Click traffic still anemic

I suppose it's not entirely kosher to blather on about how popular or unpopular your blog is, but I'm ignoring that sentiment and forging ahead.

Click is pretty much treading water. Yeah, I've been writing less. But still plenty.

And I haven't done a full-fledged distro review in awhile, nor have I gotten a link at Distrowatch for said reviews.

I'm still posting Linux and free-software entries to LXer, but since what seems to be a significant percentage of the people there can't get past the IP block to see the Insidesocal site that hosts this blog, I'm not doing so great there, either.

I got my first Distrowatch link -- and didn't even know I had it for awhile -- for a Puppy review that I happened to write just around the time that Ubuntu was releasing its 7.04 release (and for those not in the know about Ubuntu release numbers, the 7 is for 2007, the .04 for the fourth month of the year, which is April to you and me). Since the frenzy over Ubuntu coincided with a link to my Puppy review appearing on the Distrowatch home page, I was hitting 2,000 page views a day for awhile. And around here (the Los Angeles Daily News), that gets you noticed.

I managed to get a few more Distrowatch links over the past few months, plus regular postings on LXer, and was able to maintain 500 to 700 page views a day -- enough to be in the top 50 Web pages in the Los Angeles Daily News oeuvre. (Sorry to use the word oeuvre).

I've been wanting to branch out. Recently I've been trying to write more about Windows and Mac topics, and that's just not as popular (or as easy to promote) as Linux.

But I can live with 100 or so page views a day (it still spikes to 500 on a good LXer day), and while my main motivation for doing this blog under the auspices of the Daily News is that I can work on it during my regular workday, that's not a situation set in stone.

I guess I'm saying that I want to take this whole "writing about technology" project to another level. The whole tech thing is an intense love-hate thing for me. I'm both a geek and a Luddite at the same time. I don't have cable, my cell phone is years old, I just about don't have a computer made in the last five years (the Gateway laptop is circa 2002, so it's borderline).

And I don't spend much money on technology (hence my attraction to Linux in its many, many forms).

Also, I believe with great fervor that the technology we use, be it Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iPod, MP3, MS Office vs. OpenOffice vs. whatever else, and more, represents choices that are economic, moral, political and personal. That's what motivates me.

And I have other things going on in my life (and want even MORE to happen outside the realm of "I tried this new Linux distribution and my wireless doesn't work, blah, blah, blah.")

Back to the blog: In my experience, the only way to get any kind of blog traffic is to get links. Search is another way to get traffic, but it's never that much unless you have words like "Britney nude" in your post. (My apologies to all those who came to this entry because they want to see Britney nude -- there's no nudity and no Britney here).

LXer enables me to create links to this blog myself, and for that I am grateful. LXer remains one of the best Web sites out there, with a great community and a unique site design that encourages sharing and discussion of free-software news. (Disclaimer: I'm a contributing editor at LXer.)

The hardest thing to do is get people to visit your blog directly -- without going through a link -- on a regular basis. I've been blogging in one form or another for more than two years now, and while getting readers is a motivation, it's not the only motivation (I feel like I've typed these exact words before). As long as the compulsion to do so continues, I will.

For now, this rant is over. Catch you next time.