10,000 hits!

Today, I passed 10,000 page hits. Wow, in 9 1/2 months, I've reached about 7.5% of Glenn Reynold's daily visits. (Meanwhile, in about six weeks, Instapundit will reach the square of my milestone, 100 million hits. Wonder what he's going to do to celebrate?)

How did I do it? Here's a brief illustrated history:



There was a gap between wanting to say something on a blog and actually starting it. So ignore the backdated posts; the real first post (not substantive at all!) was July 29.

First real traffic came at the end of September (A), with a link from Joanne Jacobs on a post sharing one ex-education student's experience with the collision between truth and the latest education fad. I found something from an obscure part of the Internet and shared it with the community... much to the surprise of the original poster! That was most of my September and October traffic.

Then an Instalanche! I made observations (B) on why only certain states with narrow margins of victory were left "uncalled" after Election Night. Does it still count as an Instalanche if guest blogger Ann Althouse posted the link?

It was then back to obscurity (C), though I managed to link up to some smaller blogs and get sporadic visits.

Then, a fateful post at the end of February (D) on the Numa Numa phenomenon. I included lyrics and translation to the song Dragostea Din Tei.

The results are seen in (E). The vast majority of these hits came from people looking for information on the song: from search engines with keywords like "Ma Ya Hi" or "Numa Numa" or "Dragostea Din Tei." And since it's not heavily covered elsewhere, this site is high on the Google returns. Who needs Google ads?

So, there's your recipe for success in the blogosphere. Do one of two things:
1. Post substantive opinions on news topics of general interest.
2. Blog about a song that thousands of people want to know about but which isn't heavily covered elsewhere.

(Just try to guess which one of these choices was my original goal!)