Hitting My Targets

I joined Associated Content on 12th January, but it was on 14th January, 9 weeks ago today, that I published my first article. I was amazed to find this morning that I had published a total of 99 articles in that time, and so I thought it would be appropriate to publish this, my 100th article on my 9 week anniversary.

Partly due to the popularity of my slide shows, in particular the ones I posted of the Old Cemetery in Southampton, I start today with 9,443 page views, and am 90% of the way towards my target of Clout 6.

Judging by the number of comments that I received yesterday on my Christchurch slide shows and my Joys Of Gardening poem, I am hoping to break through to over 10,000 page views today, and also to reach Clout 6.

If I can do all of this today, then that will for me be quite an achievement, and will help spur me on towards greater things - ideally income related.

I haven't counted the number of my fans and followers on Associated Content, but what I have counted is the number of truly great people that I have found here, and I am blessed to have so many of you as friends.

Don't you think it's amazing that even 10 years ago, the ability to interact with so many other writers from around the world just didn't exist. Well I suppose you could do it using sites like AOL, but most people didn't know how to in the first place.

I just wondered how many of us were actually writing 10 years ago. Did you start writing because you enjoy writing, and then start using the Internet to help you with your writing, or was it the other way around, with the Internet and sites like Associated Content leading you to find your writing talents and to develop them? I know with me it was the latter.

I began writing about 10 years ago, developing an opt-in mailing list on Yahoo Groups where I published jokes to help promote my first web site. People really enjoyed the jokes, but more than that, they enjoyed a section where I added snippets of what was going on in my life, which were often bizarre, and they also enjoyed my views on life and bizarre news items.

In January 2008 I came across Squidoo, and instantly developed an outlet for my writing skills, developing first Humor related lenses, then a collection of local ones, and then a host of other topics followed. The local lens collection, which is focused on the South Of England where I grew up, and am now back living again after 15 years in the USA, is still in the construction phase, as I keep running out of time and also changing focus. The first of these lenses however, about Bournemouth, the town where I grew up, received both a Lens Of The Day award as well as a much coveted Purple Star award.

Although this local lens project stalled, I have in the last few weeks been uploading some of my photographs that were taken locally in England, and I am aiming to use these in conjunction with my Squidoo lenses to continue work on this collection. I really wanted to use my own photographs on these lenses, rather than stock photos, and so we have some days out planned for later this year, for our own enjoyment as well as for taking photographs, which we both enjoy.

Some of you might have realized that the "pretty lady" who posed for me in one of my photographs of Christchurch also appears in several other photographs that I have taken. That is because she is the love of my life, and we are getting married in 3 weeks, on the 7th April. We both enjoy doing the same things, and my life has never been so good as since we met.

Although she is also a talented writer in her own right, having her own account on Squidoo, she doesn't have the interest in it that I do unfortunately, otherwise I might have some serious competition. If you have the time to take a look at her lenses and enjoy what you see - please comment in her guest books and let her know you enjoyed them. I doubt it will work, but you never know.

So that is in summary a little more about me, my life and my loves. I hope you enjoyed learning more about me than is in my profile, and please wish me well in my race towards 10,000 page views, Clout 6 and beyond.

I feel like echoing the words of Buz Lightyear "To Infinity And Beyond", and wonder if I will ever achieve the ultimate mark of success, one million page views and Clout 10?

Written after the stats for yesterday were published
Well I did reach one goal, 10,020 page views in total, but although the register shows me 100% of the way to reaching Clout 6, I fell just 60 brownie points short. Still, my page views for the day were the third highest of the nine weeks that I have been on Associated Content, and I look forward to smashing into Clout 6 tomorrow and then climbing the stairs to Clout 7.

Written a year later
A year on from this enthusiastic moment, 9 weeks into my writing at Associated Content, I thought that I would update people on how things were going.

The last 6 months especially have seen many changes, from Associated Content being bought by Yahoo and beconming the Yahoo Contributor Network, to many many bugs and site problems, and most recently a change in the Google algorithm has contributed to the woes that many writers have had on this site.

A year ago, this was my 100th article. Now I have published 667, but the traffic on my articles has dropped dramatically in the last few months, and now it is actually well below that I was getting a year ago, despite having six times as many published articles.

I did find myself climbing steadily from Clout 9 to Clout 10, and got 40% of the way there fairly well, but since then the traffic has died and I am now sitting at 51%, having only gained 6% in the last month. At the current rate I will reach Clout 10 about a year from now, which is really disappointing after what I felt was a good start to my writing career on here.

I do hope that things improve, and with luck and some successful articles, I may yet get to the much coveted Clout 10 within six months. Wish me luck in my endeavors.

Meantime, I am spending the month of April doing a blogging challenge, writing an article a day on my blog Off The Record With Debbie And Tony, hoping that this will give my blog a much needed jump start, which in turn will allow me better opportunities to promote my new articles on Yahoo Contributor Network. Should you read this and wonder what my April Challenge articles are about, any visits to my blog and comments on the articles there would be much appreciated.