I see you better now!

Clustermaps has added a neat feature. I can now see from where my blog is being accessed, in real time. Little yellow dots give away your geographic position, and a list names the places (I guess you'll have to click on the image to see that).

Hallo Dortmund! Bom dia, Florianópolis! Good day, Sydney! Or should I rather say good night? To Wellington too. What time is it now in New York, or Fort Myers, Florida? It is 9 am here in Rio so you guys must be early birds... Âlesund and Birkenhead are probably having lunch by now...

Blogging is an interseting experience, and one can become addicted to it, if one doesn't constantly remember what the blog was started for in the first place. It is easy for it to become a "Selbstzweck", a self-centered thing, that lives for itself. Suddenly, one keeps looking at the site-hits, and thinking how the number of visitors could be increased.

At a certain point, when the blog was attracting around 60-80 visitors a day, I have been contacted by several companies who wanted to place adds on my blog. I refused all of them. The reasons to reject outnumbered the benefits by far. Well, I suppose the only benefit would have been the money, right? And, unfortunately, I must say, the offer wouldn't have made me a rich man. I wouldn't be able to stop working, and concentrate on building my boat, and post every day about the progress, my personal, inner-feelings,... As a matter of fact, it would hardly have paid me and my girl a good dinner, with a fine bottle of wine - per year!!! I found that slightly insulting... ;-)

The effect of these commercial contacts was, that I thought back at why I was blogging afterall. I started to document the construction of my boat. For myself, friends and family, mostly. I would offer pictures and description of the construction, so that I wouldn't have to send pictures around per e-mail. I also posted about other matters, influences that I might have found interesting, or simply beautifull, which would in some way describe my creative project - in a very broad sense. This includes the boat, my mobiles, my paintings, my other little creative initiatives... In order to paint the big picture, so to say.

But again, this was mostly for myself.

For the documentation aspect, I consider the blog is a great success. I do often browse through old posts. It is phantastic to have a picture diary, with construction stages, in perfect chronologic order. I reach back into the past, and relate what I was building, when, and what difficulties I was facing. And what other things I might have been thinking about. ... even if I do allways take priviacy issues into account, when I post.

Due to the very personal aspect of the blog, I saw the increase of the number of visitors with a slight suspicion. Why were so many people coming to see my blog? These people were not friends (not yet, anyway) and family. The very map, offered by Clustermaps, gave away that people from all over the globe were checking in, and participating on my construction, enjoying some of my sunrises together with me. Funny thing. Some of you leave an occasional note, which makes it possible to relate to some of the little dots on the map. But not all.

In the last months, my posting activity has diminished. In 2010 I have posted around 19 posts per month. In 2011 only 14 p.m.. Only 9 in May. I had other things to tend to, and time was scarce. Well, I guess the best indicator that my head was somewhere else, is the very diminished boatbuilding activity! But apart from that, I have also consciously, reduced posting activity to see what would happen with the number of visitors. Sure enough, the number slowly declined to the half. But still, a regular 30-40 folks would still drop in, day-by-day, to check out for posts. I wondered, if these were still the same folks, who just halved their visits, or whether some just stopped coming.

On the other hand, it was interesting to see how quick the number started climbing again, once I increased posting frequency.

I sometimes tried to estimate how manny individuals made up the crowd of visitors. I mean, with an average of 60 visitors a day, you get about 420 hits a week and 1800 a month. But how many faces are behind that number? If I take it from myself, I use to visit my favorite blogs about 3 times a week. But I guess this is an above average number... And I have no idea what the global avearage internet, blog access activity is... Does anbody know?