HAPPY Birthday to My Blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was looking through some old posts the other day and realised that my blog reached its one year anniversary. Here is a link to my first post.

I plan on posting articles of interest for local Real Estate as well as share my opinion on issues. Also, I plan to use this blog to broadcast any other personal stuff that may come up. This is going to be a way for me to keep in touch with Family, Friends, Clients, and Future Clients.

My Yearly Blog Traffic:
Since day one I have been tracking the number of visitors to my blog using a free tracker program called sitemeter.com. I like it because its easy to use and set up. Its a fast, free Web counter that has custom counters styles. Site Meter creates dynamic 3D charts showing visitors, page views, country maps, visit durations and more. I use the free version, there is the sitemeterPlus which has all kinds of cool features. Another cool website tracker that I have used is MyblogLog.com which is a more detailed and more advanced free tracker but I just like the features of sitemeter better.

From the beginning I have had around about 8000 visitors and about 113,000 page views. This week my traffic was around 177 visits. I don't know why there are sooo many page views vs. Visitors? I would guess people are really reading my blog or there is somthing else going on.....(Click Fraud)

When I started the blog I got off to a slow start and found out that I could really kick up the traffic from craigslist and also gathering readers from my other websites, through email and word of mouth. Currently my blog is completly supported with passive visitors. I get a majority of my traffic from google and yahoo. I also have a small base of loyal readers aswell. .My traffic peaked in april when I was doing a few ads for a house in the bay area on craigslist. Those peak months were months when I had more posting per month then any other.

As you can see from the chart in the last few months I have been posting less and have been pretty happy with the steady passive traffic flow of about 20-40 a day. If I do a promotion and pull out all of the tricks I can get 100-250+ visits in one day. Since I have started the blog part of my motivation is to sell real estate. While I know that the blog is being read I cant say that I have directly received any sales because of my blog. But that's not my motivation and that's why I enjoy working on it.....Its a little personal and a little business, a blend, just like my life.

My Favorites!
This year I published about 130 posts. I like each post I do but my favorites of the bunch in no particular order are:

1) My first house and pictures of my first house.
2) What I did on my birthday.
3) Castle for sale in the Centennial Estates (Love this house!)
4) Lathrop is booming.
5) Capital Gains Tax Laws and Loopholes. (this gets the most national traffic.)
6) What $200,000 will get you in Tracy, Ca. (it Sold!)

7) Byron Hotsprings posts;
Pictures I took of the Byron Hotsprings Hotel on 4/29/06
More pictures & reading on Byron Hotsprings Hotel....
The Future of Byron Hotsprings
Byron Hotsprings AKA Camp Tracy.
History of the Hotsprings

8) Local Superstar MC Hammer gets a Blog
9) My RedCross Experance (Hurricane Katrina & Rita)
10) My Pets 'N' Pals Post
11) Brichetto Tomb Historic landmark
12) My two Chinchillas
13) Star Trek: The Experance in Las Vagas
14) Friends of Tyler

It was fun going through my blog posts for the year and it took a lot longer then I thought. I was supposted to post this on the third! I forgot how much I have written over the year, around 130 posts, about one every other day. Once I have a blog post done I usually forget about it and move on. I do have about twenty posts in draft form that I have never published, just incomplete ideas that I never came back to. What I like and what was an unexpected benifit is that I can look at my blog posts over the last year almost like a diary.

Brian Barringer