Wednesday 20 June 2012

June update on my yearly goals

    
     
Must resist the urge to shoot the teddy bear first!!!

As you know I set myself some pretty stretching numerical targets for my second year in Blogging. Well On the 20th of every month I will be jotting down where I'm at with those targets. So how am I doing for hits, comments and followers? Not bad it seems:


  • To reach 1 million hits by the end of year two I need to average 53,000 hits per calendar month... this month I reached 54,647. Yay!!! But I'm under no illusion here, the competition has helped that figure out quite nicely! My total hits at close of month 1 year 2 stood at 419577.
  • I also wanted to reach 10,000 comments on this Blog too, well as you know I passed through 5,000 comments just over a week ago now, but what you won't know is that I'm currently at 5897 comments... *I'm making my shocked face*... turns out a lot of my new followers are going back through the old back catalogue and commenting. Thanks.
  • I set a third target of having 1000 followers as well by the end of the second year. Again I think the competitions have given me a pretty darn good leg up on this target. I had 442 follower at the end of year 1. At the end of month 1 in year 2 I currently stand at 814. I've not quite doubled my follower count to 884 followers... but hey those competitions have really helped.

All in all I think I'm off to a pretty good start, and if I keep on promoting what I'm doing and where I'm going I think maybe, just maybe some of those targets are actually really quite achievable. In particular the followers target. I know the rate of followers has finally started to tail off considerably... but hey that was to be expected. However, if the quality of my writing can't draw another 186 followers in over the next 11 months then I don't think I'll carry on Blogging!!!

The comments target also looks more than achievable as well. Even if I take out the number of comments that I've had on my competition articles, I still added nearly 900 comments this month... that's impressive, and I think only 99.9% of them were from me. The 1 million hits by end of year 2 though? Nope, that's looking a long way off around about now. Genuinely I thought with all the competitions going off one after the other I'd have been breaching the 60,000 hits barrier and nudging up towards 70,000. Alas that hasn't happened, and nor does it look very likely to happen any time soon... perhaps I should start doing 40k army list articles... nah only kidding. Later on today I'll post my review (finally) of Dwarf Kings Hold: Ancient Grudge. Peace out!

17 comments:

  1. Nice list of targets, and good analysis of what has happened so far since the beginning of the new year for you.

    Am routing for you here.. and hoping you hit the targets you are aiming for!

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    1. Well I'm glad at least your interested in this... after all you're the swine that threw the gauntlet down in the first place!!! I'll be trying hard to attain those goals, but we'll see how close I get. Not so sure I'll be doing monthly updates but a few people have emailed me to ask me how I'm going against my targets... so I thought I'd post an article to see.

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    2. Heh.. well I threw it down cause I know you can achieve it ;)

      Am curious to the monthly targets, and have been keeping an eye on your totals since you declared you would run for them. Let's see how it goes and how the community can help you :)

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    3. Meh... community schmunity!!! :P

      If I can keep my hits at the level I've achieved for the past month without bloody competitions every other day I'll be massively impressed with myself.

      I think next month my old hits will take a significant nose dive possibly below the 40,000 mark. Lets just say that today I haven't got off to great start... despite having an interview with Ronnie Renton and a review of Ancient Grudge go live. What do you people want? Blood?!?!?!?

      :P

      We'll see how it goes.

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    4. "What do you people want? Blood?!?!?!?"
      No, but I think those chaps behind the little girl do
      :)

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    5. Don't be silly man!!!

      They want... Braiiiinnnnssss!!!

      :P

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  2. It'll be interesting to see how this develops further :) Best of luck!

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    1. Yeah it gives me something to aim at I guess. My biggest aim thoug is to now make to to the end of year two and kick up the quality of my content a notch or three. I'm also going to be looking seriously at how I can maximise income from my work here now. I've had so many people tell me that what I do here is of a good enough quality that I should be able to charge money for it.

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    2. You say you want to improve the quality, but do you have any particular aspects you want to work on? How would you measure succes in the case of this goal?

      I agree. It seems there are interesting times coming on this blog.

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    3. More pictures of naked ladies...

      No I think my main angst about this Blog are two fold:

      1) My pictures aren't great and I'd love to get better at that.
      2) I'm unhappy with the layout of Blogger.

      On the first one I'm striving to get better, I'm reading stuff, looking into further equipment purchases I can make as well as just trying to gen up on technical information. Its a weakness and I HATE having weaknesses. I know a lot of people claim to be 'perfectionists' I'd love to be able to say I am... but I always see the worst in my work. Probably stems from many people calling me an idiot as a child because of my dyslexia. Every time I notice a mistake I can always hear their comments ringing in my head.

      Does that me I have 'issues'? Hell yeah, but they're good issues, that criticism has always driven to do better. I think it's always healthy to think you can do better. I am satisfied with much of what I do, but I swear if I stop seeing the faults I'll know that the motivation has gone.

      The look of the Blog though... well I'm working on that slowly with Dr Brainiac. First up is the button you see at the top of the page, but there will be other lay out issues I'll be wanting to address, although I'm not too sure how to tackle them all and I'll be taking it slowly and not rushing things.

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    4. What do you find lacking in your pictures? Any specific complaints or do you simply find them insufficient?

      But I think you will certainly be improving quickly seeing how I 'know' you through this blog (which, admittedly, only shows a fragment of your personality). You have a strong drive to improve in general and I think you have the community on this blog who can show you the best in your work.

      As long as you stay on the healthy side of perfectionism there's no problem, but I'm guessing you know much more about that than me ;)

      The blog layout itself leaves you constrained by Blogger so that might be more difficult. But since I know nothing about blogger, I really can't say :p

      And sorry for the incessant questions..

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    5. Well I know I'm not the best technician, plus taking pics of shiny metal mini's can be a bit of a struggle. Others manage it so I should be able to as well. I know the tricks of the trade as it were. It's just having the time to practice and putting altogether. I'll get there hopefully.

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  3. Great of you to have those goals set. If you don't have a target, you don't know what to aim at. Great job!

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    1. Well I'm getting ready for the Zombie Apocalypse... then I'll be aiming at Zombies heads!!!

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  4. Shoot the teddy! It's obviously controlling the kid, I mean look at her... Completely unperturbed about two zeds coming up behind her, hell, she even looks smug! It's got to be a short range mind control device! Shoot it!!!

    Congrats on the totals, keep putting out quality articles and you'll get there :-)

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    1. There, that's all the justification I need to shoot the teddy. Sir fluffykins gets it *BAM*

      Frontline Sniper reporting that's a confirmed kill on Sir Fluffykins.

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    2. Erm... sadly the little girl brought it as the zombies closed it. I'm saying acceptable casualties on that one.

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