines like Google and Yahoo (people type in their query and my content is ranked high-up and relevant to it, thus tempting folks to click), 33.74% comes from sites who directly link to my articles (like other sites/blog pals, forums and the occasional newspaper like the Guardian, Die Zeit and the Telegraph, who seem to like linking to my content from time to time) and all the rest (8.80%) is people putting "http://finkangel.blogspot.com" into their browser address bars (which I never do, preferring to vanity-search myself, but some people obviously do, or have me saved as a favorite)...thanks to those welcome few!

Posting-wise, I've written a total of 1243 posts over the last 3 years (some good, some bad), or an average of 1.1 per day (so I have slowed down *quite* a bit, as last year it was roughly 2.6 per day), but I actually think one post per day is a pretty good rate to try and maintain (considering some bloggers I could mention don't even manage one post a month)...heh... ;)

Popularity-wise, of all my writing, it's my technical procedures that get the most sustained hits - how to un-DRM AA files and turn them into proper MP3 files, what I tried to do when my xbox 360 broke and how to get the N64 emulator going on the PSP (that sort of thing)...under that it's my exhaustive reviews and clear step-by-step recipes...so I know what I have to do if I want even more traffic (not that's in *any* way the point of this exercise, but) - it's obviously to write easy-to-follow procedures (with lots of pictures) and review places (with lots of pictures), and clearly not taking funny pictures of cats or moaning about the commute (these make big spikes, but not sustained traffic steams)...so whatever...I'll probably just carry on writing whatever I feel at the time rather than foolishly trying to forge a career out of it... ;)

Okay, so that's the blog (if you are still here, frankly I'm amazed you're still with me (yawn)!), onto it's partner in crime - my Flickr stream - at this time last year I had posted 2920 pictures (viewed 83,576 times, or about 30 times each), this year, the stream has grown considerably to 4933 pictures, viewed (between them) a staggering 427,404 times (not including me!) or about 87 times each...! On average (at the moment) 435 different pictures are viewed each and every day...Although obviously some pictures get more attention than others...still, it's great to be part of such a great community, and I know my photography has really been helped out by being aired (both good and bad) in such an honest, transparent "Web 2.0" environment...thanks Flickr for all the feedback, both statistical and commented...! ;)

Oh, and through all of this, I got a nice little "cherry on top" a little while ago - a cheque for just over £50 from Mr Google for hosting his little adverts with my content (so they must occasionally be relevant, or no-one would have clicked them) this I have handed over to be put into the wedding budget, as it's meaningless money for nothing - I would be shooting and blogging regardless...

So here's to another happy year filled with self-improvement and equally amazing experiences ahead, and let's hope I can maintain my enthusiasm and just occasionally have something to say that other people might find interesting!

Just for reference -

What I wrote when this blog was one year old...

What I wrote when this blog was two years old...