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Mar. 1st, 2009 03:50 pmToday is a day when my head is spinning with technical questions. Most of them I have left with brave souls who know more than me. There are some questions in the universe, however, that are deep and difficult and impossible to answer. One of them is how many people read my writing on a regular basis.
Someone told me recently that this would be the simplest question to answer because I am a blogger. Because the food history blog regularly gets listed in top hundreds (but never in top fifties - I am a B-list blogger). I say "But most of my links don't make it to any of the places they're supposed to (mainly Alexa and Technorati- my numbers there are seriously wrong) and people don't mention me on the social networks and most of my readers are silent and I only know they exist when they surprise me with "I read your blog" at conventions and dinner parties and other strange places.
Just add the numbers, that someone told me.
First of all, I have no numbers for "Even in a Little Thing", only an estimate based on a bunch of things. Some of those things are reliable. Some of them are just things. I have a minimum number for my other blog, and that number is a nice number, but it's still a minimum, not a readership. It's like magazine sales - you don't know the actual number of readers,but you do know how many you sell. I don't know the number of readers, but I do know how many I get paid for. And how do I know when the same person just happens to enjoy both my blogs? And maybe my fiction as well? And also reads my other writing?
So, when I answered that around 3,500 people read my stuff a week, you understand that I was lying through my teeth.
Someone told me recently that this would be the simplest question to answer because I am a blogger. Because the food history blog regularly gets listed in top hundreds (but never in top fifties - I am a B-list blogger). I say "But most of my links don't make it to any of the places they're supposed to (mainly Alexa and Technorati- my numbers there are seriously wrong) and people don't mention me on the social networks and most of my readers are silent and I only know they exist when they surprise me with "I read your blog" at conventions and dinner parties and other strange places.
Just add the numbers, that someone told me.
First of all, I have no numbers for "Even in a Little Thing", only an estimate based on a bunch of things. Some of those things are reliable. Some of them are just things. I have a minimum number for my other blog, and that number is a nice number, but it's still a minimum, not a readership. It's like magazine sales - you don't know the actual number of readers,but you do know how many you sell. I don't know the number of readers, but I do know how many I get paid for. And how do I know when the same person just happens to enjoy both my blogs? And maybe my fiction as well? And also reads my other writing?
So, when I answered that around 3,500 people read my stuff a week, you understand that I was lying through my teeth.