I wrote my first post on this blog on Sept. 22, 2004. Four years later and I’m still at it.

In the first four years I have:

• Written 2798 posts (1067 posts this year, 764 posts last year, 555 in the second year, 412 in the first year).
• I have enjoyed 1,109,390 unique visitors to my site (up from 661,293 last year, 151,706 in the second year, and 43,715 in the first year). It’s a very, very small number of the estimated 38-million daily blog readers — smaller still considering Glenn Reynolds averages 384,411 per day.

But hey, over the last two years I’ve registered a steady half million visitors per year. It’s amazing (and a bit humbling) to realize that many people are reading (or at least glancing over) the stuff that I post here.

This past year was a great one for me and this site a lot of regards.

For the first time since writing this blog, I don’t feel like all I’m doing is writing in a virtual vacuum — I met a lot of my readers this year. It was nice to put faces to names, and — though it’s not why I write this blog — it’s exceptionally nice to hear people tell you that they enjoy your writing and perspective.

I also met a lot of my peers in the blogosphere — I feel like Urbangrounds gained a bit more exposure this year, via interviews with the Austin American Statesman, some high-profile links, and some additional networking on my part (at events such as Right On Line, Right On Austin Bloggers luncheons). It’s been especially nice to know that I’m not as alone in my conservative thoughts here in Austin as I’ve always felt.

For the first time ever, I’ve invited someone else to write here — No2Liberals, who has been a fervent and devoted commenter here for the last year. He’s only contributed a couple of posts so far, but I trust his opinion and writing to give him pretty free reign to write what and when he wants.

But mostly, and again, I want to say thanks to all of you — the people who stop by and read. The ones who come back. The ones who subscribe to my RSS feed. This blog really is nothing without people reading it and contributing to the conversation. Preston (who appears to have taken another hiatus) and Dianne (both of whom have been coming back and contributing significantly via the comments sections since nearly the beginning), N2L, BigSis, KristiW, John Jarzemsky, Jonny, Anonymous, Heavy Gabe, Colin, … thanks for stopping by and joining in on the conversation.

This site is so much better because of all of you.

Posted by Robbie Cooper on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | Trackback |