After riding my first long tail wave it´s left me hooked on blogging.The evening of January 8th 2007 saw me posting an article on the recently captured New World Record common Carp, a fine specimen of 38.15 kg (83.93 lbs) - see that post here.
Nothing much happened for a week as you can see from the graph taken from my Google analytics account, then on the 15th, off it went like a true screamer!
The first couple of big traffic sites to link to the post are pretty cool; neatorama and uniquedaily - both kind of daily news sites with a twist.
I couldn't believe my eyes as the figures kept going up.
I only started blogging in October and regular readers of catsncarp will know I started it prior to a big fishing trip to the Ebro - I was accustomed to 20-30 unique visitors a day.
Catsncarp hit a visitor high of 2,533 on Wednesday17th then slowly declined throughout the week. I was just thinking of perhaps going to bed before sunup and getting some much needed sleep, when whollop - the Japanese moved in.
elog-ch linked to the post and bingo I´m back up over a 1000 unique a day. Another couple of all nighters saw me trying to back link instantaneously as the Japanese forums all picked up on it with the biggest traffic coming from jyouhouya3
So as I sit here, knackered, hyped and frazzled but very happy with my performance and my newly tested ability with all the blogging tools Ive been setting up over these last few months, what conclusions can I draw from this very special little long tail wave?
From a cultural point of view; why are the Japanese so interested in the European Carp record? My guess would be that they are fanatical breeders of the Koi carp, a distant strain from our common carp, and secondly, they love eating Carp, its a delicacy in Japan.
When you think about that it´s a little bit scary.
Imagine loads of Japanese business men offering huge sums of money to Ninja fisherman to come over and Ninja fish Cassien or Raduta, I mean these guys will pay $50,ooo+ for a piece of Tuna. Please no!
and from a blogging point of view; what have I learned?
Without doubt MyBlogLog stats were the fastest way to see who had linked to my story, Technorati worked well but it was slow, only giving me the links after a day or so, with MyBlog Log I was getting live figures and could practically back link minutes after the story had been posted.
I also used Icerocket (free) for the first time and that threw up a few links that had escaped me somehow with Technorati (free) and MyBlogLog. (paid)
To be fair to Feedburner I didn't use their paid service on catsncarp, but I am using the paid service on my newest blog Jooster, which is getting good traffic at the moment, but I still don't think it comes close to MyBlogLog.
So I would like to say thank you to everyone thats helped me, from fellow bloggers like, DaveO Andy and Paco, .
To all the great companies involved in Web 2.0 and making it so easy for us to get out there and blog - its been a ride, but now I´m going to bed so for the love of big Carp - DONT link to this post.
