A story about the ramifications of participating in NaBloPoMo ...

Before starting the NaBloPoMo I was doing research about SEO and various other aspects of growing a website / blog. The techie people kept trying to convince me that it's all about how you design your code, structure your sentences, etc. But then there's another group that's exploring the "viral" aspects of marketing. Personally, I was getting suspicious that it's some major combo of the two that more heavily depended on the people aspect than the code.

I believe that what happened between me and others during NaBloPoMo proves two things:

• If you want to have friends, you need to show yourself friendly.
• The Golden Rule still rules.

I can directly attribute 88.2% of my traffic this month to me going out and being social. And I don't mean just blog social. I also got hits from activities on 43things.com and BetterPhoto.com. There is a direct correlation between my social behavior on a site and the number of visitors I receive ... but also there is a direct correlation between my "social-ness" and the number of pages those visitors view.

Out of my total traffic from known destinations 11.3% came from the randomizer (Thank you Lane!) and 2.5% found just my name on the list at Fussy.org interesting enough to click through.

11.8% came from search engines. The hits I did get from the search engines were mostly, amazingly on target to the subject of my writing. One however was way out in left field but they came to my site anyway and viewed 7 pages ... so maybe if I'm not relevant, I'm entertaining? I've been trying to practice sticking mostly to one subject per post. So that's just an FYI for anybody who's considering adding ads to their posts.

Speaking of ads. In general, ya'll are not a curious lot when it comes to ads. But my click-through reports did reveal which ads even had a fighting chance with my current visitors. I was pleased because it's one of my faves, too.

Some of you may wonder why I have ads with such a low amount of traffic. I figure I gotta start practicing somewhere with something and a great many affiliates are willing to let me practice on the off chance that I'm lucky one day. It's a low risk venture all the way around.

Ok one more stat just because it pleases me ... 49.3% of you come to see me via Firefox!! 43.7% is MS's IE, and 4.6% is Safari.

The ramifications of certain activities and actions like the ones above are measurable as far as visitors aka "hits" go.

BUT how do you measure the impact of words and images? At the close of yesterday, my word count for my November blogging was 18,128. I have commented on more blogs than I can count (but I am so going to count them next year). I have posted in various forms and places ... for the purpose of this blog month ... 154 images. I am not going to count (ever!) the number of links I made.

The ramification of all those words and images is that I became, in a word, interesting.

Being interesting netted me some very nice people saying very nice things to me and about me. But being interesting and caring ... resulted in very nice, interesting, caring people saying very caring things to me and doing really great things for me. That's why I say the Golden Rule still rules.

I am thoroughly exhausted from working at being interesting and caring. Am I exhausted enough to give up? No Way! Because I am also madly in love with the people who come to visit me on my blog. In fact someone recently made a very bad mistake of referring to my blog as a thing. As in "that thing is really coming along." I nearly died. "Thing? Thing! That "thing" is my BABY!"

But it's not just my baby that I'm in love with. I'm in love with other people's babies, too – their blogs and their children.

So there's no way the exhaustion that can come from being interesting and caring is going to drive me away because obviously the ramification is that I get to enjoy hanging out with a whole bunch of people who are interesting and caring and are from all over the world.

Bottom line: I have no idea how to really measure the ramifications of this experience because of the people I've met (and the books I've read). I'll give a new evaluation before the next NaBloPoMo.

Ok next up: The credits (but first I need lunch and ibuprophen ... has anybody else taken to living on that stuft this last week?)