So, Qieth’s Quips has been going on for a little over four months, and I thought it would be interesting to share with you guys how the blog is going.

I originally started QQ to give me a place to post all of my rantings, my thoughts and my ideas. A place where I could keep my posts where they wouldn’t just drown in a sea of other posts within a week. A place where, if nobody else, then at least I could revisit my writing.

Qieth’s Quips has taken on quite well, and has actually turned out to be quite a enjoyable little hobby for me. It has proven to be a tool for me to get rid of some of all of that darned creativity. But how many people does actually endure this dribble, and how much of it do I let out?

Visitors

Qieth’s Quips started in November 2009, and I never imagined the blog to have more than a few readers. I mean, “just a few” would have been fine for me, right? But fact of the matter is, the number of readers has grown exponentially over the last four months, quite to my surprise. I have not done much in terms of advertising, other than posting a link to my latest blog in my comment on a few forums. And yet, I see the visitor number go up for each and every month, much to my delight.

In November, the baby steps of the blog, I had 1374 unique visitors. Hey, not bad for a new start. In December, I had nearly twice that number, up to 2383 unique visitors. In January 2010, 3205 different readers visited my blog – not counting the bots and spammers – and february peaked at 4808 unique visitors. It is currently the 17th of March, and despite my little inactivity in the past two weeks, I am already sporting 4316 unique visitors.

So the blog seems to be going great. More people are visiting, more people are reading through my blog – heck, even “time spent on site” has gone up quite a lot. One very currious thing that I have noted as well, is that whenever there is a moonkin related update, visits seem to spike for that day and the next few days after. Well, I suppose that is to be expected. Unfortunately, I live in Denmark, and I usually don’t post blogs until the late evenings/nights, so we will usually see me almost a full day behind, but the news gets reported and scrutinized none the less.

Demographics

So who reads Qieth’s Quips? Well, judging from the locations I see in my control panel, the demographics look something like this:

• [singlepic id=51 w=230 h=240 float=right]United States – 9559
• Europe – 7932
• Russian Federation – 4601
• Canada – 745
• Asia – 682
• Australia – 644
• Other – 1178

I find it interesting to see Russia be such a large part of my readers. In fact, If it wasn’t for the fact that I collapsed Denmark, Germany, France and so on into “Europe”, Russia would be the second largest country from where I get my visitors. Russians, make yourself heard!

Most of my clicks come from forums I attend to – admittedly, most from MMO-champion.com, and either my signature or the link in my user page. Surprisingly, I get a lot of hits from Google searches. Some of the obvious are “moonkin best in slot” or “moonkin blog” or even “moonkin nibelung”, but others include “Qieth”, “Qieths Quips” as well as – and I have no idea why they bothered to click into my blog – “elitist jerks nibelung”.

The posts

What it all comes down to: My dribble. From the beginning, I decided that I would not have a set schedule for when to make a new blog. That just seems too stressy for me. I also didn’t want to “just” be another blue tracker, posting stuff that people have already seen somewhere else, and then just writing a small comment. I wanted a blog where my oppinions were heard and where I could exhaust a topic fully.

Because of that, my posting vary a bit. It really comes down to if there is any current topic that I wisth to fondle, or if a certain question has been showing up in my inbox a lot. My overall goal, however, is to feel that I have given my readers something for their trouble of coming here. I don’t just want to be another dwelling of useless information. I don’t just want to tell people how to play. I want to equip people with the tools that allow them to make their own decisions, while still – of course – making sure that I get my views across.

Of course, I want to report on current moonkin happenings. But I am not going to make a post if there is some minor change that I am confident that people will read somewhere else. In times of stillness, however, I can fill the time with random posts, crazy ideas, wishes and personal blogs.

My posts have ranged from very short (although rarely) posts with only 50 words in them, to massive walls of text over 2000 words long. All in all, in the past 4½ months, I have written 33.691 words across 42 blog posts. That is about the same as a 135 page novel! On average, my posts are 800 words long, but I do feel that this number is being pulled down a bit by the few less-than-300 posts I have made. Ah, who cares anyways, right?

Final Quip

All in all, things are going quite well for Qieth’s Quips. If there was one thing I would like more, though, it would be more comments. I do enjoy reading the feedback I get on my blogs, and the discussions that are born from them, so obviously I want more! It’s great fun, and it usually also gives me an idea of how people view my blog and what troubles others are facing.

Hopefully, the next couple of months, and many more after that, will be just as fun and entertaining as they have been so far.

- QQ