The saddest bar graph of the year
November 18th, 2007 -- by Augie De Blieck Jr.
This is alarming:

That’s the number of visitors this site has seen between January and October 2007. See a trend there? Where did everyone go? We had the usual American Idol spike in the spring, but it’s been straight downhill since.
I’m starting to hear crickets in here.
Was it something I said?
And now I’ve fallen into the trap of the “unloved” blogger screaming desperately for attention. Nevermind me.

November 18th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Possibly an upturn in the use of RSS, which doesn’t show up on site stats.
November 18th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
If that’s true, then my frequent visits don’t show up either…I always use NetNewsWire and only rarely bother with a web browser.
November 18th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
You might not be far off on that, Elayne. It doesn’t quite exactly even out the numbers, but it does explain a chunk of it. I’ll just go along with that, then. Thanks!
November 19th, 2007 at 3:55 am
All the single ladies stopped visiting when Augie got hitched? ;)
November 19th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I’m still here Augie! Pretty much every day!
November 19th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Thanks, Josh. Please clone yourself and invite all your friends.
ShyGuy - They say marriage will be the death of your blog. . . ::sigh::
November 20th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I stopped visiting as often when the ads started distracting me from the content.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:15 am
Seriously? Which ones?
November 21st, 2007 at 7:53 am
The Google Ads, mostly. A good example is the ad that is at the start of the Mr. Whipple post. It’s not that the content isn’t good, but when ads move from the side bar and into the actual posts, it gets frustrating, as a reader.
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:31 am
I know that I am not visiting as much and this reduces the chance that I will forward a link of your blog to someone. The warm weather and the fact that I started working out this year as affected the amount of time that I spend online.
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Lennon - So I need to start up a podcast to talk about the VandS stories of the day for you to listen to while you work out!
David - You know what the funny thing is anymore? If you don’t throw in tons of gratuitous ads, people don’t think you’re a serious blogger. I’m not a huge fan of in-blog ads, but (a) there’s enough statistical proof that they work that I can’t just ignore it and (b) I made sure to put it far enough down that anyone who came to the blog on a daily basis would rarely see it. I think I’ll push it another story or two down for now, to see if it makes any difference.
Thanks for your input!