AUTUMN MOON MAPLE IN HER FALL FINERY
When I started my blog back in February I wasn't concerned with how many visitors I would get or if I would make money by using Google Ads. I did it for the sheer pleasure of it, as do many of my fellow garden bloggers, and to pass the long cold winter days cooped up inside longing for Spring.
As a garden designer and garden center employee it frankly is not always easy to find time to blog in the Spring , Summer and Fall, our busiest season but somehow I did it on a consistent basis.
There are the seasoned garden pros that do it for pleasure and money, a good job if you can get it. Slowly over the months since I began blogging I came into contact with many others of the same interest and after hooking up with Garden Voices I found many more visitors stopped by my online garden.. We have numerous devoted and passionate garden bloggers that interact with each other , the community and yes, the world, and I have found that each have their own unique contribution.
My son the webmaster remarked several time that it was unusual to get as many hits as I did but I didn't think it was a lot and didn't pay much attention to it. The stories of bloggers getting millions of hits and raking in the dough always grabs the headlines. I mean, there was a Chicago suburban housewife and mother who wrote about dirty diapers and home life and became an overnight sensation.
In this morning's newspaper, a Tribune reporter talked with the folks at Technorati , the internet search engine. He asked how many of the 109.2 million blogs tracked get no hits in the course of a year ? The answer was shocking : just over 99 percent! The vast majority of blogs, he says, exist in a state of total or near-total obscurity.
So I want to thank GARDEN VOICES for saving us from total or near-total obscurity. I wonder if Technorati has visited the site and got a look at the blogroll ? Probably not because then he would've had to say " With the exception of the garden bloggers..... "
As a garden designer and garden center employee it frankly is not always easy to find time to blog in the Spring , Summer and Fall, our busiest season but somehow I did it on a consistent basis.
There are the seasoned garden pros that do it for pleasure and money, a good job if you can get it. Slowly over the months since I began blogging I came into contact with many others of the same interest and after hooking up with Garden Voices I found many more visitors stopped by my online garden.. We have numerous devoted and passionate garden bloggers that interact with each other , the community and yes, the world, and I have found that each have their own unique contribution.
My son the webmaster remarked several time that it was unusual to get as many hits as I did but I didn't think it was a lot and didn't pay much attention to it. The stories of bloggers getting millions of hits and raking in the dough always grabs the headlines. I mean, there was a Chicago suburban housewife and mother who wrote about dirty diapers and home life and became an overnight sensation.
In this morning's newspaper, a Tribune reporter talked with the folks at Technorati , the internet search engine. He asked how many of the 109.2 million blogs tracked get no hits in the course of a year ? The answer was shocking : just over 99 percent! The vast majority of blogs, he says, exist in a state of total or near-total obscurity.
So I want to thank GARDEN VOICES for saving us from total or near-total obscurity. I wonder if Technorati has visited the site and got a look at the blogroll ? Probably not because then he would've had to say " With the exception of the garden bloggers..... "
Thank you so very much for the wonderful review! I've sent a link to this post to my manager at GardenWeb.
ReplyDeleteGosh, I just don't get out enough anymore; you really have a nice blog, with a very pleasant garden voice... good work!
ReplyDeleteDon
The photo of your Autumn Moon maple is just stunning! Yes, thank heaven for Garden Voices. As well as increasing traffic to my blog it has introduced me to many more great garden blogs than I could have possibly found on my own.
ReplyDeleteHA! The thing about stats is they can make up anything they want :P
ReplyDeleteBut yes, garden voices is cool, I check it every day for updates.
Chiming in to thank Garden Voices and the thriving garden blogging community in general for all of the support. I'm sure I'd still post, but I'd feel like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with nobody around and wonder if I was being heard. (And my garden definitely would not be as good--I get some great ideas from my commenters.)
ReplyDeleteI agree, thank you to Garden Voices for helping many of us find a few to many readers. And we are fortunate that we have a social network of garden bloggers who both post and comment.
ReplyDeleteThat's an amazing statistic from Technorati!
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
(I hope this comment goes through, I got an error from Blogger on my first comment)
Hey old Roses, you of all people I have to thank !
ReplyDeleteThanks, Iboy, for you compliments,
Ki, we both love that Autumn Moon and all the interaction we've gotten from Garden Voices, don't we ?
Kim,you are so right - we'd be posting but would any one hear ?
Carol, May Dreams Gardens, such a good inspiration to all of us, YES,you will always get through to us !
And, Nickie? You must've just joined us, but WELCOME ! I hope you'll give us your two cents worth as well.
carolyn - echoing your thanks to Garden Voices I always notice a little increase in the hits to my blog when it shows up on GV. The thing about GV is I love reading it myself as much or more than I love that they reblog me. Thanks to oldroses for taking the time to gather all those great blogs in one spot for us to read. It's how I found many of the blogs I read regularly now.
ReplyDeleteConsidering how many blogs are out there, I don't know why I'm so surprised to read that 99% of them get no hits in a year. But I am surprised.
ReplyDeleteLike your son, my husband---Digging's webmaster---has expressed amazement at how many hits my blog gets, and at how fast it pops up in the search engines. "People pay a lot of money for that kind of thing," he remarks. I don't know how it's happened, unless it's all the mutual linking and commenting that goes on in the active garden-blogging community, but it is certainly nice. Maybe garden bloggers and readers really are a special breed.
Add me to the choir of people thankful for GVs. But I'd also like to thank Google, Yahoo.com, Ask.com. I'll leave out MSN as they don't send me much of anything.
ReplyDeleteHeh heh...I think I'm one of the 99% in relative obscurity finding the most amazing gardens and gardeners hidden under hyperlinks. Perhaps I should visit GV?
ReplyDelete