Thursday, March 31, 2011

Pork thigh?

This blog, according to Blogger Stats averages 55,000 page views per month. I have said before that I should not see this as a genuine interest in my blog. Most of those page views come from random image searches. I have a feeling that few of those 55,000 ever linger. Friends say I should (based on the stats) seek Google ads for my blog. Few would (or would you?) understand that putting ads would not only deface its look but somehow cheapen it. My wife thinks I am nuts and every once in a while when I tell her I am busy writing my blog she says, “Where is the money?”

My friend, illustrator and designer, Ian Bateson of Baseline Type & Graphics might agree with my wife as he says that somehow in this 21st century nobody wants to pay for content. The NY Times is going to attempt to change this view with its just imposed pay wall.

It was just about three years ago that Bob Mercer, the then editor of a magazine that gainfully employed me (but is now defunct) VLM (Vancouver Lifestyles Magazine) proudly showed me the cover (in sharp b+w) of a cute puppy. He  told me, “I purchased the photograph from a micro stock agency for $10.00 and paid only GST. The cover cost me exactly $10.50.” I knew then that most magazine photographers (or at least those in Vancouver) were doomed!



Bateson might comment, “Wow,” If I told him that some anomaly (it has to be that) has produced a jump to 116,194 page views , and in the first few days of April [I am writing this blog on Saturday April 2] page views are already at 33,437. But I will take it all with a grain of salt. I have studied the statistics and the searches and have come to the conclusion that there has to be some error in the page count as I did nothing different in that last week of March, when the hyper-jump happened. One possible one (but not listed anywhere in the traffic source box) is this one. Could that title: A Labyrinth of Gaddafi, Kaddafi, Qadhafi... have been the culprit?

Those reading this will certainly be amused by the web page captures I made from the stats traffic sources. You will immediately notice the whimsical randomness of these searches. The blog that does have some sort of permanence (it is always high in the traffic source) is the one (and a few others) about Rosa ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’. This rose is the whitest and healthiest in my garden. It is also one of the earliest to bloom and, to boot, it is extremely fragrant. Notice the screen capture of that page translated into German! If you google Rosa 'Blanc Double de Coubert' you will find my blog on the first page.

In German

One traffic source  really baffled me for a while. It was the traffic source search for pork thigh. The page showed one of my pictures of two females (wonderful females!) dancing the tango. I went to the blog and then noticed the title! Check that title here.

The other one that surprised me, too was one that came from a search hawks, 1946 and featured a sexy picture I took of Bif Naked a few years ago as The Little Sister. The explanation was obvious once I went to the blog. In it I had this quote:

Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Marlowe: Who's he?
Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946, with Humphrey Bogart, Marlowe, Lauren Bacall, Vivian).

Hawks, 1946

All in all I can only smile as to how search engines work and I can accept with some resignation what I have known for a long time. You see, my mother often told me, “Alex, you and I will have to work for the rest of our lives and money will only come off the sweat of our brows.”