Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Toys And Bacon - 4 months summary

Good people, once again, my schedule is making it a bit hard for me to write proper blog entries, and Friday will probably have a really short Figure Friday.
That said, next Wednesday I'll share with you all the bread. Yes, I'll show you how to make the greatest bread... in the world.
Today is a different matter, I'll simply share with you some statistics for this blog. It's been up and running for close to four months, and there are already a few things to take notice of.


Read on!

How many read this blog? Well that's obviously difficult to answer by simply looking at the number of clicks. I don't know how many got here through a google image search, and I cannot possibly know how many simply clicked the back button the second they got in here.
I suspect I have around 50 people who actually read one blog post or more every day, but total clicks to toysandbacon.blogspot.com is around 150 a day on the average. So it's definitely still a small blog. I don't mind that really. I'm glad to have people reading it at all.

What's really good to see is that people are not only visiting the blog, but some also take the time to comment. I have an open comment section where it's possible to make anonymous response to what you have read. I'll of course remove spam and other offensive stuff, but I'm not going to remove constructive critique, and definitely not remove praise. As someone who uses his spare time to write without getting any money from it, comments are more than welcome.
Most of my readers are from English speaking countries, obviously. It's a blog in English. I also have quite a few readers from central Europe as well as my own country.


The most popular blog post is by far the one about the Lego Space Shuttle and the Laphroaig Scotch Whisky. I don't think that's a bad thing, even though I recommend you drink responsibly.
It's an entry that gets to the essence of what this blog is about. Both in terms of the over all theme - combining toys and something edible (or in this case drinkable), and in terms of what I write about it.
I suspect it will continue to be among my most read blog entries, but as the time goes, I suspect a few of the recipes will be a lot more read, simply because they show up more often in searches, and sooner than later, the top ten list about difficulties when making sushi will surpass the Lego//Whisky one in number of readers.

My trilogy of Toys and Bacon articles are also popular in terms of readers, which is good to see. They are a bit quasi-philosophical, I'll admit that much. But they also contain some decent information about toys, cartoons and some nice pictures of toys and bacon.
One of my friends got really impressed with the picture of Aquaman holding a piece of bacon. I think it looks absolutely ridiculous. Which is kind of the point. Toys are mainly mean to be fun, and I can guarantee you I had a good time taking those pictures for the third part of the bacon trilogy.

I'll of course continue to write about both toys and bacon, and in the future combine the two as often as possible. But there's no question that in the third part, I kind of summed up the whole "toys and bacon" thing.
Anatomy of Bacon part 1 - The Knife
Anatomy of Bacon part 2 - The Oven
Anatomy of Bacon part 3 - Toys and Bacon

It's really interesting to see what you people search for. Some of the search words and phrases that has brought people to this blog are very diverse, and in some cases too weird to talk about.

The three most common search phrases that have brought you to my blog are:

1. Playmobil Fishing Boat
2. Toys and Bacon
3. Monty Python Black Knight


I must admit, the bottom two are not surprising. If you have seen (and liked) any of my pictures, you follow the water mark, I guess it makes sense to search for the photographer and context.

The Black Knight is still a popular figure in pop culture, and the Figure Friday about Plush Toy Black Knight had both some information about the toy and about Monty Python themselves. It's one of my personal favorite Figure Fridays, up there with the Tomahawk.
The number one search phrase that brought people to my blog being the Playmobil fishing boat baffles me. I know Playmobil is still popular, but it's just a bit weird. That specific Figure Friday also didn't quite turn out the way I hoped.
The good thing is that all Figure Friday articles continue to be read. Here's a list of all Figure Friday articles.

As for the picture that most people have searched for, there's no contest. It's the standard Lego man, the simple looking minifigure from one of my first blog entries. This is absolutely not surprise. Most minifigures today are very specific, and I can understand that people want to see an example of the vintage, plain looking Lego dude. Here he is...


Do I have personal favorites? Yes absolutely.
There are three articles I'm satisfied with for different reasons.

The one about peppermint tea probably has my favorite among pictures I've taken. I'm still learning about photography. I'm even still learning how to use standard functions on my Canon ES-1000D! But I am satisfied with how that pucture turned out. That weird tea cup standing on my induction plates. Click small picture for big picture...

Figure Friday are usually the articles I work the most with, and they are by that reason the blog entries I'm most satisfied with - with a few exceptions. I mean, I do make an effort when I write food articles, but most of the effort goes into actually cooking than writing about it. For instance the article about crisp bread is cool enough, but most of it is just how I made the thing.
My favorite Figure Friday is among the most recent ones. The one about StarCom. Such a heavy nostalgic trip for both me and many who read it. Tons of pictures, some cool information. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Other good ones are the Tomahawk and Plush Black Knight I've mentioned, and the Medieval Spawn. But I want to recommend them all to fans of toys.

My over all favorite article is probably the one about the toys spotted in TV-show Fringe. Not only got I to talk about G.I. Joe toys and be a snob about 80s toys in general, I also got to be a bit nostalgic about other things as well.
And to top it off, I really like the comparison between the show and my favorite comic book, Planetary. It's obvious to most who have both read that comic and seen the show, but I like the way I compare them.

And I'm pleased to have shopped into his hands the toy Peter Bishop almost bought as a kid. Never has the Ghost Busters Water Zapper (or Joshua Jackson for that matter) looked this cool...

Well, that's enough statistics for now. I guess you can call it more of a summary of the first four months of Toys and Bacon rather than presenting statistics.
Remember to leave comments below if you have questions, suggestions, comments, critique or you just want to say hi.

Enjoy people!

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