Blog Statistics

 

 

    I began Blogging about chess in 2008 but had to start over in 2010. One Friday in February of 2010 I made a post then checked it out and discovered my Blog had been hacked and anyone signing in to it was redirected to a whole bunch of those pay per click online shopping sites. I contacted Blogger and received a ‘no reply’ e-mail that essentially told me they can't help and suggesting I delete the old Blog and start a new one. You get what you pay for, I guess. Initially I was miffed but then considering that my Blog didn't have a lot of visitors, I was honest with myself an admitted it was no big deal but the thing that left me puzzled was who would want to hack a Blog with almost no visitors?
     I debated about starting another Blog and finally decided that even if there are no visitors it gives me something to do. Since then I have published 1218 posts, have had almost 300,000 visitors and now get around 200-300 hits per day which isn’t too bad.
     The most popular posts have been Strange Adjudication Policy on LSS, a non-chess post I did about Michelina’s TV dinners (!), a post on free pdf chess book downloads, the Rybka opening book online and one on chess engine styles.
     Most viewers come from the United States...60%. The next highest number of hits are from the Ukraine (8%) and Turkey (7%). Trailing considerably behind are Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Romania and Canada.
     The book/equipment review Blog was started two years ago and has had over 20,000 hits. Again the leading countries for visitors have been the US and Turkey (nearly tied) and Spain. The Blog on free stuff which was started about the same time as the book/equipment review Blog has had almost 18,000 visitors. Again, most of them from the US, but a surprisingly large number of visitors have been from China.
     I’ve been asked a few times if I make any money doing this stuff and the answer is “Yes.” But that needs qualification! The most expensive thing anybody bought by linking from this Blog was Chess Assistant Starter Package which netted me $2.80. The oddest purchase (to me) was a bottle of Paul Mitchell shampoo for men which netted me $0.67. So, on rare occasions I may get a $10 Amazon gift card, but that’s all.  Hardly raking in the cash, but I don't do it for the money. I do it because...well, now that I think about it, there's no good reason to do it.  
     I like to keep things interesting, so here's a picture of our cat, Millie.