Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Aardvarchaeology's been on-line for half a year today! Before I came here, I'd been blogging at Salto sobrius for over a year, so by now this blogging thing is a big part of my lifestyle and self-image. I love it -- I write about whatever's occupying my mind, a pleasurable pastime in itself, and then hundreds of people show up to read it every day! Being here on ScienceBlogs helps a lot to attract readers, and so do Stumbleupon and Reddit. (Digg, not so much.) As I've been boasting for a while in the sidebar, Aard is now the world's number one archaeology blog measured by the number of other sites that link to it. It's also Sweden's most widely read science blog, but that doesn't tell you much as most of the competition there is in Swedish.
Posting frequency. Since moving here, I've posted more frequently, accelerating from one entry a day to about three entries in two days on average. This probably has to do with scheduling, which wasn't available at my old site. Now I usually write my main entries in the evenings and schedule them to appear the following afternoon when Sb traffic spikes because New Yorkers have just gotten to work. But it's often tempting to write short newsworthy entries during the day as well and put them on-line immediately.
Readership. My blogging currently has a readership beyond my wildest dreams before the move. In May, Aard attracted 480 daily unique readers on average, 112 of whom could be recognised as returning readers. Meanwhile, the old site saw a daily average of 130 uniques, bringing the total up to a wonderful 610 daily readers! (These are Statcounter figures comparable to earlier statshots. The Goog'lytics number is closer to 700.)
Links: on Technorati, with links from 293 individual sites, Aard is currently ranked about number 13,000 out of millions. (Salto was briefly ranked 11,000 last autumn.)
One wish: MORE COMMENTS, PLEASE!
Oh, and BTW -- anybody want to buy an Aard T-shirt or coffee mug?
Comments
Martin, you braggart you!
Love the site, as do a lot of others apparently.
But it is so erudite that we lay persons are loath to comment and make fools of ourselves.
Nonetheless, congrats on your success, and I for one shall try to comment intelligently in the coming days.
Rich Reynolds
Posted by: Rich Reynolds | June 29, 2007 11:02 AM
Jag ska tillfredställa din sista önskan ovan med att skriva en kommentar, tillika ett tips. Med så många besökare och hits som din blogg nu har, kanske du skulle flytta den till metrobloggen och börja tjäna pengar på ditt bloggande (nu när arkeologin i sig inte verkar vara så inkomstbringande ;-). Varje gång en sida i din blogg visas tjänar du 3 öre; det kan bli många sköna tusuenlappar/år om man har så mycket trafik som dig!
I vilket fall, kul med dina bloggframgånger. Väl unt.
Posted by: Marcus | June 29, 2007 2:32 PM
Happy semi-anniversary Martin, and good luck for the future...
Posted by: Tim Jones | June 29, 2007 2:56 PM
Marcus,
I couldn't have put it any better.
RR
Posted by: Rich Reynolds | June 29, 2007 3:17 PM
If Marcus's comment is so good, could someone please translate it. The only bit I understand is "write a comment" - if I've got that much right. I know how my four year old daughter feels, knowing that all those letters mean something, just not able to figure out what.
Posted by: eleanora | June 30, 2007 1:38 AM
Many thanks for kind words, everybody!
Marcus is my old childhood buddy. Cool to see you here, kid! He said "congratulations, maybe you should move your blog to this Swedish paying venue and make some dough". Actually, I get a cut of the ad revenue here at Sb, amounting to enough that it pays for the Rundkvist family's broadband connection.
Posted by: Martin R | June 30, 2007 1:54 AM
Oh, I´m sorry that I didn´t write my comment in english. I forgot that most readers here doesn´t speak our weird little language. I have a trilingual communication going on with my wife, so I tend to mix languages all the time, without thinking about it..
Posted by: Marcus | June 30, 2007 4:59 AM