I’ve decided to start giving a damn again
I’ve never been one to mark the anniversary of this blog. I started it in January 2010 on the spur of the moment, and generally maintained that attitude of "hey, now that’s a cool idea – let’s do it". This tended to get in the way planning things like anniversary celebrations (and back when I attended CES in the first week of January every year I didn’t really have the energy for a celebration, anyway).
But as I sit here today, it is two months and eight days until this blog’s ninth anniversary, and I have decided I am going to do something different.
This time around I am going to celebrate the anniversary of the blog, and also its relaunch.
To put it another way, I have started to give a damn about the blog again.
I don’t know if you noticed, but for the past year and a half or so I have regarded this blog as a failed project. I looked at the falling weekly traffic reports, and counted the ever-declining number of comments, and grew depressed about the inevitability of site traffic eventually dwindling away to nothing. This belief came to be reflected in the care (or rather, the lack of care) I was putting into things like proofing blog posts. (After all, why bother investing in something that is going to die anyway?)
The reason I bring that up is that I don’t believe that any more.
One of the things I did this past week was to try to quantify what exactly is a good conversion rate for a site’s mailing list when compared to page views. I still don’t have an answer to that, but looking at my monthly traffic stats made me realize that this blog still has a lot of traffic compared to a lot of sites.
I now see this blog as being the metaphorical glass half-full rather than half-empty. (As I said, I have started to give a damn about the blog again.)
So, the anniversary.
I’m going to spend the next couple months thinking about what should be done with this blog. I’m also going to be thinking of how I can thank readers, commenters, and contributors, including those who have been here since the beginning and those who read the blog now.
My current plan is to give away Kindle Fire tablets in contests. (Or is that too generic, do you think?)
For example, I’ll hold a raffle which you can enter by telling me the original name of the blog. I’ll also give away a Kindle Fire tablet to the longest running active commenter (or maybe not; I don’t think my very first commenter – who I hope is still following the blog – would want a Kindle Fire).
Those contests are just ideas at this point; I’m still in the throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks phase. But I am looking at having several contests, and thus several prizes (where several is defined as being between three and seven).
Oh, I know that I will have at least one contest that you can enter by making suggestions about what I should cover on the blog. I have always valued feedback and input but I don’t know that I have really made it clear, so I hope this contest will show that I am putting my money where my mouth is.
Anyway, this was me running my keyboard off.
What do you think?
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