Today marks the end of four years of Being Yordie Sands blog posts. Yay! For those who don’t know, this blog began as My Moveable Feast in 2008. I was living in New Key West at the time and I used to go write my blog posts in a cafe across the street from The Hemingway House (Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast yanno). Anyway, I thought it would be fun to collect and display all the blog’s title graphics from inception, except the new anniversary title.

My original title page was just one of those text headings, but since then I’ve changed the title graphics regularly.

Why do I continue to do this?
This blog has endured many existential moments. It seems that once or twice a year I look at myself and the things I’m doing and I don’t like what I see. And at those times I question why I bother to blog. However, I’ve learned that being a Second Life blogger is part of who I am. I’ve discovered I need to express myself in this format. I think it’s because I want to share the things I discover as I create a second life. So, I continue.

How long does it take to write a post?
In talking with friends about blogging, I’m often asked how I find the time to write so often. Well, the blog post I’m writing right now will take longer than average because I’ve prepared special graphics and I need to plan what I want to say more carefully. So, this post might take me two hours to write and some posts have taken much longer, but my average blog post takes less than an hour, some just a few minutes. And that’s what blogging is, banging out your thoughts and pressing Publish.

Why does this blog continue to grow?

SiteMeter measures hits & pageviews. I’ve used it as a measure for two years.

This blog has been growing for a couple years now.

SiteMeter’s stats show the growth over the past year.

Pageviews are up almost double, almost 100% last year.

I’ve worked to expand readership.

I’ve done things like joining blogger networks.

Also, I use Twitter and Facebook to “amplify” the outreach.

Naturally, the good stats make me feel validated. Not all stats are good though. My Alexa Rating was doing great until one day a few months ago. On that day, it when up about 5,000,000 points (up is bad in this case). I was totally mystified, so I checked a bunch of other SL blogs and discovered all the ones that seemed to be classified as personal blogs took similar hits. Anyway, my current rating is 7,940,356 (or within the top 5% of all websites on the planet).

What is this blog’s “secret sauce”?
I’ve been writing about Second Life’s secret sauce in my other blog. So, I’ve wondered, does this blog have a “secret sauce”? Being objective, this blog’s growth is impressive only relative to itself; when compared to the very successful SL blogs, I have a long way to go. So, Being Yordie Sands doesn’t have a secret sauce, but thanks to readers I’ve been able to identify a couple of ingredients. And there are ingredients that don’t belong in this personal blog, and that’s why I’ve already moved certain topics over to Yordie Sands Notebook. I don’t know what the other ingredients are yet, but I hope to have fun finding them.

Please stay tuned…
To the people who read about the discoveries, adventures and misadventures that are my second life, Thank You! And if you are one of the original readers (I know who all of you are… /me giggles), I want to give you a special thank you for staying with me.