I've always felt that before going through the effort of thinking up resolutions for the new year, its a good idea to take a look at the ones you made last year. For one thing, realizing how badly you did on last year's will keep you from reaching too high this time.

This is I what I wrote one year ago today:

My resolutions for Hold the Mayo in 2004: Obviously better proofing, and updating the link list. I also resolve to check the site meter less often. I resolve to not put my picture on the site. Ever.

The proof reading has gotten a little better. The system level spell check in OS X works pretty well. I try to always read everything in preview mode before I post. I rush it sometimes though. I've gotten better about adding people to the lists of links, although there are a few in my bookmarks that I haven't actually linked yet.

The site meter resolution went the way of most diet and exercise resolutions. Which is to say it was a complete and utter failure.

I went the whole year without putting my picture up. This is an important one, so I am going to repeat it again for 2005.

Not too bad. Out of four resolutions I made progress on two. Achieved one and failed on one.

For 2005, in addition to the no pictures of me ever resolution, I'm going to do the site meter thing again - with a twist.

My resolution is that before the year is out my daily average visits will equal or exceed my body weight. Since my average today is 33 this means I am either going to have to either become the most shameless link whore in the blogosphere, or give up eating altogether. Actually, I'm hoping for something of middle ground solution because I'm quite fond of eating and not terribly fond of begging. I figure if I am going to obsess about the numbers I might as well get some benefit from it.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 01:37 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment

1 Well, I visit every day anyway!

I stopped paying attention to sitemeter and the Ecosystem over a year ago. I'll never have enough free time to make and keep my blog a must-read. Instead, I just write what I want when I want, and read a lot more than I write.

My stats are about the same as yours -- usually between 28-37 hits a day average according to the weekly email from sitemeter. The difference, I notice, is that you get fewer comments.

I love your posts. They're well-thought through and informative. But they also tend to be complete, 'fya know what I mean. They're the kinds of posts that would inspire a "Yep", "Indeed" or "You can say THAT again" reaction that most readers don't bother to post in the comments.

One big way to increase your traffic is to inspire repeat visits. Posting more than once a day will help, but inspiring comments will help even more. When someone leaves an interesting comment, they'll often check back to see if there's a reaction. If a thread starts a real debate or conversation, people will be checking back every few minutes!

Maybe just tailoring your posts to invite comments (by, say, asking a question or deliberately saying something debatable) can help ya reach your target weight sitemeter stats.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at December 30, 2004 06:52 PM (Mrq2h)

2 I've done 5 posts today! I'm not sure I could equal that on a regular basis, I lose so many blogging hours a day working for a living.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at December 30, 2004 07:03 PM (U3CvV)

3 Work really does cut into one's blogging time, doesn't it?

Posted by: Susie at January 01, 2005 07:46 AM (0kSYT)

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