If you were around in the open thread last night, you probably noticed that we had our first troll. We've been up and running here for about four full months now, and so far, we've only attracted Marlins fans. While our new Red Sox fan mixed things up a little last night, I think this this is something of an interesting note in the site's history.
It makes me want to talk about why I'm here and what my "vision" (of sorts) is for this site. I'm here to write about the Marlins and a little baseball in general. I'm here to share my thoughts and to encourage you to share your own. If that's what you want, great. If it's not what you want, make a suggestion. Send me an email. Leave a comment. Write a diary. Do pretty much whatever you want; just make it constructive.
As you know by now, I'm not big on analyzing the minors and who the next big stars are going to be. I'm interested in it, but I just don't have time to keep up with it. Besides, if you want a quality version of that stuff, you can go to Minor League Ball (for baseball wide info) or Maverick Ball (for Marlins specific info). Both of those sites are linked to on the right side of each page.
I also haven't been the most aggressive of SportsBloggers (i.e. compared to my other SB Nation colleagues - linked to on the right) in marketing and promoting this site. Some of my peers are out linking heavily to/from other sites, posting on MLB.com's message boards, handing out business cards, and doing lots of other things to grow their sites. Quite frankly, that really just isn't my thing. This is a hobby for me; I'm not looking for it to turn into a full-time job (or even hoping for that). If circumstances in my life change and I don't have as much free time as I do now, this site will be quick to go (although I hope that one or two of you will take over and keep the site running - but don't get too excited, that's not happening anytime soon).
From when I first started The Book of Mike almost two years ago, my goal wasn't to generate traffic. I was hoping to improve my writing (or at least practice it more regularly) and to learn a little more about baseball. So far I've at least been able to accomplish the second part (and I've picked up a girlfriend and some advertising revenue along the way).
As an aside, the relationship between unique visitors and page views that we have here is interesting. Our sister sites get about 4 - 6 page views for every unique visitor. This week, when content has been pretty light, we've averaged about 10 page views per unique visitor. In recent weeks we've been averaging something like 20 - 30 page views per visitor. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think it means that although we have a small group of regulars, many of us are here for quite a while when we stop by.
Eventually I'm sure we'll attract more regulars. In some ways I hope we do. But in others, I kind of like the size we're at right now (if we were to get much bigger, running Ichthyomancy as we do now probably wouldn't be very practical).
Enough ranting from me for now. I'll leave it at that, but I just wanted to share a little of what was in my head since it became semi-relevant after last night.