Category Archives: Blog Statistics

Guest Blog: How Judy Gets Blog Views?

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Hola to Judy’s readers. Some of you know me here as okcforgottenman, Judy’s (mostly) behind-the-scenes/curtain techie, keeper of secrets, and spotter of misspellings. I also like watching her blog stats daily as I try to figure out what specifically draws viewers/readers in. A few minutes ago I saw that someone out there in cyberspace today found Judy’s blog by typing in an interesting keyword search into some search engine:

rumcolafemaleorgasm

In case your screen is too small (or, like me, your eyes are too mature), here’s a closer view:

rumcolafemaleorgasm2

Might this yield further insight as to how Judy acquires more readers?

Judy? –

(Judy speaking now.) Well, over-60 female viewers might agree that we need to find our thrills where we can find them and a little fermented sugar cane mixed with a cola beverage seems a pretty socially acceptable way to find our bliss.  Do you agree, ladies?

As for forgottenman, you have no idea how many things in stats I would miss if it were not for him. He pointed out a milestone in views reached yesterday, has found reviews of my poems in a New Delhi newspaper and he was the one who spotted the article in a British online news magazine that did a comparison between my stats and Donald Trump’s.  Now how unlikely is that and how would I have ever known? Nice to have someone backing me up on my blog. He writes a pretty mean blog, as well–quality-wise if not quantity-wise.  You should check it out HERE.

He is also the one responsible for fishing your comments out of Spam, where they have unfairly been filed by WordPress.  So let’s give him a big round of applause. okcfm, I’d like to see you do another guest blog on the weirdest search engine terms you’ve seen on both of our blogs.. and challenge others to check theirs out for oddities to share as well.

Ball’s in your court, forgottenman.  –Judy

Blog-out

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Blog-out

Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!

He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.

Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.

Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.

Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.

A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.

History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.

 

The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/

Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it.  See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right?  WordPress doesn’t let you do that.  Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them.  So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution.  As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised.  What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius!  His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!!  Tell me that isn’t genius.

Morning Dew and Switcheroo: WordPress Daily Prompt Weds NaPoWriMo

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When I’ve Passed A Restless Night

When I’ve passed a restless night,
to once more welcome morning light,
I do not leave a lover’s grasp.
No knitted legs need to unclasp.
What time on waking I can afford
is spent by me, unwinding cord:
the earbud cord around my neck,
my PC power cord from the wreck
of pillows, comforter and sheet
that somehow, now, are at my feet.
My MacBook Air, just by my shoulder
has come unplugged and so is colder
to my touch. It won’t power on.
Then, when plugged in, my poem is gone.

For the month of April, I am marching to the beat of two drummers, NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) and the daily WordPress blog. So, for the fun of it, I’m going to try to write a few poems that incorporate both prompts. The first part of the poem (above) meets the NaPoWriMo challenge that springs from the form known as the aubade. These are morning poems, about waking up, dawn and daybreak. Many aubades take the form of lovers’ morning farewells but the topic was left wide open and so I took a different slant on it.

The second part of the poem (below) segues into the WordPress prompt entitled “Switcheroo,” that asks what blogger I would trade places with if I could. I’ve tried to make the two poems work either as single poems or as one longer poem. Tell me what you think. Does this work or do you prefer them as separate poems?

My Kindle lies upon the table,
still spewing words, if it is able,
from the book by Audible
that I heard was laudable;
so I chose it to listen to
knowing words would be but few
before I gave my thoughts to dreams
in short, imaginary schemes.

In sleep, I’ve pulled the ear cord tight.
It disconnected and tales took flight
into the air and so are gone
and my dreams become the song
whispered in my slumbering ear­­­­­­­­–
all that I dream and hope and fear
coming up to enter thought
revealing to me what I’m not
as surely as what I may be:
a page, a paintbrush and a tree.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

And so as I’m unwound from sleep,
I sit up, my date to keep
with that world I’m connected to
with cyber-nails and blogging glue.
Those who find the world absurd
might give pause to read a word
that I wed with more words ‘til
my dreams have finally had their fill
of eating up my conscious life.

Now that I’m no longer wife,
mother, an employee or
the keeper of a traveling store,
if I wish to spend my days
ensconced in a creative haze,
who is there to bother me?
I live alone. My days are free.

I would not trade with Heather Armstrong,
(Dooce.com) or Huffington,
for though more followers would be nice,
(Any blogger would like a slice),
still it is perhaps excess.
I don’t want so much success,
for much as I’d enjoy renown,
as far as being toast of the town–
I will remain just who I am.
I’ll take my blog without the jam!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/switcheroo/

Lear’s Fool or Harlequin?

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The Prompt today is “A Bookish Choice”—A literary-minded witch gives you a choice: with a flick of the wand, you can become either an obscure novelist whose work will be admired and studied by a select few for decades, or a popular paperback author whose books give pleasure to millions. Which do you choose?

Lear’s Fool or Harlequin?

Obscure or popular? That witch
creates a choice that is a bitch.

For, if at fame I had a chance
only if I wrote romance,

I’d prefer to be unknown,
in my corner, all alone,

writing words they’ll find profound
if in fact they’re ever found.

But wait. Have we two choices only?
Trite and read/genius and lonely?

Where is it written I must depend
upon a witch to plan my end?

Since when has either witch or fairy
determined what is literary?

Once I took a little breather,
I decided I’d choose neither!

Rebellious thoughts swirl through my head.
I’ll simply write my blog instead!!!

Do You Know Someone from Greenland?

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400px-Coat_of_arms_of_Greenland.svg

Do You Know Someone from Greenland?

Do you know someone from Greenland? Please write them if you do
and tell them that I need someone from Greenland who will view
my blog for me so I can get it lit up on my map;
for on my statistics page it leaves a shocking gap.
Italy is lit up and the rest of Europe, too.
Mexico and Canada and Poland and Peru.
(But not, I fear, Afghanistan or Chad or Katmandu.)

I have fans in India, in England and in China.
Readers in the States from Oregon to Carolina.
Africa, The Emirates, in Russia and Japan,
and even in Australia, I have one loyal fan.
But no one from that Island has ever viewed my blog.
It seems that my well-oiled machine is missing that one cog.
I know that Greenland’s icy—that it’s Iceland that is green,
and perhaps that oxymoron may make Greenlanders mean.
Yet I’d think in winter, when there is so much snow
the Internet’s the sort of place that they would want to go!!!
My blog may not be noted for being really hot,
and if they want X-Rated, my blog is not the spot.
But if you’ve friends in Greenland, please tell them this for me:
my blog may not be steamy, but it’s guaranteed frost-free!

(And while you are at it, please have them stop by Shawn Bird’s blog at shawnbird.com/blog She’s missing Greenland as well!)

The Prompt: Road Tripping—‘Tis the season for road trips — if time and money were out of the equation, what car-based adventure would you go on? (If you don’t or can’t drive, any land-based journey counts.) . . . I interpreted the prompt loosely this time, more as a road trip of the mind. After almost 18 months of blogging, I keep noticing that very big block of the world called Greenland that still sits blankly staring at me, resisting my blog. When Shawn wrote to me after reading my blog about statistics, (read it here) saying that she was waiting for a viewer from Greenland, I knew that was my cue. So although I doubt anyone from outside has ever taken a road trip there, if you’ve journeyed there by some other means, please drop a clue to any friends you may have who live there to take a mind trip to our blogs and shut us up!!!!