"Following" Blogs

As of this writing, I am following 46 blogs, all but one about cruising.   Pam and I have 47 people who follow our blog.  Our blog gets 200 to 300 page views every day.  So what does all this mean?

Well, I follow blogs because I enjoy reading about real people having real adventures.  Sure, a few of them are bland, but most of them give a real sense of the what it's like to travel and live on a boat.  I enjoy people who blog often because these are the people who seem the most enthusiastic about their chosen lifestyle, and to coin an old phrase, are probably high on life too.

Who are the people who follow our blog?  Many are friends and family, of course, but most are people who just stumbled on to it, either from Google or TrawlerBlogs.com.  Most are Americans, but the rest come from all parts of the world.  Here are the blog's page view stats for the past week by country.

United States - 1,531

Canada - 102

Mauritius -  56

Germany -  25

United Kingdom -  24

Russia -  24

Netherlands - 14

France -  13

Spain -  11

Italy -   11

Why do people bother to "follow" a blog?  From the comments and emails we get, people follow us because they enjoyed what they read and by following it know it encourages us to write more.  Our blog also gets added to their blog list and so they can easily find us to return again.

Having regular blogs that we follow, and having regular followers, has created a new network of friends for us.  Some blogs we follow are experienced cruisers who offer valuable advice on places to go and things to see (hi Sweetpea!).   Others who follow our blog are in the dreaming or planning stages and get useful information from the stuff we write.  These folks particularly liked "How Much Does It Cost To Buy a Boat and Cruise", our fifth most popular blog post of all time.   A few like the boat projects, some enjoy the photos and videos, and our friend followers razzed us about almost sinking the boat at Liberty Landing Marina.

No matter how you found our blog, if you're not a follower and if you enjoyed what you've read, please consider clicking the "Join this site" button up at the top right of this page.  As Radar, Melonie, and Bob (Istaboa's Waypoints) so succinctly put it, followers and comments on blog posts are like fertilizer to us.    It encourages us to tote a camera everywhere so we can take photos like the one below to share with you.

Or to relate how difficult it was to get the dogs to jump up into an unsteady swing for a photo...

and as soon as it moved how Ruby freaked and ran like her butt was on fire.

Join our blog.  The best is yet to come.  I'm fixing the Whaler and soon we'll be anchoring out and there will be plenty of comical stuff there.  And then there's painting the boat and renovating the  interior.  I'm sure we'll have plenty to write about, and you regular readers know I don't omit the mistakes and the funny stuff.  

For the record, as of this writing I have all ten of my fingers.