A Good Year for mjm wired

As almost none of you can recall, I started this site in early 2003, and I remember counting visitors 1 by 1. There were so few I knew them all by IP (yes, I hate to admit that). Anyways, I eventually started with my Guides and Resources (which was one of my intents from the beginning). I got a little bit of traffic from that, maybe 50 hits or so a day, during mid to late 2003. I remember being so excited when I surpasses 100 hits in a day. I remember gloating to my brother each time I had a big number. Man, how lame.

So come December 2003, I wrote a linux guide for Fedora Core 1 and somehow open source guru Eric S. Raymond found it useful enough to recommend to others. And BAM!! Crank it up a notch. My daily traffic soared to almost 400 a day by the end of December 2003. (Thanks Eric). So I kept on it and wrote some more guides and in May 2004, I saw my usual of almost 1,000/day double. And it kept growing, enough to bother me that each time my host went down, a few hundred people would not get through. So I jumped hosts at the end of summer. I guess it was worth the money, because starting august I was watching an average 2,000/day increase per month. Yeah, so I was getting an average of 8,000 hits per day when december ended! I even crossed 10,000 once last month.

So what's the downside? Well it sucks up a lot of my time. I also get countless requests for help. I mean some are worth it. I had an Iraqi email me from Baghdad thanking me for the useful info. And lots of others from all over the world doing the same. But I still have to deal with rude people who think that I'm offering complex support for free or students or IT workers who want me to do part of their job for them. Aahh, well, it comes with the territory. I guess I shouldn't ignore the generous cash and other gifts people have sent.

So even though I only get 1 reader of my blog for every 200 or so who read my guides, I'm still content. Who are all you people? :) I don't care, but I'm so very glad all of you out there are finding my work useful. I know my numbers might seem insignificant to some people, but I only see it as affirmation that I'm doing something productive and helpful.

Posted in: Website,

2 Comments:

• Mike on January 5, 2005 ~ 09:21 PM

  1. dey say iz human nature ta want ta be acknowledged (“getting attention”). i disagree. i think iz a learned trait.
     
     2. u should kno i read ur blog. iz like cyber-voyeurism, iz seductive. like da Dark Side, xcept no Darth Vader…

• Mauriat Miranda on January 9, 2005 ~ 04:16 PM

  You’re right. Obviously I do wish to be acknowledged. It helps the ego. I don’t think too much of it. … Oh yeah, I know you read it, in fact, knowing your regular audience does influence you. … If reading blogs is akin to cyber-voyeurism, then your blog is like cyber-exhibitionism! j/k :)