Happy birthday to You

Happy birthday to You

Happy birthday Dear Blog

Happy birthday to You

Today, this blog is two years old. In those two years, I have written 625 posts which have been read around 870,000 times or if divided evenly about 1400 times each. Each day about 900 people log on and stay an average of 5 minutes each. I’m kinda glad you’re not physically dropping into my “office”. If you all arrived during regular work hours, there’d be about 10 people present at all times. I’d probably have to expand my space and hire some people.

It was partially numbers like these that suggested to me that perhaps my writing was more important than the work I was doing in my career. More importantly though, I am most humbled and appreciative for those of you who have written to me to say that I have had an (occasionally large) impact on your life. In this sense, I consider this blog my greatest achievement or one of the most meaningful thing I have done in my life.

I am quite convinced that I have some of the best readers in the world. You are like a small community and even though members come and go, the community stays alive, at least as long as I keep writing and this is the main reason I keep writing.

You have left 6250 comments or about 10 per post. I still can not predict which posts will attract a lot of comments and which won’t, but I have learned a lot from comments and I am continuously surprised how few instances of negativity I have seen (less than a handful during the two years, in fact I can only think of two). I think this speaks very well of the community.

Speaking of community, one reason may very well be that readers find me, I don’t find them. In other words, I do not really market the blog anymore by participating in carnivals, tipping, stumbling, digging, twittering, or asking for link exchanges. I suspect ERE is one of the largest least known personal finance blogs out there.
This means that anyone coming by is pretty much self-selected either by word of mouth or by being mentioned on other blogs with a similar mindset.

I think I prefer it that way. We are, after all, extreme.