Aardvarchaeology

Today is my fourth birthday as a blogger! (Here's my first entry from 2005.) I see myself as the proprietor of and main contributor to a small daily paper on subjects that interest me. And I am enjoying myself! Trafficwise, the mean number of unique readers per day has been as follows.

• 2006: 157 daily readers
  
• 2007: 852 daily readers
  
• 2008: 937 daily readers
  
• 2009: 714 daily readers (update 3 Jan)

These stats might suggest that the blog is ailing, but actually the mean values for '07 and '08 are skewed by huge spikes on a single entry each for those years (here and here). If we looked at the median (which is much more labour-intensive to calculate) instead of the arithmetic mean we'd see continuous slow growth in the readership. Aard is always near the middle of the traffic-ranking list we keep backstage here on Sb.

The blog's not expanding its steady following much. Two years ago 130 of each day's readers on average were identifiable returners. Right now 150 of them are. There seems to be considerable turnover among the regulars. Blog readers are fickle creatures.

I plan no changes around here, so unless you guys write me interesting letters whose replies might make good blog entries or give me speaking gigs in funny places, I'm simply going to continue writing about whatever pops into my head at the current rate of six entries a week. Because, as Terry Pratchett once said, writing is the most fun anyone can have by themselves.

Update same evening: Turns out Abel Pharmboy over at the pharma blog with the confusingly archaeological name, Terra Sigillata, celebrated his fourth blogiversary yesterday. He's a single day ahead of me! And he's also an extremely nice guy. Congrats, Abel!