Those of you who frequent these pages have probably noticed that I haven’t been posting any new articles lately. I have several things going on right now, not the least of which is my airline retirement in the beginning of next year.
AroundThePattern has been an interesting experiment. I have ambled along writing articles when the mood struck me, passing along things that I have seen or done in my flying career. The traffic on the site indicated by Google Analytics has grown slowly but I don’t have a large following by any measurement. It appears that the majority of the visits are logged by robots either indexing the site, checking on the display ads or looking for a location for comment spam. I have had some spikes when I stumbled upon a popular post subject but few readers have commented on anything I have published. I will be the first to admit that I’m not the most social person on the planet nor have I been very consistent in my publishing of articles and I haven’t asked for questions or comments very often. I just assumed that if anybody was really interested they would post a comment. To date I have posted 125 articles and received 133 comments with roughly half of the comments being my replies to the commenter.
The question then becomes whether I want to continue with the site as it is, change its direction with a new design and re-purpose (still aviation-oriented) or close it down and move on to other things.
I’m still sorting things out. Back in 2008 an article was published on ProBlogger that addressed the question of when to stop blogging. I replied to the article when it was published. It’s time to revisit the decision process.
Comments
7 responses to “Airline Retirement – New Directions?”
You are one of a number of commercial pilots I’ve accumulated on my Google Reader (I need to go out and fish for more). I enjoy all the different takes on aviation and even the personal descriptions of typical days flying. You are my vicarious outlet to an avocation I did not follow. You also must be about my age. Enjoy retirement and keep blogging.
I use Google Reader to read your site. Google actually fetches your site just once even though multiple people will end up reading it. Just something to keep in mind. Always have enjoyed your posts. 🙂
I am also one of your loyal readers who follows you on Google Reader and I don’t have a lot of value to add in comments. I’m not sure if you see the number of subscriptions you have…but I’ve always wondered if blog writers need comments to know we’re out there reading.
No matter what you decide to do with the blog, I have enjoyed it and I wish you a happy retirement.
Jim & Jason
Yes, I do have access to the numbers of people who subscribe to the RSS feed and to posts by email. It’s nice to see the numbers, especially if you can watch them increase but it’s even nicer to get some sort of feedback from readers.
When you read something you like or something that you think is way off base or could be looked at in a different way let the writer know. They’ll appreciate the feedback and it builds a little community of readers who will, quite often interact with each other.
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate the input.
I’ve commented in the past to say thanks for your efforts and I have very much enjoyed your blog. I especially loved the articles about flying the C-5. The C-5 is such an impressive aircraft, and you all the more for being able to fly it, not to mention filling up at the gas station in the sky.
It’s clear to me from the sidebar content on this site that you are/were interested in developing this blog into something larger. I don’t know what the numbers are for this site nor do I know if you are, or are trying to, make money from this site. I don’t pretend to know about running a blog for profit (or to pay for itself). What I can say is success, in my experience, has not often been measured in dollars. Our world today is increasingly online and as that progresses I think it’s good to use these new mediums to continue long traditions. For centuries people have passed on knowledge through stories. These days a great way to get those stores out is to post them online. When less than 1% of blog visitors post comments, it can be feel like you’re talking to yourself because no one responds but, speaking for myself, I check my RSS reader everyday in hopes that you have posted something new. If you have it’s the first thing I read that day, often before breakfast!
If you are bored with this site, tired of writing the content and want to try something new then I won’t be sad to see it go away. If you are thinking of ending this blog because you don’t think anyone is reading it or those who do read it don’t care, then I will be very sad indeed to see it fade away.
From your post, it sounds like you are looking for more feedback. Personally, I’ve never felt like your posts were asking for feedback and perhaps building a community around your excellent content means starting to ask some questions of your readers. Either that or your could start to right really poorly so when the post is finished you readers will be forced to ask you all the questions you didn’t answer 🙂
Thanks very much for your input – frankly I don’t know much about making money from a blog either. 🙂
I’m not bored with the site – more disappointed in my inability to do more with it.
All of your comments are very valid and are some of the things I have been thinking about.
Perhaps changing my writing style to one that promotes more reader engagement will give me the
feedback that I need to feel that what I am producing is being received and appreciated.
Often I feel like I’m talking to myself.
I’ll pass on the tongue-in-cheek suggestion in your last sentence, though.
Thanks again.
I really enjoy reading your blog, and genuinely hope you keep it up. Either way, thanks for writing as long as you did and best of luck as you move forward!