So I received the announcement today that my blog received its 100,000th visitor.
That is visitors to my blog, not my website. The number of visitors to all the pages of my site in the past 26 years would be a much larger number.
But still.
It gives me pause.
On the one hand, if I did not want anyone to visit my website, I would hardly have taken the time and expense to put it online. Nevertheless, I neither advertise my website nor seek to expand my audience. The usual business model for personal blogs and online work is to try to increase the traffic and then monetize it. In the social media environment, the total number of eyeball views are everything; a person wants to become an “online influencer” who can shape fashion or thought trends, and that depends on your ability to attract and hold a mass audience. You have to be “popular.”
I go in the opposite direction. I want neither a mass audience nor advertisers. It would almost be my worst fear realized if I woke up one morning with tens of thousands of visitors to my blog. I blush with embarrassment to think about that much exposure. And I have never accepted any of the advertisers who wanted to run ads on my site. This is a voluntary experiment of my free time, and I do it for myself, not for money or for attention. It is my hobby, not my job. I see so many other social media “influencers” sell their soul for attention, money, and fame that I want nothing to do with that dynamic. I prefer to exist online in relative obscurity.
I prefer to do this for myself, for free, as a passion project –
”Grateful for This Intellectual Space: Comfortable in My Own Skin”
June 28, 2022
And that effort has garnered me 100,000 views.
So hurrah for me, I guess.
But the value is in the quality of my postings, which I labor endlessly to improve, according to my poor power to communicate, as I write mainly for myself. Others can look in, too.
Cheers!
