OK, so a few days ago, I asked for opinions and suggestions, and over the past few days many of y’all have obliged. I should begin by thanking all of you who took the time to chime in. Being on this end, it can seem like a sensory deprivation chamber, and sometimes it’s easy to feel rather superfluous and irrelevant. Apparently, I have a lot more fans out there than I’d realized…so thanks for the affirmations. That means more to me than y’all can know. It’s always nice to know that people are actually paying attention, even if they don’t always agree with me.
Of course, y’all might be wondering just what I’ve learned from this experience. Well, funny you should ask….
For lo, these many years, I’ve been relying on Sitemeter to get a feel for my readership. Apparently, this was a HUGE mistake, as Sitemeter doesn’t register hits from RSS feeds…and who knows what else it doesn’t measure. The reality is that I have NO idea how many readers I have on a daily basis. Sitemeter tells me that TPRS is averaging about visitors 500 per day, and my server stats say about 20,000. Hmm…. Since I have no clear idea what my readership numbers actually are, I’m going to stop worrying about those numbers. I know y’all are out there; I just don’t know how many of y’all there are. There are worse problems to have.
DON’T CHANGE THE NAME!! OK…I think THAT message has been received, so TPRS it is and shall remain. I’m wondering , though; what if I leave Seabrook? Or Texas? I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when and/or if I get to it.
More pet pictures!
Fewer pet pictures! Jeebus, people…make up your mind already! ;0)
More naked pictures of Ann Coulter! Or not….
How about the occasional guest columnist? Not a bad idea. In fact, I’ve got calls into Ted Kaczynski and Bob Ney.
Don’t quit and don’t change. Hey, I can do that! I was never seriously thinking about quitting. I’m still arrogant enough to think that I have something to say and that people will actually read it. My frustrations have had more to do with a creeping sense of irrelevance. Now that I’m learning just how many TPRS fans there are out there, perhaps it’s time to consider expanding the empire. I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a charity golf tournament at some point. I’ve also thought about selling TPRS merchandise…and not the cheap crap you see on Cafe Press, either. (How about TPRS rolling papers? Or adult diapers? Yeah, anyone can sell T-shirts….)
My technical knowledge and abilities are limited to a working knowledge of HTML, so if anyone has ideas of enhancements they’d like to see here and how they can be implemented, I’m willing to listen. Rather than ripping stuff up and starting over, it makes sense to tinker around the margins…plus, it’s a whole lot less work. (And James Bow, bless his heart, keeps TPRS functional for free. )
The dream is still there…and that’s to somehow be able to make a living doing this. It may not ever happen, but I keep thinking that there has to be a way. I’d love to be able to quit my day job and do this full time. Just think of the Hell I could raise (yeah, I miss Molly Ivins, too).
Thanks for you input. I’ll continue what I’ve been doing for the past five-plus years, and I hope that y’all will continue coming back. It’s been fun, and as long as that continues to hold true, I’ll still be here, trying to string together a few complete sentences here and there.
Stay tuned…the next semi-annual existential crisis of confidence ought to roll around in about…oh, eight or nine months…. ;0)
