For What It' Worth
Today is the fourth anniversary of this blog.
I'm always envious of bloggers like the Powerguys and Ed, who started off on a mission from posting number one; they can tell you exactly the day and time they had their millionth visitor, or in the Powerguys' case their ten millionth. I do the math in my head; I've been getting 50-60 thousand visitors a month for almost two years now - I must be somewhere over a million, right?
Who knows. Fun as it would be to know that, that's not why this blog started.
"Shot In The Dark" started as one of those sudden impulses that are often years in the making. I got my first taste of being an (underpaid) pundit at KSTP-AM, on my old overnight talk show in the late eighties. After that, I didn't get to do a lot of punditry - marriage and babies sort of took care of that for me for a couple of years - but in the mid-nineties, as I found the Internet, I got involved in a couple of political email discussion groups. For a while there, I contributed a lot. There were always rules, of course - and moderators who were driven more by their agenda than by desire for a conversation - so I quit. And yet that inner screedmongering unbidden pundit still needed an outlet of some kind...
About that time, I read a piece in Time Magazine referring to "Blogs"; it referred to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, and gave the address for Blogger.com. That night, after the kids were asleep, I opened the blog for business. I was fully ready to write to an audience of one for as long as it lasted.
I remember watching my traffic meter in those first several months - thrilling when someone else would read it, maybe 2-3 times a day! As we rolled up to the '02 elections, I was up to maybe 10-20 visitors a day - until, inexplicably, Instapundit linked to these two "lutefisks" of Garrison Keillor, and this bit of lefty hatemongering over the course of a couple of weeks. Three straight 10,000 hit days...
...that raised my traffic from 20 a day into the 2-300 range.
My audience - like the blogosphere itself - has grown another order of magnitude since then. I put a lot of time into this blog - I get up most mornings at 5AM and write until 6-ish, most days. But I get a lot more back; it's given me, through a thoroughly improbably chain of events, a re-entree into my life's first love, talk radio; it's brought me the first social life I've had since the late eighties; it's gotten me in touch with long-lost friends; it's much more than an outlet for my internal screedmonger.
So while acknowledging that I'd still be writing this blog if my audience were still just me and the odd random passerby, I'd like to thank you all for joining me here; the 20 of you that go waaaaay back to the beginning, the 200 of you who stopped by every day this time three years ago, and the 3,000 of you who read this site every day today - all of you. Thanks.
Posted by Mitch at
February 5, 2006 02:29 PM
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Congrats, sir! It can be a lonely thing, writing words on the screen and not knowing who, if anyone, is on the other end of the network connection reading it. I admire your stick-to-itiveness!
Posted by: Jeff at February 5, 2006 02:41 PMHappy birthday!
Posted by: red at February 5, 2006 02:55 PMCongrats, pardner. Glad to have watched most of the ride.
Posted by: kb at February 5, 2006 04:40 PMCongratulations, Mitch! Best wishes for many more successful years of blogging and Northern Alliance radio!
Posted by: Kevin at February 5, 2006 06:00 PMYou've been a blogging inspiration, Mitch, and it's always a pleasure to hear the rantings, er, the wisdom of a similarly rightward thinker.
Posted by: Rambix at February 5, 2006 08:06 PMCongrats. Keep reading and listening to things that make your blood boil. Very easy to do in "the State where nothing is allowed." I think that's when you produce your best stuff, usually. I'm watching the Super Bowl out of my other eye. Touchdown! Steelers (21-10 with the extra point).
Posted by: RBMN at February 5, 2006 08:29 PMWelcome to the arena.
Posted by: Eracus at February 6, 2006 12:15 AMCongratulations! I like your insight on a variety of topics, and now I can admire your diligence and productivity as well!
Posted by: Night Writer at February 6, 2006 10:42 AMI am going to see if Jay Benanov can get a bill passed to ban ANY POSTING ABOUT "TRAFFIC"! or "HITS".
It is absolutely the most annoying thing about blogs. "Oh, my numbers are way up!"
No one cares.
Please, if you have your own blog, do us a favor and never, ever write about your numbers. Please.
This entire post was a way for Mitch to tell the world he gets 3,000 visitors a day.
And no, before you even say it, I don't know anything about Fraters numbers at all--the Elder keeps all that information.
Posted by: JB Doubtless at February 6, 2006 12:23 PM"No one cares."
Then read something else.
"Please, if you have your own blog, do us a favor and never, ever write about your numbers. Please."
I have a better idea, JB: Get your own blog, and write about anything you want. This is *my* blog.
You seem to think you have some ownership stake in this, a blog you've never had a thing to do with. It supports my emergent belief that you're a closet collective socialist.
"This entire post was a way for Mitch to tell the world he gets 3,000 visitors a day."
In related news, I am reportedly twice as well-endowed as JB Doubtless, too...
"And no, before you even say it, I don't know anything about Fraters numbers at all--the Elder keeps all that information."
It's the little "Sitemeter" link on your left margin.
To paraphrase JB: Who cares about your blog's internal politics! That whole paragraph was just an excuse to say that Elder dominates you.
Tell it to the hand.
Posted by: mitch at February 6, 2006 01:27 PMNice defense Mitch.
It all boiled down to "I know you are but what am I"
Every criticism I leveled you tried to put the same thing back on me.
Lame.
Next time I write a post obstensibly "Thanking" my "Audience" as a way of bragging about hits you can pull out the arguments I used on you.
Posted by: JB Doubtless at February 6, 2006 02:00 PMWhat?
Jeez, JB, I thought you were joking. You were *serious?*
Oh, maaaaaan.
OK. A serious answer: You are wrong. There is no bragging; merely a humble acknowledgement that my audience apparently likes *something* they read here. Through whatever means - word of mouth? - the blog has grown. Don't like the fact that I acknowledge or mention it? Who cares! It's my blog!
And I didn't "turn anything" at you; merely said "nobody asked your opinion". There's a difference.
Posted by: mitch at February 6, 2006 02:16 PMJB Dickhead: "This entire post was a way for Mitch to tell the world he gets 3,000 visitors a day."
CJ: His traffic is visible on his sitemeter link.
Are you "PB" under a penname? Go back to whatever Democrap fever swamp spawned you.
Posted by: CJ Steinman at February 6, 2006 04:31 PMJB! Mitch! We're all on the same side. We must spend our energy crushing liberals.
Posted by: Rambix at February 6, 2006 07:59 PMLinks to the Keillor "lutefisking" don't seem to work...they go to W3.com, a site about computer science in general. Would LOVE to read the Keillor lutefisking.
Posted by: Doug In Colorado at February 7, 2006 12:20 PM