If This Blog Were a Stock

If this blog were a stock, based on this chart, would you buy it?

Here's a screen shot of the web traffic for this blog from 2011-2022

If all we knew about this "stock" were based on this chart, it shows that this blog has shown potential to reach a larger audience, but it's been in a state of decline and stagnation for many years now, and so although the possibility does exist that it could make a comeback, it would probably be a longshot. So personally I would probably pass on buying this stock right now. Though maybe it's one to watch, to keep on your radar, that perhaps if it showed signs of returning to an early 2011 pattern, of making a steady climb upward, while staying consistently above 1000, then maybe that would be the time to buy. 

Here's the weird thing, I remember back in 2012 and 2013 when I started seeing a big increase in traffic. People were regularly leaving comments, even sending me emails, linking to my blog, sharing my posts on Twitter and Facebook, and I even found a couple of forums of people discussing my posts. 

It was great to be read, and to receive positive feedback, and I always welcomed a good debate, but at the same time I felt kind of uncomfortable. Like, I didn't like being in the spotlight. I didn't like all the extra attention. It made me realize that I had no desire to be famous. And so, I thought to myself, what am I doing, do I want to be a popular blogger with a large audience, or do I want to have a blog that hardly anyone reads? Well, I guess I decided I'd rather be an unpopular blogger. And so then I stopped trying to actually grow my blog and optimize it for increased traffic. I posted very infrequently, deleted a bunch of posts, stopped commenting on other people's blogs, and ended up completely deleting the blog a few times. Then I return thinking "Hey, where is all my traffic? Where did all my readers go?" Well, you idiot, you deleted your blog, what did you expect would happen? So, I completely screwed up my search engine optimization, where I think I even got completely delisted at one point, where none of my posts were even showing up in search engines for people to find them, and it's like I got blacklisted or something. 

I didn't mind having an unpopular blog, but I still wanted a readership, at least a few real people reading my blog. But then I found out that most of my traffic isn't even real. Like this is not at all unique to me alone, but pretty much all blogs and websites, at least 50 percent of all web traffic is automated bots. Like if you see that you had 100 unique visitors today, at least half aren't even real people, they're bots. I mean I was aware of this, but I guess I didn't realize the magnitude of it. And then the really harsh reality sunk in, that maybe none of my readership is real, like maybe all of my web traffic is coming from automated bots. Like I'm sitting here pouring my heart out, thinking that I'm reaching real people, but all along it's actually all nonhuman, or at least 99 percent of it is.

Talk about a painful slap in the face. 

It's a strange situation to be in: I'm conflicted between wanting to be read, and not wanting to be famous. That's pretty much the main obstacle to this blogs success. That and a lack of a clearly defined goal. You know, what is the purpose of this blog, beyond being read? What am I trying to achieve here?

Well, for me, it's mostly writing practice. I write about whatever I feel like. So, I'm all over the place. Lately I've been posting videos, and writing a commentary to it. I like that format. Posting a picture, a clip, or an excerpt from a book, or article, and following it up with commentary. I think it works, and I will do more of them. But I think I need a clearer focus. I need to come up with a game plan, and a mission statement of why I'm doing this and what I expect to get out of it. 

It's not just about being read, it's about having something to say that's actually worth reading, something of real value, something that is healthy, helpful, and mentally enriching. And it helps if it's focused around a central theme, not scattered all over the place. So once I can figure out my master plan of how to actualize this, then maybe this blog will become a stock worth buying.