The last 48 hours have been fairly instructive for me as a blogger. Since WordPress linked to my post about DIY home renovation angst on their “Freshly Pressed” featured blogs page, I’ve received more web traffic in two days than I’ll probably ever get on this blog again. The number of comments I got on that post — 46 so far — is about half the total number I’d ever received before WordPress so generously started funneling pageviews into this, my lowly purchase on the blogosphere.
It’s cool to get a taste of what life would be like if I were a real blogger — someone who posted regularly on topics interesting enough to draw thousands of pageviews per day. As it is, I update this blog about four times a year, and my visitors are usually limited to friends, family and a handful of people I know through social media. I generally try to keep things pretty innocuous here, which doesn’t always make for interesting reading. But I’ve learned the hard way that drawing too much attention to oneself can be perilous, especially when one works in a career field that can be politically sensitive.
To those who have visited in the last couple of days — even just to spam my comment thread — I thank you for stopping by. I was trying to think of a way to parlay this temporary flood of attention into something useful, but so far I’ve got nothing. I’m sure I’ll think of something right after WordPress takes down the link.
One of the fun things about blogging. You never know what might hit and when and for what reason. It’s disconcerting though, when stuff like a funny screenshot on a tumblelog will get picked up by StumbleUpon or Digg and skyrocket tens of thousands of pageviews and then the most insightful and difficult-to-write stuff doesn’t get attention.
It’s funny, too, on the Heavy Table, for example, when some of our best work profiling a farm, a family, a chef, or a purveyor only gets a few inbound links and then everyone goes bananatown over a flowchart about beer.
Either way, keep it up.
It’s a rush to get that much traffic, isn’t it? I’m glad your blog was highlighted. I don’t often follow any of those links. I have all I can do to write regularly myself and keep up with the list of blogs I already follow. But the title of your blog intrigued me, as I am a St. Paulite (sort of… born and raised… now living in a suburb… and I work downtown.)
I’ve added you to my reader and will stop by whenever you feel compelled to post!