100 Posts: Time for some introspection

Posted by: Steve on: January 16, 2009

• In: metablog
• 2 Comments

Before you continue reading my post, I just wanted to say that I delayed the scheduling of this post as long as possible because I have a difficult decision to make at the end of the entry.

When I started this blog, 100 posts ago, it was originally based on my little notebook for discovering what music to pick up.  As I wrote, I eventually discovered that I felt like writing more than just about music, but media as well.  Hence, “Steve’s Media Blog”.

I’ve made an effort to keep music an important part to this blog, mostly by keeping a music-central theme and posting free music every Friday.  I think I’ve done a good job with that, with only mid-December as being a bit of an off-period (because of a vacation).

I just wanted to point out some statistics before I get to my difficult decision.  Here are my top 5 all-time posts to date, based on amount of views:

• Friday Morning Free Music: American Eagle – 772 views
• More Free Music and Dr. Pepper Fallout – 514 views
• Diamonds from Tequila?  Who Knew?? – 322 views
• Free Stickers! – 232 views
• Friday Morning Free Music #3: Oprah’s Christmas Mix – 36 views

The first four out-perform every article here, mostly because of image search results (and a link from Google’s blog for the Free Stickers).  Generally I assume that numbers like 36 views paint a more realistic picture of regular visitors to my blog.

However, I’ve seen my blog rise steadily in average viewers since the start, and to date I’ve had 4,009 viewers.  Not too shabby, if I may say so!

Now on to my decision.  I’ve looked at my recent posts, and compared them to the various blogs that I follow.  My posts recently have essentially been link posts with no real substance.  Which is fine, but I’m trying to pass this blog off as something I actually write in.   I do that when I have a review, but lately I haven’t had much time to listen to the music that I want to review.

So the way I see it, I have a few options:

1. Keep writing in this blog, but veer away from link posts – or write more of an opinion around them.
2. Stop writing in the blog.  Leave it at 100 posts, and move on to something else.
3. Keep the blog as is, while starting a new project separate from this.

Right now I’m really leaning towards #2.  But when I consider the amount of work I’ve put into this blog in getting people to at the very least read it, it saddens me to think that I’ve wasted all of it.

So I’m going to do a combination of #1 and #3.  I’m going to keep writing in this blog, but I may start a separate blog somewhere else with another topic.  Please use the comments on this blog for future posts and give me some feedback on my entries.  I need to know when I’m being lazy and when I’m putting some real thought into this blog.