Friday, August 5, 2011

Long Live LBRs!

Here's a salute to our LBRs.  (LBR = Loyal Blog Reader)  Back when we started this blog on 01/01/10, we foolishly thought we were writing it solely for ourselves and that no one would be interested in reading it.  We said, "The purpose of this blog is simply to attempt to record the year."

On January 3rd way back when, we even titled a post: "This blog's for me." We went on to say, "It's only been a couple of days since I created this blog and I can already tell you it fits me like a comfortable slipper.  I didn't realize that I didn't have a blog just for my own miscellaneous ramblings.  Of those 34 or more blogs I mentioned the other day--this is really the only one that doesn't have a truly specific and focused purpose.  It's great to be able to write whatever I want about anything under the sun...writing about nothing in particular is a fat lot of fun."

We had absolutely NO idea that anyone would be interested in reading our mundane meanderings.  When the first person mumbled they might be interested in reading this blog, we were amused and thought perhaps they had way too much time on their hands.  When the second person said something similar we were perplexed.  What on earth in this blog could be interesting to other people?  Pretty soon people began mentioning things they could only know by reading the blog.  We were flattered but also even more perplexed.  How could anyone find this blog interesting when we had specifically stated "This Blog's For Me?

Well, one thing led to another and the rest is history.  Over the past year and a half, we have been gifted with the greatest core of Loyal Blog Readers we could possibly imagine.  It's so uplifting and heartwarming it feels like living a scene out of a Jimmy Stewart movie.  Our LBRs have stuck with up through thick and thin typos, through totally mind-numbing mundane-ness and are hats are off to our LBRs. 

What caused this focus on LBRs this morning?  Each Friday we receive our blog stats.  They are below.  You can see we averaged 28 visitors each day during the past week and they stayed an average of two and a half minutes.  They each looked at about a page and a half.  What that statistic means is that half of them looked at one page and the other half look at two pages.  We figure our loyal core of LBR numbers somewhere between 24 and 30.  Their numbers ebb and flow each week and the average is probably mid-twenties.  That's a LOT of LBRs for a mundane blog like this one, especially when we have been particularly mundane of late! 

We sure do appreciate you--and you all know who you are!

The fact that you are "out there" reading this blog is a source of continuing amazement to us.  It's at once an "ah, shucks" humbling compliment and always a constant challenge.  We do know that as the quality and frequency of our posts declines, our readership shrinks almost immediately.  When we're out there doing stuff, readership often expands into the mid-30's.  But when times get boring and truly mundane, there's always our core of Über LBRs.

You're on our mind this morning and we just wanted to shout out a huge THANK YOU for reading.  We will do our best to continue to Ruminate & Reminisce about Mundane Meanderings.  Although we started with the naive idea that "This blog's for me," we long ago realized the error of that idea.  We cherish the reality you LBRs care enough to read what we write and we're now delighted to say, "This Blog's for YOU!"

Thank you, LBRs, for the daily spark of motivation and energy to sit down and write something you actually read.  Life is GOOD!

Have a great day & Many Cheers!  jp

The Daily News                        
                      (s41livesimple)                       

                    -- Site Summary ---                     
          Visits

            Total ........................ 9,360            
            Average per Day ................. 28            
            Average Visit Length .......... 2:36            
            This Week ...................... 194            

          Page Views

            Total ....................... 16,557            
            Average per Day ................. 38            
            Average per Visit .............. 1.4            
            This Week ...................... 269 

2 comments:

Kirsty said...

I'm reading and loving it:)

John Parsons said...

Thank You, Kirsty, for your great comment! We love reading your blog!

We had an interesting email interchange with an LBR yesterday morning. The LBR will remain anonymous. However, we thought you would enjoy the emails. Here was Email #1 from one of our favorite LBRs:

"Nice column today...actually I still think that one of the reasons it attracts an audience is the wide variety of topics. It's almost like "geeze what is that guy up to today". Another reason is that for couch potatoes (like me) its an opportunity to check up on what's happening without expending any energy."

Here is email #2:

"John--actually I thought of another reason to read the blog after I sent the e-mail. Your many activities and coming and goings makes me tired and gives me a good excuse to take a nap! LOL"

To which we replied:

"See...it really DOES put you to sleep!"

Long Live LBRs--you are ALL so Awesome! jp