Posted 6:50 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

What's new?
Free-State Project folks might take pleasure that their website has moved above the LP site in Alexa ratings.

Current stats on the ballooning blog:

75 posts in 93 days
56,400 total words
805 words/post
14,214 readers to date
190 readers/post

updated the Coalition casualties - up by 6 more deaths
updated the Alexa ratings page

Posted 10:40 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Update for 8/26
Note that the coalition casualty count went up by TEN today. The insanity continues.

Readership for continues weak, as with almost all other web-based sites. I've never been in a position to notice it in past years, so I really don't know the reason. Even extremely busy sites like lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com are down somewhat.

Posted 7:17 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Busy summer, huh?
Over the past month, internet readership appears to be down in general. It's been true for No Force, No Fraud and for other Babelogue blogs. It's also true for most of the sites I track on "Most popular liberty-oriented sites".

Perhaps it's just that we all get busier in the summer, or maybe it's because we're all tiring of reading about Iraq and are simply reading less.

I made an unintended visit to the State Fair yesterday, to deliver an extension cord to the LPMN booth so that the fan could be used. While there, I trekked to the SkyWeb Express display in the Technology Building (in the far northeast corner). SkyWeb (formerly Taxi2000) is the centerpiece of the building, and has moved their whole demonstration to that location.

Go take a look if you're at the fair.

Posted 6:46 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

No Force, No Fraud, No shortage of words
Just 81 days ago, I started No Force, No Fraud. I've posted on 68 of those days.

Total words: 50,394
Words/post: 804
Total readers: 12,705
Readers/day: 159

Posted 7:14 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Just an update
Updated the home page this morning... new quotes, new body counts.

For No Force, No Fraud, a small highlight... moving from 15th to 14th in total readership to date. For NFNF, that's significant because it started much later than those above it. I'll never catch the top several blogs on Babelogue, because they get more daily readers than NFNF. the only way that can change is if NFNF articles are re-posted on other sites.

If you have a favorite site that you think would post or link to NFNF articles, send them a note suggesting that.

Posted 10:25 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Blogging can be tough!
This morning, I finished my No Force, No Fraud blog to be posted tonight, and I thought I had done a good job on it. So, I was pleased all day at having finished it well ahead of time.

About 10 PM, I decided to take a last look at it, and couldn't find it! Evidently, while changing some filenames, I had written over what I wrote. NO BLOG.

I scrambled to rewrite it, searching again for the links and quotations I had used, and did manage to finish it before midnight, my normal posting time. It's definitely not as good as the original version written when I wasn't so tired.

Yesterdays NFNF blog readership took my total readership to over 12,000... a minor milestone.

Posted 8:00 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

about time I returned to this blog!
Summer is always a time of intense activity, it seems. I suppose it's because we sort of snuggle up for the long winter, then let it all out in the summer. I know 4 people who are breaking off long relationships, 4 people moving (some the same, some unique). A good friend moved to this area, another friend had a first baby. The Libertarian Party moved headquarters.

I started writing No Force, No Fraud this summer, which has been a major change in my life. Readership varies daily, but has been rising steadily. On the 64th day, my total readers passed the 10,000 mark.

I keep track of the size of each posting I make, and keep a running total of words written. Right now, the total is over 42,000 words, an average of almost 800 per post. Wordy sucker, huh?

It's fascinating how people get to my NFNF site. Most of them are a mystery, but quite a few seem to be because someone has made a post to a discussion list, quoting me and linking to NFNF.

There are quite a few blog-recording sites... sites that keep track of thousands of blogs and record when each is updated. They're software spiders that work automatically.

Subject matter seems much more important than writing skill as for grabbing readers. For example, people writing about war can get a LOT of attention. A few days ago, Steve Perry's Bush Wars had over 25,000 readers, because he had a lead commentary on antiwar.com. Steve normally has a lot of readers, but that day had 4 or 5 times normal.