March traffic report

There were about 33,000 hits here in March, a number that might have been a bit higher had it not been for some outages, including a major DDOS attack, on my webhost. Traffic fluctuates somewhat from week to week, with search engine referrals varying over time, but in general a normal weekday is in the 1100-1400 range while a normal weekend day is in the 600-800 range. As always, thanks to everyone for dropping by and for coming back.

I don't normally add much content to these posts, but since Big Media Matt and Angry Bear are discussing the topic of blog traffic and new blogs breaking in, I'll throw in a few thoughts. I've been around for almost exactly as long as Yglesias, and there's no question in my mind that it's harder to get noticed now. The ratio of Blogs I Ought To Read to Blogs I Actually Have Time To Read grows continuously, as I'm sure it has for everyone. A lot of new blogs only get noticed if a top-level blogger hypes them. In January of 2002, there just wasn't all that much competition, especially on the liberal side of the house, and all you had to do to get blogrolled somewhere was to blogroll someone else.

Yglesias says:

Nowadays, though, it seems like it'll be very hard to break into the top ranks unless, like [Wonkette], you can take advantage of pre-existing relationships with people who are important in the sphere.

[...]

A mitigating factor is the increasing trend toward group blogs so that someone running a worthy, but under-read, site may become incorporated into a more established enterprise.

The list of 2003 Koufax Award Finalists for Best New Blog bear this out: it's almost all group blogs and pro blogs. Two non-pro blogs are Kos alumni (Steve Gilliard and Whiskey Bar), and the group blog Corrente is made up of former guest posters at Eschaton. That's a tough crowd to go up against.

But it's not impossible, and there are many ways to make a splash. I've long felt that finding a niche is key to success for most people, which is one reason why I try to keep the main focus of this blog on Texas stuff rather than national or international issues. It's not a ticket to Atrios/Kos numbers, but there's clearly a lot of interest in The Great State of Texas. Blogs with at least some focus on places that aren't that well-represented (New York, California, and DC) are usually worthwhile to me. Similarly, there's lots of law and economics blogging out there, but not a whole lot about health care, education, insurance, and so on. Find a niche and fill it, and people will find you.

Anyway, that's how I see it. Back to my original topic, top referrers and search terms are under the More link.

Aggregators, collections, indices, etc
======================================
356:  http://www.bloglines.com
249:  http://www.technorati.com/
160:  http://www.blogrolling.com/
140:  http://blo.gs/



Weblog referrers

================

1811: Daily Kos


645:  TAPPED


607:  Atrios


308:  The Burnt Orange Report


228:  Calpundit


140:  The Agonist


140:  Pandagon


109:  Kicking Ass


102:  Coffee Corner


102:  Rob Booth


81:   A Perfectly Cromulent Blog
 

80:   Norbizness




Top search terms

================

#reqs: search term

-----: -----------

 1007: real men of genius

  912: ugly people

  644: diane zamora

  533: jon matthews

  178: american idol tryouts

  112: baseball and steroids

  100: william krar

   95: prime number algorithm

   89: schlitterbahn galveston

   80: catholic high school girls in trouble

   69: budweiser real men of genius

   64: little hipps

   62: off the kuff

   61: buy girl scout cookies

   59: world's largest rat

   55: largest rat

   53: andy pettite

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 11, 2004 to Traffic Reports | TrackBack