New Visitors

There’s something about the idea of guest posts that I love. When Restaurant Gal asked me to create a post for her site a couple of months ago, the whole idea was completely new to me. I’ve been blogging away for nearly 2 years now and none of the sites I’ve visited have ever had guest posts - they might quote a section from a blog they read, but never get someone else to actually write a complete post for their site.

At first the idea was quite intimidating. Here on my own blog it’s my space and I can do whatever I want with it, but for someone else’s… well, it’s like it’s ok to slouch around the house in your tatty jogging trousers and curry stained t-shirt, but if you’ve invited round to dinner at a friend’s house – especially if it’s the first time and you’d like to make a good impression – then you want to make a bit more effort, smarten yourself up, maybe even take a shower, clean your remaining teeth and comb your beard.

And then it’s also been wonderful to invite others to guest blog here. It’s rather like bringing a new friend home to visit; one you’ve been telling the family about, only now they finally get to meet him or her in person.

Now oddly enough, one of the things I found when both Restaurant Gal and El Guapo posted here was the number of comments dropped quite significantly. Typically my posts usually gather comments that number in the 20s and occasionally even in the 30s, yet with both guest posts there was barely a scraping of double figures.

If I was to try and draw conclusions by noting comment numbers alone, then I might have thought few people other than me were interested in the whole guest blogger concept. However, I also have Sitemeter, which paints a very different picture. Here are the Visitor Statistics for the past month:



As you can see, my average daily visits vary between 50 and 100 (the fact that its at its lowest at the weekends make me guess that most of my visitors are sneaking a glance at my blog during work time). However, notice that spike on the 25th of May when my daily average more than doubled - that was Restaurant Gal’s post – and the one where it quadrupled on Tuesday was El Guapo’s after he mentioned on his site that he was blogging here.

It appears the number of lurkers has been immense.

So what conclusions can I draw from this? Well I guess it means either all these extra visitors were not impressed enough with either me or my guest blogger to leave a comment, or they were shy.

And because I’m feeling in a more positive mood today, I’m going to take the 2nd option as the most likely explanation. Let’s face it, most of us tend to be quieter around strangers, and in new circumstances we’re more likely to sit back, observe and assess the situation before leaping in and blurting out something inappropriate and potentially embarrassing.

The real outcome will be revealed over the coming weeks when I’ll be able to see if my daily average increases (some of the new visitors have decided to stick around for a while), stays the same (none of the new visitors liked my style and so haven’t come back), or decreases (even my regulars are pissed off with this idea and have given up on me).

In the meantime, to any lurkers who are wondering whether it’s safe to comment, I’d like to say come in, make yourself comfortable and help yourself to one of my wife’s home baked cookies. Don’t be afraid to say hello :)

To grab a wonderful quote I discovered on Jennifer’s Pinwheels site today:

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,
It’s about learning to dance in the rain