Its All Been Downhill in Trollvlle Since September 4, 2009...OR Shannon Stewart and Marisa Miller Say Bring on the Hits!

September 9th was my ex-wife's birthday. I had intended to wish her a happy birthday, but I don't think I posted that day. I know it is typical to be mortal enemies with your ex, but as we have a wonderful child together, we have managed to stay good friends. In fact one day soon my lovely Wife, my ex-wife and our amazing son have a very exciting announcement to make... Stay tuned for that. Anyway, I didn't post on September 9th, but everyone's favorite nocturnal blue birdy blogger did. You can read it here. You probably read it already, he has a pretty popular blog and with Miss Marisa Miller helping him out that day I know he had a ton of views. I for one was a bit surprised to see Miss Miller, a known Chicago Cubs fan on a Dodgers blog.

While now you can see her on a Rays blog, too... Okay, back on track. For those who remember seeing Marisa on the Night Owl, but don't remember why -It was, in fact, page views (and not swimsuit models) that were the topic of his post that day. He mentioned that those of us who us who use Blogger to host our pages can now get stats on our blogs. I was unaware of this little feature and being a stat lover myself, I was immediately fascinated. I do pay attention to how many visitors I get to my blog each day, week, etc., but I didn't know I could see what pages people were looking at. The Night Owl (as he generally does) got us all thinking. Being a stat guy, as well as somewhat of an ego maniac, as soon as I finished reading his post that day (which incited 15 comments by the way) I checked my own stats. At the time last year that I was actually posting daily, sometimes 2 and 3 times daily on as many as 4 different blogs, I got a lot of traffic. Nowadays my visitors are few and far between. I get it. Why visit a blog that isn't updated, thats silly. ANYWAY... the blogger stats revealed some interesting and surprising things. I have made some posts that I am pretty proud of. Some posts took me hours or days to research. Some posts took hours to scan and upload all of the images. It seems that those posts got a few clicks when they were fresh, but I was quite surprised to learn what my most popular post ever was. It came on September 4, 2009. A little over a year ago and yes it has all been downhill since... Now, in the Night Owl post he mentioned some things that attract visitors, namely pictures of hot girls and rare cards. Regular readers of mine know that from time to time I post pics of models who share names with baseball players... Yes, I have about a dozen pics ( I actually have more, but not all of them are appropriate for this all ages blog) of Shannon Stewart mixed in with my card scans and from time to time I bust them out (like right now) BUT Ms. Stewart is the not the lure that brings new folks to my blog. My best post ever? Like I said, it was on 9-04-2009. It had just 2 pictures on it and they were both REALLY small and hard to see. Yes, it took me over a year of blogging to realize that you could change the size of the images you upload. Anyhoo... THIS is the post that reels them in. If you don't feel like clicking, this was the primary image in that post. The subject was Bronson Arroyo and a TTM request that I sent him. Like I said, I am stat obsessed. I used to keep a log book of how many "hits" my blogs got on a daily basis. According to my log book the Troll family of blogs took in over 400 clicks that day. Pretty cool, but Bronson KEEPS ON BRINGING you to me... This post had 11 comments, which is among the most I have gotten without giving something away. I guess that is a mark of a good post. I remember when I put it up. I didn't plan on that as my topic that day, but I was short on time and wanted to put something up. Little did I know that would be my top post ever. That Arroyo post has had 76 views this week, 215 views this month and over a thousand views over the last 12 months. Wow. I don't get it at all. My next best post is this one... It was listed on 12-26-2009. It was a pack rip of 1997 Pinnacle X Press that my Father ripped on Christmas Day. Another quick post. No rare cards, no hot girls. It didn't even have a pic of my Dad in it. Weird. Third best is this one. It was a contest. Bloggers vote for the Hall of Fame on 8-31-2009. It had a ton of hits back then. I was giving stuff away, but its weird that this month over 100 people have checked it out LONG after all of the prizes were given away. I don't get it.

Anyway, thanks for reading this ego driven post. I can't make any sense of it. None of my most popular posts have pictures of pretty ladies or rare cards. Heck, they aren't even good. I clicked on them to find the link, but I couldn't bring myself to re-read any of them... One last thing on this topic before I sign off... The stats page also tells you the main referrers of visitors to my blog. That said I owe a huge thanks to The Sports Card Blog Roll, My Past Time...I Love It! and the Cardboard Junkie. Thanks of course to the Night Owl for inspiring this post and thanks to everyone who has stumbled in here for whatever reason. Stats are fun, knowing that people read this dribble is cool, but knowing that the most people who visit this blog are here because they want to know if Bronson Arroyo signed my cards. Weirdness. What is even weirder is that anyone actually read this far considering the first line of this post mentions my ex-wifes birthday... Not really a line that hooks the reader. I should really just stick with Shannon Stewart... Oh, if you are wondering about the pics on this post. I went with hot girls and vintage cards cuz I want the hits! This blog is 6000 visitors away from hitting 100K... There WILL be a contest whether it takes a month or a year to get there. Also, still waiting for someone who wants my Million Card Giveawy cards. Anyone? Also, still need some addresses for the group break. Get in touch if your name is in yellow... Go Rays! Troll out.