… why I have been trolling so shamelessly for new followers. HA!!! That was a trick question. Because it wasn’t even a question, it was a statement. And because you all know I don’t posses an ounce of shame in my entire body. And mostly because you all know that I am a stats-monkey. I live by my stats.
Oh, I know you all think that is terribly shallow of me. This means one of two things. Either you have more hits and followers than me, so you don’t have to worry about stats anymore. Or else you haven’t figured out what blogging is all about yet.
Stats are how we get validation. Stats are how strangers tell us they like what we do, and then become friends as time goes on. Stats are the difference between doing a blog and just typing a diary.
We are all here doing whatever it is we do so that somebody will notice us doing it and stick around to see what we are going to do next. If you don’t care if anybody reads your stuff, why do you have a blog? You could just be talking out loud to yourself like a normal crazy person.
And we all have a lot of competition. There are a lot of blogs out there, all clamoring for an audience. We all try to get noticed like groupies trying to get picked to go back stage with our favorite band. Hey, I might be shameless, but at least I am not resorting to flashing my boobs at you… (Okay, there was that one post with the picture of me in the red shirt where I claim to have invented the wardrobe malfunction way back in the day, but other than that)…
So where am I going with all this?
I will tell you where.
I am having a race… a stats race…
As of this moment, I have 927 followers. I also have 48,442 hits. I want to see which I will get to first: 1,000 followers or 50,000 hits.
The beauty of this race is that I don’t really care which one wins. It works out well for me either way.
So go on… click the follow button… or open a few old posts. Pick a side you want to see win and do your part. In fact, I would even suggest you start a betting pool with your friends, but gambling is illegal, and I am trying to stay out of trouble… for a while.
Pouring My Art Out 
I have 327 followers but 75000 hits, go figure.
I rarely check them, most followers no longer exist or are not real people. It doesn’t matter if you have 3000 followers or 300, the real measure are the real ones liking and commenting. Most people are passing through, it’s the ones who stick around that matter. So you have plenty of those, I have about 10, but those 10 are worth more than 317 other randoms
I know all that. The real truth is that I read somewhere that a blog with big numbers is an actual selling point when you send stuff to publishers. And it just sort of makes me feel like I am doing something real. I love me real friends here. I wouldn’t trade them for a big number. I just want both.
So I have a plan that I will execute throughout the night…please let me know when you need your thousandth follower…I’d be honoured…
You can’t really follow more than once can you?
Bless you…I’m not following you!
oh… I am crushed… but I guess the fact that you show up means even more somehow… I will have to figure that out.
I officially follow people who post rarely, so I know when they’ve posted something…I always know there’s something to read here.
Good answer.
It’s true and everything!
Well why wouldn’t it be?
……if you build it, it will come…?
eeewww…
Without people such as yourself; there would be no colour in the world!
It’s the tie dye shirts I wear.
New blogger here. What are stats? Please explain.
Stats are on the tab next to reader when you open the page to see the posts from the blogs you follow. If you can’t find it, reply and I’ll help you out.
Yeah… listen to her… unless you are a computer moron like me… then my descriptions might be better.
Stats tell you how many visitors you’ve had and what they’ve looked at on your blog.
Now could you please write a poem about them?
I think he’s already written a poem about them a few posts back.
I don’t even remember that. But by all means, go ahead. Grab all the glory. Be the poetic helpful tech support guru and friend of the downtrodden. I can sit here and twiddle my thumbs… maybe.
Wait, you cannot retract comments like an invitation, once they’re out there it’s forever like a tattoo.
I never take anything back… that is the secret to my lack of success.
Yeah, you wrote a poem about being Freshly Pressed and it mentioned something about stats or maybe it didn’t.
Oh… the WordPress ode… I think that might have had something about stats.
and you thought I just skimmed!
I was going to say it was all a test of your loyalty, but that was never in any doubt.
Ahhhh, just remember the henchmen may be busy with Inquisitions and now Espionage but things could get radical at a moment’s notice.
When the headsman is busy, the mice will play… or something like that…
I’m going to post about Sex and Espionage, ha!
You can’t go wrong with that. Or you could do a James Bond screenplay.
I was going to post about sex exclusively but with the Snowdeal development I must incorporate the two, an intermingling of the two… .
sexpionage… as I said
then I said something. If I can’t use the title maybe it should be the name of a band.
I will pass that one on.
sexpionage
Great title but it’s not going to work with the content which may have to be two posts. I hate when that happens.
Do what I do do… just put part one and part two at the end.
Why does she get to write a poem and not me? Once again I have lost all control over my own destiny.
Destiny is overrated, but if you must be artistic you can record yourself doing an interpretive dance.
Even though I write songs and play them, I do not have the dancing gene… okay, at Grateful Dead concerts under the proper… circumstances I did… but for the most part, no. And interpretive dance is to dancing is what a Big Mac is to fine dining… or so I have always believed.
But it would be funny, and that’s what counts.
I will do a lot of things on my blog… I have no shame… but I wont go out of my way to humiliate myself… it has to happen naturally.
Thank you, Dr. Science!
That’s Queen Science to you!
Sorry… should I cut off my own head, or will the Royal headsman be too put out?
We’d rather no expend the Royal Energies with beheadings when there are Inquisitions to conduct.
Hmmmm, Snowden will be charged with espionage. I was thinking he might get a commendation.
Your beneficence knows no earthly bounds, your Highness!
Okay… if you have a blog in WordPress… look at the black bar across the top of the screen. You will see a button that has little lines on it that look like measurement lines on a ruler. Click on that button. It will take you to the stats page of your dashboard. Stats are just statistics. It shows how many people visited your blog today, and since you started. There is like a bar graph thing that is fun to watch.
There is also a map of the world that each country will change color on, depending how many views or hits you get from that country. It is like playing risk… try to conquer the whole world. Check it out, then let me know if you have more questions.
Um, yeah. Are these stats organized according to a linear regression model?
uhhhh… sure… yeah… maybe… okay… maybe elroy should help you… sigh…
It’s a simple little bar graph, not covered in the Introduction to Statistics.
There is an introduction???
Yeah, if you’re going to take college level statistics which I did not. But I did suffer along with my sister when she did and so remember a tiny bit about linear regression, a very depressing part of statistics that, as I recall, suggests if you get an A on the mid-term you will likely get less than that on the final.
So statistics predicts its own uselessness… that is sort of cool.
I can try to get people to stop following you, but I can’t figure out how to uncomment.
I think you can go right to the dashboard as fast as you can and click “my comments” then delete-delete-delete until there is nothing left, not even a phtff or a fizzle.
Why would you do that?
Ohhhh, I wouldn’t do that but it can be done. If you say something you wish you hadn’t I think you can delete it. Maybe you can’t but I think you can.
Maybe you can and I really can’t. HA!
Do you have something called Omnisearch in your dashboard? I’m trying the new dashboard and I noticed they’ve added a new function called Omnisearch but it doesn’t actually do anything yet.
Oh lord… more changes… and I can’t start a new revolution until they stop watching me with the big flaming eye.
That would delete my comments. Not PMAO’s.
Yes, we discovered that; bummer, back to the drawing board.
I know how we could … if he’d just do some more spam posts…lol
hahahahahahahahaha! It’s all over WP. He’s a fugitive.
And to think, my legitimate comments used to be counted as spam for about 4 months.
Yes, I think I remember that time. Comments would end up in spam for no apparent reason then they’d have to be rescued by a search party.
Yeah. It’s almost as though PMAO was rubbing it in by making spam comments that went through. sigh
He’s that way, you know, prone to just lording it over and rubbing it in.
He loves rubbing and lording.
I’ve heard that about him. It’s an unhealthy preoccupation and has been known to stunt growth AND cause blindness.
Don’t look at my hairy knuckles…
Now I’m gonna have to look.
sigh
Oh please.
ha
Just imagine how tall he would have been if he didn’t have that obsession.
hahahahahahahaha!
oh stop
Mr. Hotspur is funny.
He really is. He’s my hero. I have written more good posts about him than anybody else.
Oh yeah, you’re a Hotspur groupie.
We all should be.
He’s funny and he used to have a very inspiring couch.
His pictures change all the time.
I am the destroyer of wives’ tales!
You’re doing it wrong.
I do everything wrong. That’s what makes me special.
All the way around to right again.
Am I really that clever???
Yes, because look at all the comments on your post, versus mine.
I have my good days, but mostly that is because people seem to gather here to talk to each other. It wouldn’t matter if I am here or not.
That used to happen on my blog. Now, it doesn’t happen on my blog. People are like ‘yeah, don’t have time for him.’ I’m whining.
The truth is that you are too smart for most of us, and you don’t try to hide it. I don’t ever have that problem… sigh…
How am I too smart? If I was actually smart, maybe I’d write some shit people actually want to read?
Your whole blog screams ‘I don’t give a crap what you think.’ You are eclectic. You tend towards sarcasm and world-weariness. I love the randomness in general… from pictures of clouds to romantic Mondays. But the poems or stories where you do random in one small post are just incredible.
I think maybe we are in a cycle. I notice that most of the people who seemed fascinated by me in the early days are just hitting the like button now. Most of those people are people you know… I met them on your blog. Some of them read all my early stuff and used to show up to do the funny comment thing. You have been doing that to me too, but once again, for whatever reason, I have to tease you about it now and then, because I really do think you are sort of awesome.
I just farted. No seriously, it takes a big man to admit he farted, and I drove a tank in WWII. A fish tank.
dude… you are so weird.
That’s what I’ve heard from the NSA
We should do a joke to mess with them.
No, we shouldn’t. Because if WP no like it, I’d hate to think what NSA would do bomb al qaeda terrorist.
You are playing with fire…
Great balls of fire.
Don’t play with your great fiery balls while we are talking… it makes me nervous.
I didn’t mean we should meet in a black site secret holding facility.
At Area 51 or Hangar 18.
Ha. I was going to make an area 51 joke.
Holy smokes… 344 views today, and the day just changed a while ago… what the heck is going on. See? People are crazy. I do stuff I think is awesome, and I get 30 or 40 hits, but I fart around and it goes nuts.
See? i barely broke 200.
That is way better than my average day. This is like my third or fourth best day ever. It might even be because Hastywords reblogged one of those cute picture posts I di of her kid.
I had one 900 view day, surrounded by tons of sub-200 days and a few sub-300 days. months of them
I had that one day with 1,275 hits. I still don’t know what I did.
sorry, 1,175…
My busiest day was 3200, I think. That was in December 2011. Being FreshlyPressed didn’t break that record.
See, you are in a pretty good place if you ask me. I still have weeks where I average in the 40’s and 50’s. Then sometimes I run in the high 100’s for a week. It would be nice to figure out what works, but I am not chasing stats that hard. I just like watching the numbers slowly go up. When you start a blog, you imagine how cool it would be to get 1,000 hits some day, or to have 50 followers. We need to keep a little of that magic with us.
I think it is the Hastykid reblog, because that is now on my top posts and pages thing in the sidebar. It wasn’t before. Hastywords must have some following.
She has her Twitter and FB followers included. Her Twitter is like over 2050. So I’m not sure. She gets a lot of likes, but I don’t think that translates to views.
How do you get that many Twitter followers? I have 82…
i got 600-ish, so… just keep at it, I guess.
I just sort of fart around. But I got some celebs to tweet me, so I got that going for me.
True
I am just destined to say relatively obscure, feeding off the leavings of my betters.
See? People are betting on you
I fell like a race horse.
In what way
Oh… I meant feel… feel like a horse… because people are betting on me.
Oh. You’re a wild horse
Ot a wild ass at least.
Admit it… I am making you feel better about yourself, aren’t I?
Well, all these convos are taking place on your blog, not mine.
It’s nice to have you back. I admit that I did, for a while, just hit the like button on you, because it felt like you were doing that to me. I was making a point. My feelings were hurt. That is how immature I am am. You deserve better.
You can’t comment on everyone
I always did. Every single one. I keep the people I follow to a minimum just for that reason.
Ah, I see. You only follow people who comment a lot
You are so cynical. No, I meant that I only follow people who I think are worth reading, and you in particular, rarely write anything that I don’t find worth commenting on. And I do it to show that I am not just clicking the like buttons to get through my reading chore for the day.
But I don’t have a full time job, so…
Nice
Well, not so nice, but it does give me more time.
I think we would get along if we ever meet in the real world.
We probably would. We should meet sometime!
That would be cool.
Oh lord, therein lies the rub
I am good at rubbing… wait…
be vewy, vewy, careful this is a G rated blog or it was until you got banned for misbehaving.
Even my bad wasn’t all that bad.
It wasn’t even a bad. Bad would be if the CIA showed up at my door asking questions about you, then suddenly I was on a one way flight to a cell room somewhere hot and dirty with no shower or fresh water. When they get here, I’m going to pretend I’m not home and crawl around the perimeter of the rooms in my house on my hands and knees below the windows until they get discouraged and go away.
Remember from the… other place… that story… that happened to me…
I am just that slippery.
You’re a rubber, not a something something this is a mad lib comment
I am still trying to to get used to women’s lib.
The good old days.
Back when freedom was FREE.
Oh we paid for it one way or the other.
We were bartering, it was an even trade.
I say if people die for something, that is a pretty steep price.
Well if you’re going to be all literal on me…
sorry
You are just that meaty.
Thank you for noticing.
It worries me that I did… sigh…
once again… sssshhhh
Well you are…
I know, but…
You have a very dark side to you, Ed.
Yeah – the inside.
Ha.
It’s where the sun don’t shine
You can make it shine there, but it takes a little effort.
And a knife
That too.
sssshhhh… Hey, you know what’s funny? Ever since I put that sidebar thing about my top posts up, I have been tickled that my post about the feety jammies was always up there with the unicorn vomit post. But it got bumped off today for some reason.
I love the feety jammie post.
Me too.
Don’t you dare teach him how to delete my comments. I have a race going on, dang it!
It would still be a race. The followers would win.
Don’t be skewing my results thusly, Man!
Everyone! Don’t comment! Just Like! Then we can all skew his results! Skew them!
Skew you… HA!!!
Skew you and the horse you wrote in on.
HA!!!!!
I would rather that you alter the odds in a more upwardly mobile direction.
Down is up. Black is white.
Now you just sound like a Jefferson Airplane song.
No, that’s Blood, Sweat and Tears. I think.
I guess.
The ink is black, the page is white…\
Wait, no, it’s Three Dog Night
There you go.
I think you’re the only person who still cares about blog stats. I just care about how pretty my followers are.
(I’m setting you up pretty good for a good comeback here. Take your time!)
No… it’s just nice to know that you think I’m pretty… that is what you meant, right?