600

It's post #600.
600 posts isn't anything monumental as bloggers go, especially when it's been over 5 years of blogging here at Out of My Hat.  Several of the blogs that I read post on a daily basis.  Most post much more often than I do.  Several of the blogs that I once followed have faded into the cyber mist and no longer exist.  Others have taken their places as new people have started blogging and I have found new blogs to follow. I haven't taken the time to delete idle blogs from my list of "blogs I follow" and should probably clean that up...someday.

I was looking back over the previous 599 posts and looking at the most often viewed posts and the posts that received the most comments.  The second part (the most comments) is a little bit skewed since some of you now comment on Facebook instead of on the post itself.

For a short time, I was having the posts appear as "notes" on Facebook but then I really had no way of tracking how many hits I was getting.  Of course, in the grand scheme of things, I don't suppose that it really matters if anybody reads the rants of Midwest, small town boy.

This post from December 2006 is the one that has received the most hits--4,045 to date. That's a little over eight times as many as the second place post's 488 views. Most of them are at around the 50 mark with a few reaching toward a hundred hits.  Numbers dropped as I became less regular for a time and are slowly picking up with more regular posts and from linking to my blog from Facebook. Twitter has had little impact since I only have a few followers and really haven't figured out how to use it to my advantage.

I know that the large number of hits on the few posts that have large numbers are from search engines that find something that causes people to click on a link and read them.

I also took some time to read comments from the posts that drew the most comments here at Out of My Hat (again, Facebook comments were not tracked).  I found it interesting that I receive far fewer opposing comments here than on Facebook.  Apparently, Facebook friends feel more free to share their opposing viewpoints than those that post here. Posts with labels--message, religion or favorite bible stories--receive few comments.

In the five+ years that I've been rambling at Out of My Hat, I'm no closer to writing a book than I was when I wrote my very first post suggesting that it was in my future. Maybe it still is...

In any case, blogging has been a far greater experience than I ever imagined it to be. I have made cyber friends from around the world. Some contacts go beyond the comments on our blogs to Facebook friendships, personal e-mails, cards or letters via snail mail and an occasional meet at Ted Drewe's.

Thanks to all of you that have stopped by to read, share a comment or share a link to one of my posts.

John <><