Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Tales Turns Three

This month marks the third anniversary of Tales of Two Cities. Three years ago this blog began as the last statewide election cycle was in its final weeks. Three years later the silly season is on us again and this time around Tales of Two Cities will be blogging about the races from the get go. I hope to keep it interesting and perhaps a little edgy too.

These three years have been pretty gratifying for me. Three years ago, before I attached a site meter to the blog, my best guess was that about 200 people visited here every month. Now, thanks to the aid of Site Meter and Google Analytics, I know that a little over 10,000 visitors pass through here every month. Over half of those visitors qualify as being “absolutely unique” which is described by Google as being “the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.” So far this year, the number of visitors has increased every month.

Over the past year or so, I have been approached about selling ad space on Tales of Two Cities and I have now decided to give it a shot. I admit to finding the thought of receiving some compensation for this labor appealing, particularly in these recessionary times. I could use a new digital camera and it would be nice to buy flowers for Mama Wordbones once in awhile. I figure that if I actually generate some revenue I can justifiably refer to blogging as something other than an obsession. I do promise I won’t junk the place up with things like ad words. What you see now is pretty much what Tales of Two Cities will look like with advertising and I reserve the right to refuse to accept any ad that I think would be inappropriate. I don’t need the money that bad.

So what will an ad cost here?

I haven’t quite figured that out yet so I’m going to start by suggesting that anyone interested in advertising here drop me an email at wordbones@verizon.net. Any reasonable offer will not be refused providing, as previously stated, the proposed ad in question is deemed by the Tales of Two Cities Revenue Authority to be appropriate.

I would also like to encourage readers to submit ideas, hot tips, political intrigues and suspicions of malfeasance. I have no interest in conspiracy theories. Anonymous commenter’s will always provide plenty of that.

Thanks to all the visitors for three good years. As long as you keep visiting, I’ll keep posting.

9 comments:

Andy Liberman said...

Keep up the good work!

Dave W said...

When it comes to local news, you are clear and away the top website out there as far as I am concerned. Congrats on the three years.

Anonymous said...

This is the only blog that posts regularly, so there's the reason for the traffic.

But again, you're being naive at best when assigning 'cookies' and site meters to garner unique visitor lists. My IP address can be any of several available, and all meters record every computer as a unique visitor so that you have everyone listed as unique even though they're visiting from various machines. I had two different meters and they registered anywhere between 30 and 300 visitors in a week, simultaneously. Google site meter complaints and you'll find they are tremendously inaccurate.

Thirdly, web advertising is not very efficient. That's all I can divulge.

Freemarket said...

Awesome, congrats!

B. Santos said...

Happy 3rd wordbones!

PZGURU said...

Three years is quite an accomplishment.

I will take exception to your statement about encouraging readers to send submit suspicions of malfeasance. I can recall several CONCRETE cases that have been brought to your attention for which you casually turned an indifferent eye, primarily because it related to politicians that you obviously support (or about whom you just refuse to report anything negative).

You are obviously very aware of a lot of the goings on in HC, but you let your biases get in the way of objective reporting in too many cases.

Tom said...

Who'd believe you'd make it through the terrible two's twice in your lifetime!
Congrats!

Anonymous said...

WB
Congratulations on 3 years.You've been a good read. I have even enjoyed the biased reparte by PZ Guru who simply can't let go his animosity. Keep up the good work and you'll continue to have the readership. Now the question is How can you convert the growing ratings into cash?
HH

Bob O said...

Congrats on three years. Well done!

And I know for a fact that you are responsive to your readers and commentors, both those who are positive and those who are negative, because you've gone out and done some research on things I've mentioned in comments to your posts. Again, well done.

Yes, be suspcious of the metrics because there are ways to spoof the counters, for both good and bad reasons. Give it a plus or minus of ten percent, at least.

Anyway, like I always say, I don't always agree with you, but I appreciate your blog, both for your opinions that make me thing and your aggregation of HoCo news and views.

Oh, and, of course you should get paid for this! That's what America is all about. Didn't Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin get paid for their publications? Bring on the ads, even though I won't click on them.

Again: well done.