Thank You For Subscribing!

By
Wayne
Published: July 14, 2009Posted in: Random ThoughtsTags: , , ,

As I write this, my Feedburner account says that I have 396 subscribers.  This is a significant difference from the “about 100″ subscribers I had around 3 months ago, and I really don’t have a clue how my subscriber numbers have jumped so quickly.  Regardless though, I’d like to say thank you for subscribing!

A little while ago, I noticed one or two significant jumps in the subscriber number.  Enough to cause a little concern in fact.  One day I jumped up 50 new subscribers, and the second jump was about 75 subscribers in a day.  These happened a few days after I announced that I was going to migrate my blog to WordPress.

Could it be that some of those are actual people that are interested in what I write, or could they be people who are simply subscribing to re-post a snippet of my writing on their own blogs?  I have noticed that my posts are now showing up regularly on certain blogs who’s only purpose is to regurgitate the posts that others have written.

I don’t mean to say that I’m flattered since they didn’t even communicate with me prior to doing so, nor do I approve of them doing it.  They just do it for whatever reason, and it isn’t always to make money since I see that some of them don’t have any way to make money from their sites.  So why would they do it?  An attempt to create more traffic for themselves by showing Google they have more content?  I’m not sure.

I’m not terribly concerned about it as sites like these usually don’t have a long lifespan.  They eventually get the boot one way or another.  It’s also the reason that I don’t advertise my subscriber numbers like I used to.  Even though I’m quite happy to see the increase, I believe a good percentage of that number to be from suspect sources.  I don’t believe in false advertising nor blowing a horn that isn’t in tune, and with the regular ups and downs of Feedburner subscriber stats, I don’t have a high confidence in the accuracy anymore.

In any case, I’d like to say “Hello and thank you” to all humans who have decided to subscribe to what I write.  Also, thank you for hanging in there during my periods of Pink Floyd fascination.

Insight: As part of this thank you, I’d like to point your attention to those three recent posts I did on Pink Floyd.  If you take a look at each one, you’ll see that I did those a little differently than my normal posts.  There’s a reason for that.  I have been inactively looking for those movies in real life for a number of years, only to come up empty handed in the end.  I’m so excited to see that they are up on YouTube that perhaps I went a little crazy with them and wanted to have them on this site.

The posts themselves however were structured to target certain keywords, as well as put in place a nice way to maybe make a little money for myself down the road and help out fellow Floydians find a great treasure that I had such a hard time finding.

Everything about those pages is completely within the guidelines and perfectly legal.  You too could create posts like those and perhaps draw a little search traffic your way.  If there is any interest, I’d be happy to break those posts down for you.  You only need ask as that is something I won’t do, unless I’m asked.  The three movies I found are La Vallée that was released in 1972 and that Pink Floyd did the soundtrack for, called Obscured by Clouds. The second post More is another soundtrack that was released in 1969. Finally, there is Zabriskie Point that was released in 1970. Pink Floyd participated in this with several other well known artists.

I’m using these posts as examples.  Did you skip them, or did you notice what I was doing on them.  Did you watch any of the movies?  Sometimes a “monkey see, monkey do” post is nice to have as an example.

You might not notice, and I should explain to you, that I don’t always explain what I do.  I leave many things open for interpretation, as well as holes that you yourself would need to fill.  I do this for two reasons:

  1. To make you think – Life is nothing when everything is handed to you.  Thinking and deductive reasoning are great skills to develop, and I try to encourage everyone to think outside the box, and within it when necessary.
  2. Leaves more for me to talk about later.  If I blew my entire load in one post, I’d have nothing to write about later.  I really don’t converse much and tend to be the quiet type.  Same is true for writing.

The rabbit hole that is programming is vast and contains many corners, off-shoots and dead-ends.  Sometimes you need to find these on your own and can never be told.  Some things just need to be experienced.

This is one of those moments where I felt that explaining myself would be better for the overall good.  Plus, I think this is something that everyone who is trying to make a little money can benefit from.

If you have subscribed to my blog, I’d like to invite you to leave a comment to let me know who you are.  If there is anything you’d like to ask of me, please feel free to do so any time.  Perhaps you have an idea for a web site or blog and would like to know my opinions.  Maybe you’re a co-worker or friend who is simply keeping up with me and what I write about. Maybe you’re banging your head on some issue.

Regardless of who you might be, I’d love to know who you are.  It’s a rather empty feeling seeing nearly 400 subscribers and only seeing comments from a handful of “regulars” and the occasional new commentator.

I’m highly thankful to you for subscribing, and I hope that I help you in some way with your technology and education, or simply put a smile on your face because I’ve done something completely random and out of place from what you might expect from me.

Thank you for subscribing!

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About the Author

Wayne John is a web developer in Southern California that shares his 25+ years of programming and web development experience freely and happily to anyone willing to learn. He also loathes speaking in the third person. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed or get updates in your email.