Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Randy's Genea-Musings is Two Today!

I've had a lot of recent experience with two-year olds - they are fun, energetic, inquisitive, messy, loving, happy, demanding and precious. Thankfully, they grow up into real people. Each of us goes through this stage of life, but few of us actually remember being age two. We do remember our progeny being age two, usually with fond memories and many pictures. So it is today...

Randy's Musings was started two years ago on this day (having completed my taxes and paid a large penalty...) with this post:

* Who, Me? Blog? OK...

Quickly followed by:


* Genealogy is My Passion (Post 1)

* Genealogy is My Passion (Post 2)

* Why do I pursue my family history?

I don't have a picture of my first post, but here is a screen-capture from April 30, 2006 of the very blue Randy's Musings from the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org.



If you read through the April 2006 Archive of my blog posts, you will see that I posted about the San Diego Padres 2006 season, my music favorites, some family pictures, some research tips, some census whacking, and lots of stories and narratives from my research.

In early May 2006, I decided to concentrate on genealogy on this blog and renamed it Genea-Musings after a long, hot shower. I created another blog in June 2006, called Randy's Busy Life, for all of the other stuff. These days, I'm usually too busy to really muse about my life, so it's turned into a Joke/Story/Family/sports blog. Then I created another genealogy blog in 2007, The Geneaholic, to try to keep track of my daily genealogy activities. I'm not sure why I do this, other than to have a record of all my mistakes and successes.

After two years of Randy's Musings and Genea-Musings, this is post number 1,772. Over 731 days, that averages out to be 2.42 posts per day. I think the most was 6 posts in one day and I've had many days with zero posts (usually when on vacation).

Not every post has been a work of meaning or pride. It's hard not to make misteaks in content or spellking (thankfully, Blogger's spell check is working again). I've learned to express opinions after thinking hard about it rather than in a moment of pique or sarcasm. I try not to criticize the work of others, but sometimes it has to be done by somebody.

This has become a labor of fun and love - I enjoy hearing from all of my readers. I wake up each morning wondering what I'm going to write about during the day. My readership has increased each year.

Since I started this blog, I have had over 102,000 unique visitors (these can be multiple visits per day by the same reader) and over 165,000 page views. My statistics indicate that this blog currently has about 250 unique visitors a day, with an average of about 350 page views. In addition, about 125 subscribe via email using Feedburner, and 40 subscribe via Bloglines. I don't have a count for other feeds and blog readers.

This is a traffic chart for the last two years (since July 2006 when I subscribed to StatCounter). The three lines are Page Loads (green), Unique Visitors (blue), and Returning Visitors (orange).


I appreciate all of my readers and viewers - thank you for your support and comments.

Joe Beine started his Genealogy Roots Blog and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak started her Megan's Roots World blog (before it was changed over to the Roots Television empire) at about the same time that Genea-Musings started in April 2006. Congratulations to them on their accomplishments - not just their blogs but their web sites and professional achievements.
What does year 3 hold for this blog and my genealogy pursuits? God willing, we'll find out. Maybe I can learn to play better with others and not be as demanding as my two-year old grandson.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

Happy Blog-Birthdae, Randy. I've only been following it this second year, but I've learned several fine things from your writings and pray you'll continue many more years.

Congratulations, m8!

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com

Becky Wiseman said...

Congratulations, Randy, and Happy Birthday to your blog! I'm looking forward to many more of your entertaining and insightful posts.

Joe said...

Congratulations, Randy. 1772 posts! Dude, you rock!

TheGeneticGenealogist said...

Congratulations Randy! I always enjoy reading your blog, and I'm looking forward to more great posts in year three!

Anonymous said...

Randy,

Congrats and Happy Blog-Birthday!

Donna

Miriam Robbins said...

Many happy returns of the day to you and your blog, Randy! I'm not sure when I started reading it...back when you were commenting regularly on Ken's blog (that is how I found you).

I'm looking forward to many more future visits to "Uncle Randy's" blog!

Bill West said...

Happy Blog-Day, Randy!
Thanks for the tips and grins and advice, and here's to many more years
of genealogy fun for you!

Jasia said...

Happy blogging birthday Randy! I always enjoy reading your blog posts and faithfully follow both of your blogs every day. I look forward to many more blog posts to come!

Janice said...

Randy,

Happy 2nd anniversary! May you have many more!

You are one of the "staples" of my genealogy blog reading!

Janice

Melissa Barker said...

Happy Blog Birthday!! I visit your blogs everyday and enjoy them very much. I hope you have many more years of writing ahead of you!

Melissa

footnoteMaven said...

Randy - Happy 2nd Anniversary! My day would not be the same without you.

fM