For some time now, I’ve used various tracking software to get a sense of who reads my blog, and why. In part, I’ve tried to make better blog postings from the data. In part, it just satisfies curiosity and provides an ego boost. But it does reveal some things about the nature of the internet, and blog posting, and why things like AP’s new “bloggers policy” is ultimately ridiculous.

This blog is viewed by roughly 100 people a day. Not alot of views, but hey, I’m also only three months old now. From talking with veteran bloggers, going from zero to a hundred in three months on a topic as crowded as political commentary is apparently good. I hope so - since I put a great deal of effort into the site. I mean, I’d like thousands of views, my masses of followers demonstrating zombie-esque allegiance to me, but since I’m not running for the DNC nomination, I guess I’ll have to settle for my current audience of about 1200-1500 people a month who visit my blog, and that number continues to grow.

My readers are quite frankly from all over the world. Just look at who’s visited in the last 30 days:

I’m quite surprised by this to a large extent. I have a rather large readership in Europe and have had European government servers ping my blog, rather frequently actually. I’ve also had some obvious readers, for example, ever time I criticize the Chinese, I get pinged by a PRC server. This does not surprise me at all - I expect they’ll be making a file on me. When I blogged about Milly D’Abbraccio, I got a notable spike in European views - I suppose because her porn films are very popular.

I’ve also received some disturbing traffic - especially in response to the posting I did about Milley Cirus. At least once a day, I get a hit and a view from someone looking for child pornography on the internet - and pegging that story I did. I presume they were looking for nudes of Ms. Cirus, of which of course I had none. Nevertheless, it’s a disturbing thought so many people out there looking for porn of children - and I’m only seeing the searches that resulted in a ping to my site.

One of the other things that seems to be interesting to me, is that the “heartland” could care less about my blog. Take a look:

Outside of big cities, most of the rural areas of the US never visit my blog. I suppose that’s not a big deal, since most of the issues I write about don’t directly affect rural America. I overlaid a map of “red state blue state” on this image… and it’s kinda funny… apparently a lot of libs must read this - and live a life of quiet desperation. With the exception of a few commentaries, I hardly have any libs fiercely debating the stories of this blog - but they are all reading.

The other interesting thing to me is WHO visits my blog. For example, about two hours ago, I posted a story on the KC135/GAO/Boeing/Northrup story. Within about half an hour of that posting, I had visits from Wright-Patterson Air Force base, Northrup corporate HQ, Boeing corporate HQ, the Pentagon, the Department of the Air Force, and TRANSCOM headquarters. I know this because I can see the servers who come to my site (quite sneaky isn’t it - but this information is all public).

When I did my blog story on Mickey Kantor and you tube - his firm visited my blog quite a bit that day, as did people from the DNC, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. That is kinda spooky in a way - since I suspect Mr. Kantor may have read what I said. Not that I’m upset about that - but I didn’t anticipate my blog might have such a direct impact.

When I’ve done stories on Administration policy, I can almost always count on a visit from OEP or OVP. I still have some friends in the Administration - hopefully its them. Otherwise, I suspect I’m doomed.

When I’ve done stories about members of Congress, I can almost always anticipate their office visiting the blog. Sometimes I’ve told their offices straight up - when I’ve had contacts - that I’m saying something about them. Most of the time, they just show up. For example, I had several visits from Sen. Coleman’s office when I was doing my stint about Franken and his tax debacle. I also had visitors from Speaker Pelosi’s office when I’ve done stints about her visiting our enemies and cowtowing to Syria. I suspect her PA person didn’t like my piece.

I won’t use their names, because I don’t want it to be like I’m saying their endorsing the blog, but some significant commentators and members of Congress have read my blog and stolen its concepts. I kind of like this part. Since I cannot really be a policy advisor as a consultant - this allows me to be still in the game of politics.

I started Right Commentary in part because I wanted to remain active in politics. I also started it because I found most of the rightosphere blogs out there were this interesting mix of dialetic screed, headline reposting, or just ridiculously uniformed analysis. There were few blogs out there that are written by anyone who actually served in government. I suspect that will change, since as I’ve demonstrated, blog writing seems to be an effective tool to get your views before people who might be able to act on them.

Oh and one last thing - I’m still waiting to be “fight the smears” overloaded. My servers are primed for the flux of massive Obamites trying to blow up my severs.

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