Whatta week. Michigan to Kentucky (Mammoth Cave National Park), Kentucky to Mississippi (Tupelo, the Birthplace of Elvis and home of my eldest brother), Alabama (Huntsville and the Space Center), Tennessee (Gatlinburg). It feels like I was away for a month. Walking around my hometown yesterday was almost a surreal experience.
Of course, the surrealism may have been the after-effects of the stomach flu or it may have been the quiet relief of not having a vomit threat hanging around my head for the first time in four days. Baby Tess came down with the flu on Monday, and my wife came down with it Wednesday. My wife was over it by Thursday morning, but then I had it, along with Max (2) and Michael (7). If I didn't move, my stomach didn't bother me, making me the ideal selection to drive the ten hours home from Gatlinburg. I drove, while my wife climbed into the back of our 12-person van to clean up kids.
While on vacation, I had lots of time for idle thinking, and I thought a fair amount about this blog. The main thinking point: What should I do with it? The strain of adding fresh content seven to ten times a day is a bit much. It takes up a bunch of time, plus such factory-like output strikes me as hackish. Some of the posts (in my opinion, at least) struggle. Consequently, I made the tentative decision to post less, but to make each post better.
Then when I returned from vacation, I read David Scott's posts and noticed that he posted only once or twice a day (which is all I asked of him). I checked my visitor count and found that my traffic had slipped only slightly. The weekday daily "Visitor to Posts" ratio during David's reign was about 260 to 1 (meaning there were 260 visitors for every post). During a typical weekday, my ratio is about 50 to 1.
What's it mean? Either David drew new readers to the site (which doesn't appear to be the case, since my software doesn't show an influx of visitors from unusual locations) or I'm spending a lot of time adding fresh posts that don't add much to the site's popularity.
That more or less cemented it for me. I've decided to post fewer items. But I also plan on making each post better (though I'll still offer the occasional one-line posts).
I can't honestly say I know what this means. I have no concrete plans. All I can say is, you normally won't see ten posts a day, but you will hopefully see higher-quality posts. Whether that means the posts are lengthier, funnier, linkier, etc., I don't know. I'll just have to see how things go.
I'd like to hear your impressions about this new plan. If you get a chance, send me an email (link on left) and tell me what you think. If you (like my wife) have thought, "I like TDE, but he doesn't need that amount of volume," I'd like to hear it. If you'll be disappointed that I'm not running 50-100 posts every week, I'd like to hear that, too.
Until next week, may Spring fever hold you tight.
