Year End Wrap Up Part IV: Demography

You know, there are so many other, probably cooler things I could do for my final year end wrap up. I had some pretty hilarious recollections of my life written out in screenplay format. Like, me getting beaten up as a child. Or striking out badly (how was I to know that epic poetry doesn't count as poetry when trying to pick up girls?). But let's be honest. Let's be clear about who I am what I stand for. Transperancy. Reaching across the aisle. Maverickism. Or TRAAM for short. That's my platform and that's my promise. So today I thought I'd discuss you. All of you. My beautiful and loyal constituents (vote for me).


Geography: I wish it'd break down where readers' are in more detail than merely country, but I'll deal. As you might imagine, it's almost all American. That's fine, except that there's one little thing. The agency gets a lot of queries from Canadian authors, both first time and already established. I've got nothing against that. But I have few enough hits from Canada that one could reasonably dismiss it as coincidence they found the place at all. Seriously. There are half as many Koreans who've seen this blog. And South Africans. And a lot of other things. There's actually twice as many hits from Russia. So a word to my writerly colleagues in the Great White North: Don't be such hosers, eh.

Browser and OS: About 46% of viewers use internet explorer. Then there's roughly 25 each for Firefox and Safari, then a host of other things I didn't really look at. Presumably smart phone browsers or something. Or maybe from the South Africans. Who knows? Interestingly though, Microsoft has 50% of the OS but Apple's got 40. 40 is a substantially larger number than the 25 commanded by its primary browser. 40 is also enormously more than the 10% or so of the market that apple machines make up. It's all good. As Basil Fawlty would say, I'm attracting the right customers. If not the elites, then at least the elitists.

Awww come on! I kid. I kid 'cuz I love. Really. I do. Please don't leave. Vote for meeeeeee. Don't you know-nothings know anything? Why, if it weren't for that generous campaign contribution Jobs gave me I'd never have secretly abused my authority to get him a transplant. Bosom buddies. That's what we are. As loyalists to Jobs it is your duty as good, God fearing Americans to VOTE FOR ME. I am not a crook.

Referral sites: Almost all of this actually comes from my bio over at the McVeigh Agency website. Anyone find me a different way? I'm reaching across the aisle to you. Speak up. Or I'll cry. Regardless, there are ocassional little bumps in traffic because someone will tweet about me, add me to their list of of links on their own blog, or do other things like that. Which is super cool of you all. I appreciate the votes. For me.

Total numbers: The biggest traffic actually came in October. I think this little blog o' mine first really went public towards the end of September when it wound up in the aforementioned staff bio at work. Presumably many people flooded in when it first went up and then left. Or they just don't check as regularly as they did in the beggining. It went from almost 1,200 in October to a little over 700 in November. Arrgh, my ego! However, it's at nearly 800 for December (and we've got this post yet!). I feel that this is evidence of a steady upward trend as our brand (me) gains traction with the core demograpbhics and jargon, jargon, jargon, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword. Long story short, I dunno if those numbers are good or not. But I'm pretty happy with it. And I'd like to keep those numbers rising slow and steady. Long as they're back up for the next election cycle.

Design: The design of the site is pretty much what it was from the start. I've been experimenting with different things in the sidebar, but I've never been a bells and whistles kind of guy. Apart from making the links garish and therefore easy to see, I've left a default template almost untouched because the brutal simplicity of white on black works well with my heavy handed soap box nonsense.

What you're doing: Jesus christ. Stop producing so much stuff. I still need to read Damien Walter Grintalis' piece that we represent. It's already been through the editorial ringer though and I wasn't one of the original people to do so. It's going to be a strange coversation with the boss. And that sample I linked to a while back for Jeremy Shipp's got me curious, so I should probably buy one of his. Meanwhile, I read several followers' blogs, though I rarely if ever post. I try to follow some people on Twitter. I should do more of both but... Why are you fuckers so prolific? I can't keep that shit straight. I follow like ten people and I already need Tweetdeck or whatever because I can't figure out where one conversation starts and another one ends. Or who is in on what? That's why I'm proud to announce that I'm making Travis the Howler Monkey my Official Campaign Social Media Guru or OC-SMEG (He's a real smeg head.) for short. I wanted Eduardo, my Thesis monkey for the job, but frankly, he had better things to do than to (how shall I put this?) monkey around on that godforsaken Twitterverse. Although you'll note I now follow God on Twitter. And God follows Justin Bieber. Truly, he works in mysterious ways.

In conclusion: Vote for me.