Situation Normal: All Fouled Up

April 16, 2020 at 4:59 am | Posted in Astrology | Comments Off on Situation Normal: All Fouled Up
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The “best” bloggers, the ones who can actually make a living out of “this thing of ours,” are the ones that plan ahead.  They have ten or twenty or more blog entries in the queue, and each one publishes like clockwork, once a day or once a week or whatever schedule they have.  If they are sick or need a vacation or anything like that, then those queued up entries cover the time they take off.

That does not work if you curate time sensitive content (such as astrology forecasts).  Without “established” (meaning monetized, “in real life”) relationships, curating content (via reblogs and similar) is a matter of picking and choosing from what is current.  Some content is dependably superb.  (And the best bloggers are a pleasure to work with.)  Others, not so much (on either count).  If you are curating content as it arises, you have no coverage for a “day off.”

What does that mean?

For “me” (meaning Grandtrines, Lost Dudeist Astrology, and the other blogs I use to curate content) it means that, if I need to be away, then the flow of content stops.  And sometimes a day or two is needed to restart.

We needed to be away.  But we will restart.  Keeping in mind that we are all mortal (at least as far as I know), some day will come where I will be “away” and not return.  But, for now, I plan to be back going “full steam ahead” in a day or two.

–GT

When to post a New Moon or Full Moon Post

October 15, 2016 at 2:16 pm | Posted in 2016, 2016-Lunations, Astrology, Editorial, Lunations, Special Days | 9 Comments
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Most of my content, for about the past two years, has been reblogged.  Through a near “accident” (wondering what WordPress could do and testing different options) I transformed my blog into a “content aggregator blog.”  The decision was the correct one for me though it requires hours a day to maintain.

That said, I see a huge variety in the timing of posts for a lunation (Full Moon or New Moon).  Having watched this process for about 50 lunations or more, I have some observations:

  1.  If you are not interested in “click through” from reblogs by someone like me, time your posts for 24 to 48 hours before the lunation.  Less than 24 hours, and you have lost your audience.  They have gone out to play, and they are no longer interested in what you have to say.
  2. If you want the benefit of reblogs, as well as the full attention of your audience, time your posts about 48 to 72 hours out.  You will capture about 24 to 48 hours of audience, and my reblogs will capture the rest.  Your click through rate will tell you how interested people are in your particular way of analyzing and describing the upcoming lunation (as well as providing useful solutions to the many who seek those).
  3. From my vantage point, I can see clear “winners” and “losers” in terms of who gets readership.  If you want to see who the top five were for this Full Moon (October 15/16), check the links at the bottom of my page for the Full Moon.  The order has been randomized to obscure who was “#1” and who was “#2” and so forth.  But these five had nearly as much traffic as everyone else combined.  (OK, my page did well, too.  But I am taking myself out of the mix since I cannot evaluate myself neutrally.)  See, also: Full Moon of October 2016.

As an example, here are my stats leading up to the Full Moon of October 15/16 (Saturday night, and weekend Full Moons are almost always the busiest in terms of traffic):

grandtrines-stats-for-2016-10-15

[Click Image to Enlarge]

Note how *SLOW* the “day of” the Full Moon traffic is compared to the previous two days!

Editorial: A Short Missive to Fellow Astrologers Who Read This Blog

August 5, 2015 at 6:27 pm | Posted in 2015, Astrology, Editorial | 5 Comments
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NOBODY loves to do LONG detailed analysis more than I do.  But let me encourage you to consider adopting very SHORT blog entries.  Why?  Because “things” are different now.  What do I mean?  Ten years ago, most of us used desktops and sometimes laptops to “surf” the internet and read blogs.  But, now, nearly 50% of the traffic comes from mobile devices: tablets and “smart phones.”

So, have YOU tried reading your entries on a smart phone or tablet?  If you do not like what you see, be assured your visitors will not either.  Generally, this means you need really SHORT entries that make your point QUICKLY (i.e. few words).  Here is a screenshot of my traffic shortly before this entry.  Notice that almost HALF is from mobile devices (Chrome for Android, iOS and so forth):

2015-08-05 19_14_33-Traffic

If you want visitors to actually READ what you are writing, then keep it SHORT!

Grand Dreams

November 5, 2012 at 4:19 am | Posted in Editorial | 2 Comments
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If you like Grand Trines, then you might like Grand Dreams.  We are spinning off a new blog to focus on dreams and the intuitive side(s) of ourselves.  Hope you like it.  (And, if you do visit, please do leave feedback!)

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