I started allowing comments on this blog in December 2004. These are the comments received, per week, in the time since.
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I’ve noticed, as with my blog posting history, that there is no correlation between frequency and quality. Few posts with a large number of comments have particularly good discussions — my favorite discussions often have no more than 10-20 comments. Likewise, I see nothing about periods in which I output a large number of blog entries that tends towards quality, as I perceive it. On the contrary, my favorite blog entries seem to be distributed without regard for such patterns.
Waldo, I hope you are feeling better.
What causes traffic on a blog to drop? I noticed that yours fluctuates.
See that low point in Jan 2006? That was the political sphere in Virginia taking a few weeks off before the next election cycle begins. It’s about the only break I have had this year.
A great deal better, thank you.
Mine is actually fairly consistent, but comment levels certainly fluctuate. One of my blogs, cvillenews.com, has traffic levels that constantly fluctuate between ~2,100 — ~3,500 visitors/day. Weekends are the source of sub-2800 traffic. Whenever I get a plateau of traffic up around 3,500 visitors for more than a few days, it’s always prompted by something going on in meatspace — some sort of a scandal or going-on that makes people interested in discussing it. Whenever there’s a spike like that without a corresponding blog entry, that usually means I need to get off my butt and figure out what people are so excited about, so I can write about it. :)
Glad you are feeling better.
Very interesting stuff… guess it’s time to start actually monitoring my own sites, though I am somewhat afraid to as I know everything will be in much smaller numbers (grin).