500,000 Page Views and Rising
Strike up the marching band and break out the kazoos! Saturday night, Building the Ergonomic Guitar served its 500,000th page since moving to its own domain in April 2007.
Cause for Celebration
All kidding aside, I realize that compared to mainstream sites, it’s a drop in the bucket. But let’s put this into perspective. We’re talking about a niche subject – a guitar blog (niche) about guitar building (niche within a niche) covering ergonomic guitars (a niche within a niche within a niche).
From this vantage point, a half million page views in just over a year is impressive. Now contrast Year 1’s 75,000 total page views to Year 2’s 500,000 and it really starts to tell a story. Clearly, folks want to know about ergonomic guitar options, word is getting out and increasing numbers are coming to find out more.
Thank You For Making It Possible
Thanks to all of BTEG’s readers for the site’s success and special thanks to the growing community of regular commenters who help drive the exchange of fresh ideas.
And thanks to everyone who has generously provided subject matter for articles. Whether it’s a guitar player on a newly commissioned instrument, a professional builder sharing a new design or interesting links and resources sent by readers, the site depends on you for its continued growth.
Finally, I thank my wonderful wife for supporting my obsession commitment to BTEG. More than anyone, she knows how much time and effort I spend researching content, corresponding with folks and tweaking the site – all to provide readers with the latest on ergonomic guitars.
Help Get the Word Out
The more people know about them, the greater the demand there’ll be for these unique designs and approaches so here are several easy ways to spread the word:
- Link to an article on your favorite guitar forum.
- Drop an email to a friend telling them about an interesting article on BTEG.
- If you’re a guitar blogger, write about what we’re doing here.
- Give a favorite article a thumbs up on Stumbleupon.
- Bookmark articles on a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us.
And if you’d like to show your support by buying me a coffee, I won’t fight you on that either. 😉
Now What?
Good question. What do you think? Do you have ideas for new content? Does the site’s design serve you well? What would you like to see covered? Let me know.
Now… on to 1,000,000 page views!
Congratulations on such a fine ongoing job with this blog/site Robert.
Best Regards,
Rick
Thanks so much Rick! And thank you for sharing your work with us.
Congratulations! We are not worthy of a site like this. We bow our heads in shame. 🙂
Keep up the good work!
/Mats
😆 Thanks Mats.
Congrats! As for suggestions… what about a forum? We have to wait for articles to post comments. There’s no place to have spontaneous discussions. Of course, a forum might not be congruent with the blog’s “charter,” but I’ll just throw it out there for consideration.
In any case, keep up the good work!
Actually…I’ve been experimenting with forum software for that very reason. There’s a tremendous amount of knowledge and passion among BTEG readers and we’d all benefit from spontaneous discussions.
First concern – site performance and its impact on readers. Currently, BTEG works rather well on its basic hosting partly due to many hours tweaking the site. An active forum could require an upgrade to hosting and additional revenue streams to defray the added cost.
Second concern – spam. We’ve all seen forums ruined by spam so forum software with good anti-spam tools is critical.
Neither is insurmountable. They just require some planning so stay tuned.
This is an excellent resource, and I’m glad to have found it, even though I have no health issues requiring ergonomically designed implements. I am working (slowly) on rebuilding an old Jazzmaster body (already modified beyond restorability) and am finding myself thinking about how I might add some more ergo design elements, especially for seated playing. Eventually I’d like to do a full on ergo design like a Klein clone or similar. It’s inspirational to see what other folk are doing.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for your support Dave and I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with so stay in touch.
Congrats!!! You left me in the dust! It pays to be ergonomic I guess.
Thanks Stratoblogster!