Yesterday, this happened on Twitter.
YES, FOLLOW ME! FOLLOW ME ALL OF YOU! FOLLOW ME TO THE GATES OF HELL AND BACK!
I’d like to thank me for making this all possible.
Tag Archives: scratchbomb
Your Scratchbomb Analytics Update
Here are a few items of note about traffic to Scratchbomb.com in the last month. Absolutely none of this is made up or exaggerated in any way. I’m presenting it because I constantly get SEO-related spam, and I’m hoping this will prove once and for all that this site has zero interest in improving the size and quality of its audience.
- Despite a late surge from my Extreme Couponing post, the Scratchbomb piece with the most page hits is once again my recap of game 6 of the 1999 NLCS. This is bad in the sense that nothing I wrote recently tops something I penned almost two years ago, but good in the sense that I am hard at work at something closely related to that post (/vague)
- Top five countries visiting Scratchbomb: USA, Canada, UK, Philippines, India. That last one I kind of understand–considering there’s a billion people in India, from a purely statistically standpoint, any site should get a significant number of visitors from there. The Philippines has me stumped, but I’ll take it, and will also learn how to speak Tagalog.
- On the low end of the scale: Two visits from Vietnam, and one each from Tanzania and Nigeria. Still looking for those first elusive page hits from China and North Korea.
- Number one search term inexplicably remains “rip taylor,” with most of those hits generated by this almost-two-year old post (number three on the page hits charts). Your guess is as good as mine, folks.
- Number two search term is now “studio 60 on roosevelt avenue,” which means I will NEVER stop writing these things.
- Rounding out the top five search terms: “rapture”, “scratchbomb”, and “jeff kent.”
- “steve phillips” has plunged all the way to #9, below “jersey city crank crew” and “jim dolan”.
- Best search terms of the month (sic all spelling mistakes):
- “does anyone know the song with the tune coco coco”
- “extrene couponers eat shit”
- “gary carter racist”
- “jamie farr shirtless”
- “what else looks like a swastika”
- Worst search term of the month: “chipper jones y’all”
- Number 10 traffic source leading to Scratchbomb: google.ca. Thanks, Canada!
- Number seven search engine directing traffic to Scratchbomb: Yandex, the top search engine in Russia. Cπacибo, Poccия!
- The fifth most popular browser used to view Scratchbomb is something called Mozilla Compatible Agent, which I’m pretty sure is a SkyNet product. Thanks, Terminators!
A Special Scratchbomb Thank You From Scratchbomb
The rapidly impending New Year brings with it many things to look forward to. For instance, Twilight Zone marathons, and bowl games I could not possibly care less about. But it also is a time to reflect on this year, which turned out to be a pretty good one at Scratchbomb HQ.
It didn’t start out well. We had another death in the family, the latest and hopefully last in a string of them that’s hit my extended family in the last five years. I was not enjoying my job very much, and then I was not enjoying it all because my entire department was eliminated. The novel I’ve been working on for years remained on flatline.
In general, I was in the same creative and personal funk I’d been in for years, one that made me feel like not only did I have no time to work on anything meaningful, but that I never would have any time. I had this self-pitying, self-fulfilling dread that the deck was stacked against me and nothing was ever going to get better. It wasn’t fun.
And then, out of nowhere, things got fun.
Most importantly, I got an amazing amount of support and help from tons of friends–online and off–during my unemployed period. Amazingly (considering the economy), I found a new gig in less than a month, one much better than my previous job for a multitude of reasons. I was honestly inspired by how many people helped me–from people who sent along my resume to folks who offered a “that sucks, dude,” it was a total George Bailey moment.
With the knowledge that I had so many people behind me, I made the biggest, most life-changing decision of my life: I would not be negative, at least about myself. I would pour myself into work and not get bogged down in the self-defeating mire of Who cares? Who am I doing this for?
The amazing thing was how easy it was to give up being negative. It’s my default setting, something I just lapse into when I have no other reaction. Getting rid of this was like taking off a heavy winter coat drenched with snow once you come inside. I feel 50 pounds lighter, in my head.
So I poured myself into my writing, and the results speak for themselves. This year, readership on this site EXPLODED, killing, I mean, reaching hundreds of thousands of folks. I started to do some regular Mets-centric writing over at Amazin Avenue, and that has been extremely fun and rewarding–as will the Amazin Avenue Annual, which should be available in your local book shoppe by Opening Day.
Speaking of books and baseballing, I’m pulling together something based on the two exhaustive look-backs I did on Mets seasons: The 1999 Project and In the Year 2000. Based on reactions to these efforts, I think there’s a book to be written/sold about them, and I would like to do that writing. (Someone else can do the selling.)
I’ve also ramped up work on the novel again and should have a shoppable draft ready in a few months. And I wrote a pilot for a thoroughly hypothetical sitcom, which will definitely change television once someone decides to actually make it. (Well, it’ll be funnier than Outsourced, anyway.)
Will all of these things bear fruit? Will any of them? I’m not even concerned about that right now. I’m doing the work, rather than wondering and wallowing in the wasteful space of Should I bother? It’s my belief that notice and success will follow, and the early returns on this belief are good. So while I’m apparently one of the very few people sorry to see 2010 go, I’m looking forward to more awesomeness in 2011.
Everyone who read Scratchbomb this year, commented on it, linked to it, recommended it on Facebook, tweeted about it–I can not thank you enough. You bought low on Scratchbomb, and I hope someday you all get to say you were on board when nobody was here and you can complain about all the newbies that ruined the site.
Onward and upward!