HD911.com
because the 90's paled in comparison to this...

I’m not a trainspotter by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a weird admiration of trains and all things transport. Same goes for cars, buses, boats and planes, its something that I find interesting whether reading about transport history, or about the newest fastest plane, train or mag-lev, or simply watching Top Gear or Fifth Gear on the televisision. But recently I’ve been watching a different kind of traffic. Something far more boring, and about as eventful as a small country town, and that’s the web traffic graph for this site.

You may remember a week or so ago I wrote a few thoughts about the release of the new version of Ubuntu, due to which I was riding a tidal wave of visits (in comparison to the previous time this blog has been open) for a number of days totalling over 400 page hits in 5 days (almost half the total hits since I moved the site to this new domain). Don’t laugh! This is good for HD911, any self respecting site probably gets this figure within an hour, or the likes of google whom I imagine hits this figure every nth of a nanosecond.

 Dismal Beginnings

Since the Ubuntu boom of late October things have dwindled completely, to a point where I’m averaging less than 20 hits a day now. Yes, like the impending recession after the mining boom, or the transport slump in the U.S since September 11 (why I can even attempt to compare this, I don’t know), my webgraph looks a lot like the recent stock performance of Northern Rock bank after their recent credit/lending crisis.

There’s only one reason for this too, I’ve got to pull my finger out and post some interesting content.  Time will tell, but I’ve got forces working against me, like my mediocre writing ability, these random darting thoughts in my head,  these bats in the sky, (Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?) or the damn snakes on this plane.  But let it be known, the vision of HD911 is to grow from its meagre beginnings to become something, and do this it will.  Someday anyway.

But its been interesting none the less.  We’ve recently launched three sites at work and its been interesting seeing the different interest in each due to product knowledge, advertising and type of the site.  For instance, our company site, new revamp, which has always been a solid performer has been on the increase ever since the launch.  No boom, just rising steadily.  Another, which has had a heap of marketing and a push in the past is dwindling now where as another with short term (I won’t say viral, but similar) marketing has gone from being a no name to having a huge influx of users on a daily basis.  I’ve also realised this Search Enging Optimisation (SEO) stuff is not for me, least not as a full time job anyway! I’m a doing man, and working in a position where you carefully lay the ground work for possible future gain is a little to unexciting for me.  It’s vitally important though.