0 Another busy month

It has been another busy month at Keeping Stock HQ. Numbers-wise, it wasn't quite an outright record month, but we had the most traffic we've ever had in a 30-day month. Here's our most recent metrics, via Statcounter:

And Ken Perrett from Open Parachute has been busy all morning uploading Sitemeter and Statcounter data for the 300-plus blogs he ranks. Here are the June 2014 Open Parachute rankings:

It's pleasing to still be ranked inside Open Parachute's Top 10 New Zealand blogs. It makes the effort we put into blogging (which often comes at the expense of other, more productive things we could be doing) worthwhile.

As the General Election draws nearer, politics will be our primary, but not our exclusive focus. James Stephenson emerged from hibernation this morning to blog, and we're hoping Nookin will make regular contributions so you don't just have to endure our thoughts. And Curly Sue has promised to keep her creative juices flowing, even though she's been a bit quiet of late!

A blog would be a lonely place if no one visited or commented, so thanks to those of you who take the time to do just that. You encourage us to keep going on days when we could easily flag it.

0 Yet another record month

We were a little bit gutted when our Sitemeter counter spat the dummy last week. That's because we knew that another record was within reach. Sitemeter still hasn't found our missing visitors, and in fact is more than 100 hours behind now:

Fortunately, we also installed Statcounter a few years ago, and given that Ken Perrott at Open Parachute also includes Statcounter in his Blog Rankings, that will now be our counter of choice. But Statcounter too confirmed our best moth ever:

And to round things off, we've achieved our best-ever ranking on the Open Parachute rankings; check this out:

 

We're never likely to threaten Kiwiblog or Whaleoil, or any of the top five. But we've got our eyes on Sciblogs, and as the election draws nearer, even Danyl's Dim-Post numbers may be attainable. But we also work full-time, and we have to balance our priorities!

Rex asked yesterday "You do this why?". That's a very good question, as we approach our seventh birthday. We "do this" because we can, because we enjoy it, and in view of the increasing visitor numbers, clearly other people enjoy what we produce as well. We're never going to be mass-market in the same way as the leading blogs on Ken's rankings, but we're up there with the most-visited "boutique" blogs. Clearly, there's an audience.

And we'll continue to "do this" as long as we enjoy it. When the enjoyment factor drops away, it'll be time to retire from blogging. In the meantime you're stuck with us!

Thanks to everyone who visits, and an even bigger thanks to those who take the time to comment; we sincerely appreciate your opinions (even yours Rex), even if we don't share them. It would be a boring place if everyone agreed all the time. So it's onwards and upwards!

0 Nearly, but not quite

After our busiest ever blogging month in March, we had low expectations for April. The combination of a 30-day month, public holidays (Easter and Anzac Day) and our trip to South Australia all pointed to falling numbers in the latter part of the month.

And we were right; visitor numbers were down, but not by as much as we had expected, and we still recorded our second-ever busiest month both for unique visits and page views. Here are the numbers:

We were more surprised however to hold our place at #10 in Open Parachute's New Zealand Blog Rankings. We have some way to go to catch the likes of Whaleoil, Kiwiblog or even the union-funded Daily Blog, but for a most-of-the-time one-man band we're not doing too badly.

As always, we note that these results are entirely based on the premise that people will vote with their mouse, and pay us a visit. In order for them to do that, we have to provide content that's worthy of checking out, and that's what we try to do; sometimes, more successfully than others! So thanks for stopping by, and please call again; we DO appreciate it.