I’m back from Lalaland with MUCH to tell, but will have to save that for another day. I started this post the week before, but never got around to finishing it…so here’s to finishing what I’ve started. For once.

It’s been brought to my attention that I should care about blog traffic, at least this is what my husband continues to try to convince me of. He’s, in fact, the one who signed me up to twenty or so indexes, catalogs, and such. This list includes Technorati, Blog Catalog, and many others I have no clue about. I’ll have to get around to cornering him to tell me exactly how many and which indexes I’ve been signed to. I found out about his devious plans when I looked at my sidebar and noticed, under my non-existing Blogroll, there they were–links to Wordpress and the Writing Blog Catalog. I thought, “That’s weird. Why would this catalog automatically enroll me? And why on earth am I linking to them? I don’t know them. Who are these people? Who do they think they are? How insidious spam is, that they’re able to come to MY WEBSITE AND place themselves SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF MY PERSONAL BLOG! These geniuses must take me for a FOOL to have ME advertise for THEM FOR FREE.” And just before I blew up with fury and ranted to Dan the heinous crime that was committed against my precious blog, it struck me to ask him, “Dan? Do you know who this Writing Blog Catalog is?” He nonchalantly turned his head in my direction and replied, “Oh yeah. I forgot to tell you. I registered you at this writing index. You know, to promote your blog. It’ll make it easier for people to find you.” Scrunching my eyebrows I replied, “Next time. Tell me.” The anger slowly dissipated. Catastrophe averted.

photo credit: Axel Buhrmann

It was also Dan who signed me up to Google Analytics, which is actually a very interesting tool. It allows you to see how many people have viewed your blog, where they’re from, how long they viewed which pages, how they found your blog (whether it was through those convenient indexes or by miraculous searching through Google’s power engine), and many other statistics. And though it is very interesting, I don’t seem to find it quite as interesting as my husband does. Practically everyday he pours himself into looking at each statistic. For example, did you know that my break in going to L.A. caused a huge downfall in readers? There’s a nifty map showing the downward shift. Surprise, surprise. But through researching Google Analytics, Dan will be able to tell me in the next few days, will you all come back? Why doesn’t he just start his own blog? He did, but then business school ruined all his anticipated plans including blogging through his two years here. So in his small way he fulfills his hopes of his blogging career vicariously through me. I must admit it does feel a little bit Pinky and the Brainish (Brain from the Animaniacs, pictured left), except this Brain’s head spans a greater length than width. Dan rarely asks me what I’ll be writing about today. Instead, he rubs his hands together to plan how to take over the world, or the world-wide web as we know it.

I honestly don’t think about these kind of things. When I started this blog, it wasn’t my plan to announce to the world that, “HEY, I’M HERE. COME READ ME! I’M WITTY, FUNNY, WELL-WRITTEN, AN EXPERT IN EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW.” Quite the contrary, I know that there are a gazillion blogs out there funnier, more stylish, sassier, more professional, more informative. But that really isn’t the point, at least not for me, and not for now. As I contemplated starting this blog, my Brain, a.k.a Dan, asked me, “Well, I’ve done some research about blogging from professional bloggers who make their living from it and they recommended that your blog be about one thing. Be an expert in some field and make your blog be about that.” So sorry to disappoint, but this site’s purpose is to write ANYTHING. Because as much as I like money as the next person, I’m not ready to self-impose it into anything it doesn’t want to be and in the meantime, I hope that the longer I write the more it’ll figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. So I’ll look at Google Analytics, but anything like problogger.net will have to wait.

In case any of you came here looking for tips on how to drive more traffic to your blog, my Brain suggests checking out this post from problogger.net.