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Hobby Hovel: One Year Later

One week ago on October 21, 2010, Hobby Hovel reached its one-year mark. The saying “time flies when you’re having fun” is one that gets thrown around frequently, but when I look back upon the past year I’ve spent blogging about figures, toys and plamo, it feels anything but short – indeed, it feels as if I’ve been doing this forever. Maybe this is because Hobby Hovel has become the punctuation of my life’s story. Instead whizzing by the weeks and months like a free-falling rock, the blog has given me the occasion to pause and invest myself into this project week after week. In a way, blogging has validated my own existence. As frivolous as ranting about Japanese collectables may seem from a stranger’s perspective, it is nevertheless an activity in which I construct meaning for myself.

Since the activity of growing and maintaining Hobby Hovel has become such a pivotal part of my life, it only makes sense to reflect on the past year when the occasion arises. So without further ado, strap yourselves in for some dense bricks of text coming your way!

How It Began

The blog itself may have begun a year ago, but the real roots of my figure-blogging hobby trace back to the 22nd of January, 2009 when my father surprised me by asking for one of my “little things” (literal Chinese translation) for a photography experiment with his recently-purchased macro lens. As my folks have generally steered clear of my personal interests, his request startled me, yet it was far from unwelcome – after all, I’ll all up for non-negative attention for my hobby from others. I distinctly remember scrambling to pick an appropriate subject. I preferred fix-pose figures over plamo and action figures because there’s no risk of it being broken, yet I wasn’t quite ready to my folks to discover the morally questionable amount of details put into the undergarments of some figures (or worse yet, the cast-off feature). After a couple of minutes, I decided to bring Alvis downstairs and looked on nervously as she was placed in a butchered cardboard box with paper towels stretched over the cut-out windows on its sides.

When I saw the photos on the computer screen, I was ecstatic. To my photography virgin self, those first few simple shots were nothing short of divine. I never knew Alvis could look so good when properly lit and displayed in a better context than my ugly wooden bookshelves. Sure, I’ve seen fancy figure photos before, but I never thought polished shots would be so close within my reach. Immediately I ran upstairs to fetch another, and another, and another, until the evening grew late. But come the next day and the day after that, I kept on bringing more and more stuff down until my entire collection was accounted for. I threw the photos on my recently-created Flickr account, as I was dying to share them with my dear friend Alicia (who would later on volunteer to give Hobby Hovel theme you see now).

After I got over the initial wave of excitement, I began to write blurbs in the description fields of the photos, some of which were moderately long. I kept on doing this as my collection and photostream continued to grow. At the same time, I also began to receive comments from other Flickr users, which led to my first step into the plamo/figure community. At first I was content with just throwing my photos into the various photo groups on Flickr, but as time rolled onward, it was clear that lust to share was no longer satiated by such limited means. Finally, on the 21st of October that year, Hobby Hovel tore itself free from the womb of imagination and reared its ugly head on the world wide web. Looking back, I really wish I had chosen WordPress instead of Blogger, but hey, what can you do?

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

When I started my blogging venture, I held the naïve belief that I would not be affected by the want to page views. Rather, I thought I would be content with the mere joy of writing and photography, along with the knowledge that when someone types something like “HGUC Acguy” into Google, there would be a detailed review outlining everything you’d want to know about it in the search results. Of course, it didn’t take long for this mentality to crumble like a biscuit in a bowl of hot soup. There was an undeniable joy in receiving comments, no matter how short and inconsequential they may be. I looked to other similar blogs and envied their big comment tallies, as well as the praise and conversations those comments contained.

I wanted more readers, and I wanted them bad. I looked for guides to improve search engine results, bought my domain name, struggled to replace Blogger’s shitty default comment system, and began to try to push myself into the spotlight. I submitted my blog to RSS aggregators, posted abridged reviews on figure.fm, made a Twitter account, searched and subscribed to other blogs, and contrived myself to make comments for the sole sake of putting my name and URL out there. Around this time I also began to stat whore via Google Analytics and Feedburner, eagerly anticipating the spike that came after every week’s post. As my attachment to the blog grew with every review I wrote, so did my fanatical devotion to numbers.

Eventually, the mad chase of numbers caught up with me. Though I do not have the moral character that would compel me against lying and using others to my own interests, I am a very bad actor by nature. This means that when I am not interested in someone else’s works and contents, it takes tremendous effort on my part to churn out a constructive comment. Pretty soon, I found myself spending entire mornings grinding through my RSS feed, forcing myself to make comments on posts that really didn’t speak to me. Blogging had become a job to me – a job that I had very little fun with.

Naturally, I began to question my own reasons for blogging after I hit this impasse. While I often have to force myself into taking photos and writing reviews, I believe I still find these activities fun, especially for the immense sense of gratification I get after I hit the “post” button. I enjoy some of the interesting people I’ve come across as a figure blogger (a couple of whom I’ve met in person). While the ties between fellow bloggers or Twitter users are by no means close, I still consider them as friends – after all, it’d be very hard to come across such colourful characters in person. I want to meet more people like them, but it was increasingly apparent that my practice of “blog diplomacy” was unsustainable.

And hence I stopped. I deleted the figure.fm posts and did some serious spring cleaning on my RSS feed. Under the belief of “if you build it, they will come”, I took the passive approach and reclaimed the enjoyment in this pastime.  Today, Hobby Hovel gets an average of 3000 visitors per month with around 60 subscribers to the RSS feed. It’s not a number I could boast about, nor do numbers mean much when compared to actual response in the form of comments and tweets, but it is nevertheless a marker of what I’ve managed to accomplish in the past year, which I cannot help but to feel proud of.

Ashlotte and Weekly Highlights

When it comes to meeting new people as a blogger, I am a one hell of a lucky bastard for having met Ashlotte. I couldn’t believe my luck when he accepted my offer of being a co-author at Hobby Hovel back when we were mere new acquaintances on MFC. I’ll take this opportunity to say this: Ash, I am forever grateful to you for giving Hobby Hovel your work and talent. Even if we do have different ways of doing things, I enjoy your photography and reviews immensely (I only wish there was more of it =P). And of course, Weekly Highlights would not have been possible without your idea and your continued support – thank you!

Weekly Highlights is a pretty time-consuming activity for me. Between my ADD, the limited amount of exchanges Ash and I are capable of making over Google Documents each week, and the time required for me to edit, format, and hyperlink everything, the rants are often rushed, and sometimes I’m not perfectly satisfied with what is posted at the end of the day. I’ve considered dropping the segment completely on at least 2 occasions, but I could never bring myself to do it. Not only is it a good way to keep the blog active, it’s also a great way (at least for me) to make some conversation with the readers. There have been some fun and bizarre times on the comment fields, and I’d rather not give that up. Of course, nothing in life is certain except taxes and death, but for what it’s worth, I’ll do my best to keep it going through the school year.

Goals for the future

So, now that I’ve glossed over the past, what’s in store for Hobby Hovel’s future? More of the same, I’d reckon, though at a lower frequency than before, since I don’t order enough to keep up with a weekly schedule. I’ll probably have one or two reviews every month, and when combined with Ashlotte’s reviews and our rants, I think this place will remain to be sufficiently lively in the immediate future. But beside the issue of frequency, there are a couple of changes I’d like to see from myself.

Better content

I’ve been told I am a funny guy by some people in person, but unfortunately, I don’t it’s the kind of “funny” that transitions well into writing. I wish I could make other people crack up with words alone, but I don’t think it happens all that often for me. Maybe that’s partly due to the subject matter I deal with, since it’s probably easier to make fun jabs at ridiculous ero-figures than blocky mecha. Still, at the end of the day that’s just an excuse, and I will continue to try to make the content not only informative, but also entertaining.

On the other end of the spectrum is photography, which I can’t do much about, in all honesty. I stopped studying visual arts in the 10th grade and have yet to meet some sort of artistic muse since then. The photography gear that I use is not my own, I do not like going outside with my figures, I am often working under time constraints, and I am pretty much creatively bankrupt when it comes to anything visual. Some people have complimented my photos in the past, but as I’m sure all my fellow figure bloggers can attest to, making a semi-decent shot of figures and models really isn’t all that hard, even if you don’t have the greatest camera in the world. One thing I will avoid in the future is downright lazy and rushed photography. An example of this would be the MG Master Gundam review, in which I couldn’t find a single shot that I am pleased with. Not only did I half-ass the shots, but I also made no effort to edit them beyond the basic adjustments. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and no amount of textual description can compensate for a set of shoddy photos.

Meet more people

I may have said that I’ve put an end to my policy of vigorous self-promotion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want more readers. Waking up to see comment notifications in my email inbox is tied with having delicious bacon for breakfast as far as pleasant morning activities go, and having mini-conversations on Twitter is always a welcome diversion for me. However, while Google searches, Flickr links and aggregator hits do rake in some reader who may then become known to me via comments or Twitter, it would be foolhardy to ignore the social network aspect of blogging. Yet that’s almost exactly what I’ve been doing recently, as I’ve stopped exploring the figure/plamo blogophere beyond the blogs I currently follow and the sites of my readers. I don’t think this is such a great policy, and I plan to dive into the community once again, albeit with some moderation in mind this time around.

Here’s a question to all of you fellow bloggers out there: what are some of the key methods to get better exposure (besides having compelling content, of course)? I hope I’m not missing any glaringly obvious measures. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanksgiving

Of course, no anniversary post would be appropriate without a list of thanks. If I could leap through my computer screen to where you all are, I would give every one of you a firm handshake and/or a big hug, but as such technology is merely the fluff of my imagination, I hope you’ll suffice with the limitations of words alone.

Thank you to our “regulars” (Aka, Tier, Sloth, Ningyo, LEon, HamsterCorp, Rico-sama, and anyone else whom I may have missed). I believe every blogger is a comment whore at heart, and reading your responses and feedback is probably the most rewarding thing about this entire experience. Here’s hoping that Hobby Hovel will remain worthy of your notice in the days to come!

Thank you to @animefigures for tweeting my Flickr photos and virtually all of our posts to your 4,000+ followers – Hobby Hovel wouldn’t be the same today without your support and exposure.

Thank you to John and Molly for lending your plastic treasures and words to Hobby Hovel – I owe no less than five reviews to your generosity (that’s 15% of the total! Crazy, I know)!

Thank you to my folks for tolerating my hobby. Without you there would be no photography and hence no Hobby Hovel (nor internet, food, roof over my head, and innumerable other things, for that matter). Fringe Japanese interests aren’t exactly all that pleasant, especially to a family with roots in northern China. I am indeed fortunate to be born into this family.

Thank you to Alicia for not only hooking me up with the visual theme, but also for all the encouragement you’ve given me, all the shoop that was whooped, all the technical difficulties you’ve solved for me, and for being an awesome friend in general – God knows I’d be absolutely fucked if you were gone.

And finally, thank you to Ashlotte. After all these months of working together, I consider you a true friend, despite the distance that separates us and the differences between our respective backgrounds. Sure, you are still mysterious and unknown to me in many respects, but I hope I’ll get to learn more about you and that our partnership will continue to yield much enjoyment in the future!

-Chag

28 replies on “Hobby Hovel: One Year Later”

Happy birthday! …Blogday? And, hey, your numbers are bigger than mine!

You mentioned bacon, which reminds me, I call bacon “the desert of breakfast” for a good reason.

I don’t know much about getting more exposure (in fact, I hate myself and will only promote myself with caution), but I had been using some other site called StatCounter (but I was under the impression that Google Analytics wasn’t free, going to try that out now) and I actually prefer to find out less about raw numbers and more how the hell people got to my site in the first place (and approximately where they are physically located…). I’ve seen some weird search keywords used that led to my site, somehow. I think the best ones I’ve seen so far were “hamstercorp naked” and “what does it mean when red stuff is coming out of my hamsters rear”. Though, it doesn’t catch a lot of data, but I’ll see how Analytics does for a bit. Current events seem to make a pretty big difference, too. Before Halo: Reach released, most of the stuff in the top keywords was the Queen’s Blade stuff, and for some reason Reimi Saionji. After Halo: Reach, the top of the list was entirely Halo-related searches, and most of the clickthroughs went to the pics of Noble Six I posted.

I should try replacing Blogger’s comment system myself sometime. I hate not being able to properly reply to a comment.

Anyways, grats. Four more years! Four more years!

Hehe, thanks!

“Hamstercorp naked”? I can only imagine what you did in the past to prompt such an inquiry. Maybe contrary to what you say about self-promotion, you “promoted” yourself on a few unscrupulous video sites back in the day, eh? EH? =P

Setting up Discus should be pretty easy for you, since your theme template is straightforward. It only caused major headache for me because I screwed with the formula. Definitely give a a try — the tech support on twitter is very keen on responding to questions, should you run into any problems.

Thanks for adding me on PSN, btw!

Well, I hope I haven’t been posting strange pictures anywhere because of the Ambien…other than the strange figure pictures, anyways.

This Disqus thing seems to have worked rather nicely for you, and seems to pretty much do what I’d want it to from posting comments on your stuff. At least it looks like it won’t send me a notification email every time I comment on my own stuff, like Blogger does.

OoOoOOOooo Mysterious~~~~

Haha well all I can say for my part is you’ll probably see more reviews from me as the weather improves (Although it rained all this week…again…WHY GOD WHY!!!).

Mmm beyond that anytime I get bored of reviews or bad weather persists you can count on me to come up with some hairbrained article idea to pass the time…Although Cataclysm is coming up so I’ll have to take care not to become an addict again…

“I’ll have to take care not to become an addict again”

Those are some common last words there, bub. Have I told you about my experiences with WoW back in high school? It cost me broadband internet for a YEAR. Just when my homies and I were getting ready to down Ragnaros. Broke my little heart, man. On the bright side, I wouldn’t have got into anime and figures if I hadn’t stopped playing, since every moment I wasn’t playing WoW, I was looking up stuff on Thottbot and WoWhead. Don’t do ittt Ash, not when the weather has just began to make a turn for the better!!

Haha well I might hit it hard for the first month or so, but I’m not the hardcore raider I once was pushing day and night for those server firsts.

More scared of Tera Online…Loli catgirls…In tight fitting outfits? Oh jesus…thats trouble for me alright…

Congrats! With so many figure websites on the web, it’s a great experience when you look at your own photos and finally think that you might be able to do this, and it’s just as great a experience to say that you’ve kept it up for an entire year.

Ah, stats … some people say they don’t care about stats, but I am not one of them. I check my site stats all the time. What I don’t care about is what those stats represent. Back when I started my own site, I did the banzai commenting thing on everyone else’s blog and I cross-posted my stuff on figure.fm and posted on a couple of anime forums. I think almost everyone who starts a blog does that, but I stopped pretty quickly. I don’t really know how to build traffic or gain exposure; I’ve actually gone the other way, I don’t really advertise my blog anywhere and I don’t use Facebook or Twitter to push my site. Actually, I did hope to gain some fame by becoming known as the guy who reviews porn figures, but even that sort of notoriety is hard to come by. If you can get some sort of reputation, though, that’s one way to stake out a niche and claim some fame. Just like the condensed milk guy.

Congrats again. There are very few other blogs that I’d feel comfortable talking about the foot-long Mothra larva on, but yours is one of them.

LOL, between your handmade bondage equipment and tentacles, I think it’s pretty safe to say that you’ve distinguished yourself from the rest of the pack. But even if you didn’t have all those delightful obscenities, Tentacle Armada will still be every bit as successful. This may sound like flattery, but I consider you the “big daddy” when it comes to figure blogs. When you have the most appealing content out there, it’s pretty easy to catch attention through the word of mouth. Even the Tomopop editors take notice of you and regularly feature your shots on their posts. When your posts promote themselves, that’s when you’ve beaten the final boss of the internet.

Dawww thanks. Speaking of the Mothra larva, I saw it in my dream last night. I don’t remember it all that clearly, but I think I was in a dark alley when I saw it. Maybe it would be for the best if I don’t remember.

Yeah, Blogger’s a chump. It’s not too late to change.
Then again, I can see your decisions pretty set in stone, with how you broke your balls getting a proper comment system to work some time ago.

‘I am a very bad actor by nature. This means that when I am not interested in someone else’s works and contents, it takes tremendous effort on my part to churn out a constructive comment.’
Seriously, you’re one of the more honest characters I know. I don’t deny society’s need for hypocrisy, but it reassures me to see the fortitude of self needed to not give a shit. That’s a compliment.

Thanks for calling us comment whores, bro. We love you too. Dance, dance! Who wants a dance? Eight bucks a dance!

BBL never had as poignant a history as HH – I was basically someone with a lot of crap to spout out and get off my mind, and people at school were very bad listeners. A bit of Touhou sophistry and scathing reviews on the latest incestuous moe-moe series later, I had myself a shoddy weblog. Well, you’re right in how it keeps my life in check; doing something makes me feel less like a despicable human being, and writing is one of the more romantically-tuned things I could possibly do.

I’d like to think that my venture overseas allowed me to largely stop caring about blogging in general, with how I’m just about doing whatever the hell I like on BBL now, not to mention the ten day intervals between posts. Next week, I’m planning on writing a Socratic dialogue between Meiling and I, and the week after that I’ll post pictures of myself with the bass cosplaying Tissue-hime. The sky’s the limit now. I’m still dropping comments where they count, but at least I’m charging more for them these days.

Really, I don’t understand photography at all, so it seems to me like you’re beating on yourself. It all looks fine to me; I’m no measure of photographic artistry, but no one else has pointed it out either, so I think you’re good. You had quality in quantity, since you took (and more importantly, explained) like every possible angle; that’s not to say you don’t have quality period, but to say the lack of excessive care would more efficiently produce in your strengths.
So basically, don’t worry about it.

I did wish you the belated blogday at some point right? I believe I did.
Now this is completely unrelated, but I found a rather polished TOUHOU DOTA map, which we absolutely have to strike up with people on Garena.

Yeah, now that I have the comment system figured out, I’ve made my peace with Blogger for now. The technical aspects of blogging is an extended process of trial-and-error for me, so I have to wait until school it out again to survive the process with my sanity intact.

FUCK YEAH TISSUE-HIME COSPLAY, I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE NINGYO’S DELICIOUS THIGHS.
I am in doubtful yet hopeful suspension as to whether you’re actually serious about cosplay, but did you actually get the bass guitar? I would be beary disappointed in you if you end up leaving it to collect dust. I expect a bass solo the next time I come over, or else I’ll open Meiling myself.

You did tweet me about it, and thank you =). I’m all up for some of this Touhou dota, should you ever stop playing MSN ninja =P

Touhou Dota? You have my attention. Is this a W3 map still or a game on its own?

Back in my highschool days I wasn’t too shabby at dota myself. Let me play too 🙂

I’ve only played dota a few times at Ningyo’s request, so don’t expect much in terms of competition. Since neither of us have legit Battle.net CD Keys, we play over a LAN application called Garena. I’ll post another comment when I actually get my hands on the map. I really hope it has custom unit models, since I’m not sure how I’d feel about seeing a Furborg being passed off as Meiling.

Wow, the depth of these nested comments are tits. Props to comment system.
Hey, don’t you lump me in with those groups boy, I’ve totally got a legit CD key. Why do you think I have downloadable titles on a bnet account?

Look, I’m getting to learning the bass. If you break her open I’m filing a lawsuit for adultery, villain.

GUYS, GUYS, GUYS, we should totally all play! Have a sexy HH in-house match. It’s still a WC map, here for all: http://www.epicwar.com/maps/150129/

And yes, there are custom models, hence why I called it ‘rather polished’. It has some kickass skill icon cooldown effects too.
I’d be the last one to play it if they depicted her as a furbolg. Though her panda form is disgustingly cute.

That image looks awfully lonely…

It pains me to read your story and realise I have no such fond tales to speak of. The history behind my blog is all over the place and my incompetence in keeping a constant focus on the blog makes it that much more embarrassing. So much so that I refused to link my then-dead blog on the earlier comments here.

I’m sure we’ve all been through the initial thoughts and actions you undertook with regards to your blog at first. ”when I am not interested in someone else’s works and contents, it takes tremendous effort on my part to churn out a constructive comment.” This is so very true and I have to admit I was quick to realise this. In fact, I don’t think I’ve commented on a blog that I had no interest in at the time. I’m a believer in quality content so I absolutely DETEST those blogs out there making multiple posts per day with a few copy-pasted pictures above a sentence of generic monkey dung.

For the longest time I have dreamed of the ability to punch people over IP but a hug is fine too. It’s only natural to seek salvation elsewhere when presented with an ever growing list of indifferent individuals. Being a comment whore simply denotes our need to express and reap the delicious dew of our labour.

Congrats.

Yea he just had to go with the loney Alice picture…Seriously Chags what the hell? Also when did you get into Touhou and why wasn’t I informed…

Awww come on, it’s cute! Doesn’t she seem happy? I typed “birthday” and “cake” into danbooru and that is what I got. A blog anniversary IS mostly a solo celebration — I mean, I can’t really call up my friends and yell “HELL YEAH NIGGAS IT’S BLOGDAY, TIME TO GET DRUNK!”, so I figured that image is pretty fitting.

I’ve played a good few Touhou games, though I’m pretty awful at all of them. Then again, considering how big the fan community is, you don’t even have to play the games to be a Touhou fan nowadays. Btw, with any luck I’ll have a Touhou figure review up in the new future~

Yea fanon likes to pick on Alice so her + birthday cake is never anything happy…Go back to DB and just search her name + birthday and you’ll soon understand. :p

Geez I wish I had local friends to leech figures off of…lucky sodding bastard… T_T

Considering we’re all here with you to commemorate such an occasion.,I’d say the image isn’t fitting. Sure you may have been alone when you typed it up but think about it this way:

(Offline) You will be alone at the time you call your friends to attend a party of yours until they actually arrive.

Like Ash says, at least you HAVE firends to leech figures off locally. My only figure buddy moved to another state last year T.T

I hear you on the crappy posts. This seems especially true for a lot of gunpla blogs that make Work in Progress posts that consists of nothing than a couple of camera-phone quality photos and a couple of sentences. Far be it for me to act like some sort of internet police, but I get really annoyed when I click on a new item on the RSS feed only to be disappointed.

“Salvation” is a strong word to use, but I don’t deny its truth. If the internet is the ocean, Bloggers on the little men on life rafts sending out SOS signals. Being affirmed of other castaways certainly helps to keep your mind off the vast shark-infested waters.

Thanks Sloth, and I hope we’ll but have fun and success with both of our respective blogs!

Happy anniversary and what you wrote was what I kinda went thru too. Nothing beat an honest post. Btw your photography and studio setup was awesome.

Thanks Dave! The balance between plamo and figure content is something I’ve been neglecting, but now that I’ve virtually covered all the figures I own, the tide will shift toward the former. The next review from me will definitely be gunpla. Expect it in the next couple of weeks! =)

lol now I feel bad, listed as a regular and then it took me 11 days to comment… I was busy! Honest! I didn’t want to skip through the post and I refuse to read figure related news at work, the number of inappropriate things one can come across on figure sites is exponentially higher than tech sites.

Regardless of my excuses, congrats on a year! It’s interesting to see how you started in contrast to myself. I started with hatred for a certain company, you started because you found photography. I envy that start.

I can’t remember exactly how you or I found you or I. But I suspect it was Flickr as 13 months ago you posted on a picture of mine. My first post at Hobby Hovel however I believe was 8 months ago on Kagamine Rin. Which I notice now has double comments everywhere, oops! I do remember reading your Drossel review though and just not commenting.

As for trying to get more exposure and traffic, I fail at that myself. Back when I tried it seems my page views stagnated and I sat at nearly no growth. Eventually when I gave up my page views started to rise dramatically. I’m not sure if I post better content now than before, but I truely believe that that’s how you get hits. Good content. And it’s through that thinking that I’ve opted to change the layouts on my posts to what they are these days.

To illustrate my point a little check out the (inflated) stats from my server. From the months of January 2010 to May 2010, my growth was almost zero, the drop in March however is due to a file permissions error and seemingly can’t be fixed no matter how I try it always removes the new data. But regardless that was all a nearly flat line, and back then I was posting more around the Internets. You can then see it start to rise over the summer, where I posted less and less everywhere, and I think even less and less on my site itself.

So in conclusion, I haven’t the slightest idea what brings in traffic.

And here I thought you didn’t like me anymore! Lol, I kid, I kid.

I definitely found you on Flickr. I think I was poking around the photo groups at the time and your photos caught my eye. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was following your weekly posting schedule in my own blog. It’s a shame that I can’t keep up anymore. Actually, I’m amazed I (tried) to maintain a weekly pace for as long as I did — I must’ve been slacking HARD last year.

The Gods of the internet work in mysterious ways, but I can certainly get behind the policy of making better content. The motto of “hard work and guts” may not always right true in life, but it’s certainly a good principle to follow. Thanks for your posting your chart, dude, and here’s hoping that I’ll see my own mysterious traffic spike in the future~

I can’t keep it up either… I managed for like a year, then gave in just once to procrastination and boom, here we are, barely posting.

I hope you get your mysterious traffic spike in the future, and I hope it’s not seemingly spammers like so much of mine is. I’m up to 3500 spam comments per month now!

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