Coffee with Clark "blogstone," by the numbers

Screen shot of blog page views per month from beginning in May 2009 til today when it surpassed 5,000 monthly views for first time.--Note: Blogspot is wrong, not May 2007, but 2009.

Coffee with Clark reached a "blogstone" today--more than 5,000 views in a calendar month. That's a long way from May 2009 when it started.

Here are the numbers:

•  5,012--December page views at 9:45 am today
• 4,459--Previous high month, July, 2013

105,000+ --page views total

Page views by country

United States	66350
Russia	4423
Germany	4282
United Kingdom	2533
Ukraine	2277
France	1878
China	926
Canada	687
Poland	670
India	607

• 128--number of countries with readers
• 33--new countries this year

Blog posts per year

• 2009--339
• 2010--292
• 2011--135
• 2012--203
• 2013--252--by December 31

Months with most posts

• August, 2009--76
• July, 2009--70
• January, 2010--57
• April, 2010--47
• December, 2013!--39--by the end of the year

Day with most page views

• Dec, 23, 2013--532! A watercolor "Christmas eve journey"

Most popular posts of all time

• 2492--All aboard for Bartlesville , October, 2010 (I have no idea why)
• 1646--All aboard, August, 2010
• Actually top six posts of all time include the words "All aboard." Lots of train buffs?

Most popular posts in last month

• 129--Flags of historic friends--Canada, Feb. 2012 (This is now the 10th most popular posting of all time) I wondered about posting articles and maps about the countries of my readers, but apparently, it's interesting.
• 114--Black Friday blues, November, 2013
• 75--A Friday night 44 years ago, Nov. 2013
• 71--Raining ice as the sun comes out, December, 2013

My favorite and most creative posts--helping earn the Okie Blog Best Writing in the State Award in 2009

•  "The booth is a verb"--More than 10,000 words in multiple chapters telling the story of the booth and my friend, the late Bob Illidge, from 2009.

This blog is typical of many, starting out with a flurry of postings, bottled up inside, or from something that triggers a passion. That's why the first year had so many postings and then tapered off. I wondered when I started it if it'd continue, and it did slump, but has picked back up.
That's due in part because I teach a class in blogging at UCO and have to be active to have integrity. It's also due to the fact that the blog has grown and changed since the beginning and I've learned a lot and changed too. 
It now includes more photographs and paintings, and more story telling I think. The design has changed with the times too. What hasn't changed in the past four months is the title photo at the top, from my back road solo trip to New Mexico. That photo tells you so much about me and my interests. But it will eventually change too.
 What's next? I have no idea, although I've said for some time I want to take the blog to the "next level," whatever that means. I hope it means switching formats and hosts, adding advertising for some income, and emphasizing travel more. But I don't really know.
Why do I do this? I guess because I'm a first-born Capricorn  and deep down, a journalist.
When I owned the Waurika News-Democrat, my weekly column was titled "Trail Talk," because we were on the old Chisholm Trail. As a friend once said to me about this blog, "Hey, you've got your column back."

Blogvolution Blues

A good blog is always changing, always evolving, I've found. I call it "blogvolution." It changes with the author and times and  technology. Like life. No change, no life. I teach that to my students. It's always a matter of learning, experimenting, changing, growing.
But I an not pleased when I click on some item, tinkering to make small changes with an overall appearance I like-- and my  whole blog changes, as happened two days ago. Bear with me while I try to figure this out and improve the layout and typography. I don't know what I did, and I don't like it, and Blogspot, while easier than Wordpress, is not exactly non-computer-geek friendly. I considered changing to Wordpress, but since I teach a blogging class, Blogspot is just too beginner friendly to give up, even if it maddeningly obtuse. Some blogvolution is regressive. Or maybe it was just a sign that I was too stuck in my ways and need to change more.
So I'm out of my comfort zone and still tinkering, a little at a time. It will get better.

• Rule One--Is it easy to read? If not, nothing else matters--that involves quality content, interesting and good writing, and appropriate typography.
• Rule Two--Is it attractive and well-organized to help achieve Rule 1? If not, make it so.

I'm working on rule 2 at the moment, without much success. I may have to hire someone to get it where I want. Suggestions of any sort are welcome.

Who reads this blog, and why, around the world?

                 Who reads a blog like this? The evolution and progress of Coffee with Clark has  astounded me for four reasons.  
First, of the millions of blogs in the world, few continue as long as this one, now approaching four years with fairly regular postings.
Second, since it's not a "niche" blog, and doesn't have a huge official following, it still has attracted an international audience. I would love to know about the people, beyond the United States,  who read it in those 84 other countries on six of the seven continents around the world where my stats show they are. I wish my stats also showed where most of my readers were state-by-state, but so far that hasn't happened. Google stats do show me almost 65,000 hits and which posts are most popular, and a number of other things, but I'd like to know more.
Third, when I look back at my postings, I'm amazed at how much I've learned and how the blog has evolved over the years. I'm still learning--and have to since I teach a class "Blogging for Journalists" at UCO every semester. The pressure is on.  Of course my students often teach me as much as I do them. 
Fourth, the amount of new online resource material available on blogging, plus news stories and more about the impact of blogging continues to grow. One highlight of the past years was winning the "Best Writing" award in the state, my first year. Then they quit having the contest. 
I do know there will be more change in the future as the "blogosphere" continues to explode and change, almost every minute, much like our physical universe.  You need to read Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" to put all this in perspective, and to see the multitude or blogs, and the world leaders. technorati.com  In the near future I hope, I'll be changing to Wordpress from Blogspot, but I'll continue a couple of other teaching blogs in Blogspot because it's easier to teach. If I could find my "niche," maybe I could make money at this, but I don't fit into niches very easily.
So here, from Google stats, are the countries where by readers come from, in no particular order, but I've arranged them by continents.

• Africa--Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Gabon, South Africa, Mali, Morocco, 
• Asia--Japan, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Korea, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Armenia 
• Caribbean and Central America--Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico
• Europe--Poland, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Georgia, Turkey, Romania, Slovenia, Netherlands, Serbia, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovnia, Latvia, Greece, Hungary, Czech Republic, Norway, Estonia, Belgium, Macedonia(FYROM), Portugal, Estonia, Monaco
• Mideast--Saudia Arabia, UAE, Israel, Kuwait, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Iraq, Cyprus  
• North America--US, Canada, Mexico
• South America--Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru
• Oceania--Australia, Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, New Zealand

For the record, most readers come from the United States. Here's the top ten countries for readers and the number of hits in the past four years. 

United States	41372
Germany	3062
Russia	2746
United Kingdom	1819
Ukraine	1361
France	878
India	556
Netherlands	529
Slovenia	422
Canada	415

Unreadability blogging book rant

Horrible typography. You can't read this at full size

• If you saw a book with tiny white sans serif type in reverse on bright green and red and blue, you'd assume the authors and printers knew nothing about readability, right? Right. And if it were a how-to book, you'd question their expertise any anything else--if they don't understand basic readability. Right? Right! 
• Coming soon on blog, I'll be switching to Wordpress, 'cause Blogspot on Goodle is static and monopolistic. So today I bought two books. One was "Wordpress for Dummies." A good book. But, then there was this flashy one on the newsstand. 
• ...If you're considering blogging, don't buy "The Bloggers Book" with a CD in it. Published by the English. Ok...but these fools may know the Internet--which I now question, but they know nothing about typography---yep, 8 point sans serif white on weak green or bright red or yucky orange, etc. Other text is hard to read 8 or 9 point sans serif. Organization is awful, hard to follow.
• Finally, I've blown $29.99 on this, already found errors in graphics, etc. And being English they spell emphasize "emphasise." Makes me glad we won the Revolution. Now if we can teach them readability. Oh, yes, I intend to email them this, but you could too. But the 5 point type is probably hiding their email...can't find it.
• You gonna hear from me. At least what I spent is tax deductible. www.imaginesubs.co.uk/icr
• And if you click on that link to subscribe, you have to have a pass code to get in, which you get in finally big sans serif type on the back page of their lousy book