Wow.

Has it really been one year since I started this blog? Well, yes of course it has been, time is funny that way.

Let’s do the fun thing everyone likes to do, examine some stats. These stats come from the wordpress.com stats stuff.

Total Views: 66,971

Average Views Per Day: 238 (steadily rising)

Posts: 1394 (not including this one), averaging 3.8 posts per day

Comments: 2380

Top Referrer: survivalblog.com (shows how much readership they have)

Top 20 Posts: the main page is actually the top hit, but ignoring that:

1. Correcting handgun shooting problems
2. On a home defense tool
3. The 9mm Handgun
4. Hornady Critical Defense ammo
5. Ruger SR-22
6. Home Defense Shotgunning
7. 50 things everyone should know
8. Rikki Rockett, BJJ black belt
9. I don’t make a wee bit of sense
10. Ruger 10/22 – now with extended magazine
11. Ammo for an M1A
12. Why does anyone need one of those?
13. Choosing a gun
14. (Revised) Improved Battlesight Zero
15. About Hsoi
16. Storage for a self-defense handgun
17. Buckshot for self-defense
18. Snub ammo trials
19. SR-22 side-effect
20. On a home defense tool – part 3

I thought about just listing the top 10, but top 20 gives a better picture. What do I tend to write about? Well, lots of things actually, but guns are certainly my biggest category both in terms of what I write about and what brings people here. The self-defense angle is strong, and it shows people are very curious about that for whatever reason.

What I’ve wondered is, what is my writing going to look like this year? Most of those articles are from the early parts of the past year. We’ll see if I write anything as useful and good. Gun stuff is fairly steady and I expect it to remain as such. I’ve been sporadic with martial arts blogging, not sure why but I think it’s mostly topics. Politics… I wrote political stuff but have been quiet on it lately probably because there’s a bit of a political lull, but things are ramping up again so we’ll see how it goes. Other things? We’ll see. I know I have some categories and tags that haven’t been touched in a while. Also my regular Sunday Metal feature has been fun to do.

I made an effort to write every day. Even if all I could do because of circumstance was a “sorry, can’t write now” posting, at least I made the effort to never forget the blog. I’m pleased that I was able to keep it up and actually surprised that I was able to produce an average of almost 4 posts a day. People say I talk too much, this confirms it. 🙂

Yes I know my statistics aren’t much and really nothing to get too much into. I know there are sites that generate that much traffic in a day or an hour. But that I see a steadily increasing readership is kinda cool. I am curious how many (regular) readers I actually have. The statistics don’t really give that picture. I know I’m not writing in a vacuum, I know I have some regular readers, but I also know most of the readers are quiet and passively reading. I can’t help but wonder how many people regularly read.

Thank you for sticking around. I know some people blog purely for themselves, but and while I do write because I want to write, I cannot lie and say I don’t care what you think. If I wanted to write purely for myself I’d keep a diary. To blog means I want an audience, that I do want people to read and hear what I have to say. So I thank you for being out there and reading.

Thank you.

Plans for the future? I’ve been considering moving the blog from wordpress.com to my own domain. I’m not sure about doing it, mostly because of managing the old content. There’s so much already linked to, all the 1600+ posts linking back to other posts and causing breakage there. Many sites out there already linked up. The content being indexed as well as it is in search engines. It’s hard to want to let all that slip and go. But I figure I probably need to make the switch sooner rather than later.

And I plan to continue writing. I still want to write at least one post every day. What topics? We’ll see. Some things will continue to remain off-limits. Some things I’ll keep on with. Your input is always appreciated.

Thank you again.

Yes, posting has been light. Work’s been crazy. Second job has some work for me to do, which I’m happy to take on because I can use the extra money. Got many relatives from Wife’s side of the family coming to visit tomorrow. Just much going on.

Oh, and that posting on hunting with the .223 took me a while to write up (as you can tell by the length). Any spare time I’ve had lately has been working on researching the topic and writing that up. It’s a bit rambly, but there was a lot of stuff I wanted to record for posterity.

So go read that one long post instead of a lot of little short posts. 🙂