Category Archives: Blog

Where Does Your Traffic Come From?

The other day when I thanked my top eleven referrers, Becky asked, “How does one determine who one’s top 11 (or 10 or even 2) referrers are?

I mainly use MyBlogLog, a free service which shows you a list of your top ten referrers every day. They have a paid option which offers up-to-the-minute stats, but I just have the freebie service, which updates once daily and offers me a week’s worth of stats at a time.

It also gives—and this is really the point of their service—stats for which of your outgoing links people are clicking on the most. For example, I can see that only nine of you clicked on the Rilke link last Poetry Friday to read the whole poem. Overall traffic was slower than usual that day, so maybe all my poetry readers are on vacation?

I also find it interesting that on an average day, Lilting House is still only getting about two thirds the traffic of Bonny Glen. Which means a whole bunch of you haven’t heard our big news yet. You’ve missed a lot of Wonderboy excitement too!

Thanks for the Traffic

Darren Rowse of Problogger has a very good point.

“My Mum always taught me to say thank you,” he says, “so I thought it was time I did by thanking some of the sites that have sent me traffic.” And he invites the rest of us to follow suit. “Perhaps we should make this a semi regular event of acknowledging the places that keep our blogs going by providing readers.

Darren is right. Without readers, we bloggers are talking to ourselves. I do appreciate the traffic y’all send my way. Really, one of my favorite things about blogs and blogging is the sharing. Look! I found this fantastic book/website/quote/article! Check it out! What do you think?

There’s a reason Show and Tell was everyone’s favorite thing about kindergarten. It’s as much fun to watch and listen as it is to show and tell. So: here’s my great big thanks to all of you out there who are showing and telling such interesting, inspiring, and thought-provoking things; and thanks to the folks who have linked here when it’s my turn to Show and Tell.

Here’s a special shout-out to my top twelve referrers from recent months:

Karen Edmisten
Farm School
The Llamabutchers
Danielle Bean
Chicken Spaghetti
Big A little a
A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
Spunky Homeschool
Real Learning
The Common Room
Jen Robinson’s Books Page
Suitable for Mixed Company

I also get a lot of traffic from the folks on the Real Learning Webring, especially Bruggie Tales, Castle of the Immaculate, Cajun Cottage, By Sun and Candlelight, and, of course, my virtual home away from home, Cottage Blessings. Thanks, all of you!

Feedburner Issues

Apologies to my Bloglines subscribers for all the previously published posts that keep showing up in your accounts. Sounds like a lot of us are having the same problem. Seems to be a Feedburner problem. I hope it’s resolved soon. Argh.