Sunday, July 22, 2012

How popular is this blog?

At first sight it doesn't do too badly. Usually in excess of 70 views per day during the week. But look more closely: almost all of those people are looking at one post, which describes a UK Government security accreditation standard. My article is one of the few "out there" which explains how to go about getting accredited.

Subtract that one article and there's a smattering of hits on some articles I wrote on Myers-Briggs personality type theory and some hits on beauty-spot posts such as National Trust sites we've visited and Weston-super-Mare (sic).

The blogs I look at are aggregation/tutorial sites in arcane areas which interest me such as theoretical physics, economics and politics, genetics, science-fiction, etc. The people writing these blogs occupy positions where they know a lot more about what's going on and what's hot than I do.

So where's the expertise I have which is world-class and best-in-class? Doesn't exist, sadly. When I was working full time in the corporate world on public telecom networks and their architecture/design I could have put together a (maybe anonymous) technical blog. But I didn't.

So bottom line: unless you are a world-class practitioner plugged into the relevant community, it's unlikely that anything you write is going to have a truly mass appeal, even in a niche.

None of this should be surprising: I have just described the usual fate of all would-be authors.