Kevin Warnock

2012 blog stats from WordPress for KevinWarnock.com

Here are the WordPress ‘views’ for this blog for 2012:

January 2012 – 8,566

February 2012 – 10,321

March 2012 – 14,383

April 2012 – 12,520

May 2012 – 11,610

June 2012 – 9,753

July 2012 – 11,113

August 2012 -10,938

September 2012 – 11,698

October 2012 – 13,429

November 2012 -11,910

December 2012 – 11,579

Total for 2012 – 137,820

Average per day – 378.59

These figures are just for http://kevinwarnock.com, and do not include figures for sub domains such as http://photography.kevinwarnock.com.

This graph doesn’t tell the full story, however. I wrote frequently during the earlier part of the year, and infrequently toward the end of the year. The traffic didn’t drop off much even though I wrote less, so had I been writing frequently, I believe the traffic would have gone up considerably.

Point Reyes, California lighthouse, June 10, 2012

Yesterday, June 10, 2012 I took a drive to Point Reyes National Seashore, California USA from my home in San Francisco. Even though I moved to San Francisco from Chicago, Illinois after 9th grade in high school, I had never been to Point Reyes before. It’s not far from San Francisco, so I feel silly for waiting so long.

Sadly, I arrived at 5pm, but the walkway to the famous Point Reyes lighthouse closes at 4:30pm, so I didn’t get to touch the lighthouse. I did get to stand on the very windy peak above the lighthouse to take the photograph above. I estimate the wind was a constant 40 miles per hour while I was up there. According the the sign, winds have exceeded 100 miles per hour up there.

The lighthouse is not at the peak height because that would place it in the fog more frequently. The lower perch makes it more visible to passing boats and ships.

Cow at a ranch at Point Reyes, California, June 10, 2012

Amazingly, there are cattle ranches at Point Reyes, and the cattle at one ranch are not separated from the road by fences or even space. I was able to park and take this picture of a female cow.

Her name is 834.

I used the same Canon 135mm lens I use when I photograph female people. I asked my subject if she had any more flattering ear rings to wear other than the gaudy yellow pair she’s sporting here, but she ignored my remarks. I took dozens of pictures, just like I do on a photo shoot.

Sunset from Highway 1 near San Francisco, California, June 10, 2012

I drove home on California State Route 1, which for the most part follows the coast of California and is thus very twisty and is demanding of drivers. Just after the sun went down I took the shot above. The sun isn’t directly showing in this shot, which I enhanced in Adobe Photoshop to make it more dramatic. I don’t often photograph sunsets, but this one just presented itself.

Exotic gourmet sodas for sale at The Inverness Store deli and grocery store in Inverness, California, June 10, 2012

Before I went to the lighthouse, I stopped at a charming grocery store and delicatessen in Inverness, California named simply The Inverness Store. This store is simple, but it is a treasure on the inside because it houses the most diverse collection of gourmet soda pop that I have ever seen in person. The photograph above shows about half of the selection offered, but this photograph shows dozens of flavors, such as Rhubarb soda and Huckleberry soda. I had one of each, and they were delicious. I don’t drink much soda anymore — only a few per week at the most. But when I do drink soda, I love these artisan products, which I have written about before on this blog.

Hanks Gourmet Vanilla Cream Soda

In keeping with my new persona as a blogger, I introduced myself to the wife and husband team that own The Inverness Store — Nav and Raj Singh. I was so charmed with the soda selection that I came back around 7pm and asked if I could take some photographs. I asked if I could set up a still life, and Raj said that I may. I set up in the evening sunlight on a table just inside the front door. The low angle of the sun in the shot above bounced off the yellow label of the bottle on the right and penetrated the brown bottle of Hank’s Gourmet Vanilla Cream Soda in front, setting its contents aglow. The still life is arranged on a poster of a vintage school bus conversion from the 1960s, which the store had on sale for just USD $5.00 each. Since I love buses, this setting just felt right.

After I completed my photographs, I chose a bottle of Huckleberry soda to drink on my drive home, and when I went to pay for it, Nav gave it to me. That’s the first gift I’ve received as a blogger, and it made my day. Thank you Nav and Raj!

As usual, I uploaded these pictures at full resolution. Click on the pictures to see the full size versions, which are larger than your screen, even if you have a new Apple MacBook Pro with a Retina super high resolution display (over five million pixels), which was announced to the world today in San Francisco at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. I upload my pictures at 21 million pixel resolution.

Alexa.com rank for KevinWarnock.com, as of April 18 2012

Today is an exciting day for this blog. For the first time, this blog, KevinWarnock.com, is among the most popular million websites in the world. I achieved this by posting just 312 blog posts.

KevinWarnock.com site statistics from inception in November 2009 through March 2012

I started blogging in November 2009. I present my WordPress site statistics visitor graph above. There is an initial surge in traffic until March 2010. That traffic is due to my framing my blog temporarily on another website that had more traffic, so that part of the graph is misleading. You should only pay attention to the graph from March, 2010 onward. I did almost no blogging until January, 2011. Once I started writing more regularly, the traffic went up quickly, particularly in the last few months. This blog had 14,383 views in March, 2012.

The Alexa ranking for KevinWarnock today is at 971,695. Interestingly, the United States only rank is not shown. Instead the rank in Mexico is shown. I almost can’t believe it, but this blog is ranked at 24,550 in Mexico.

According to Alexa, there are 63 websites that link to this blog.

I enjoy writing and taking positions on issues that I care about.

Thank you for reading.

At the beginning of 2011 the Alexa Rank for this blog was about 12,000,000 in the world. Sadly, I didn’t make a screen capture back then to show you now.

Blogging is not easy. Blogging is fun and rewarding however, and I’m hooked. I plan to blog the rest of my life. At the end of my life, this blog will be my memoir, and it will capture a lot of me, since I don’t write a one topic blog, unless you consider the top to be me.

I am still a beginner, and there are many things I don’t do properly. For example, I don’t have this site outfitted with buttons that make it easy for readers to post a story to the social networks. I need to do that, for I suspect I am missing a lot of traffic by putting a roadblock to users sharing my posts.

Despite my mistakes, I’m on track to crack the top million in the world this year. My world ranking today is 1,464,388 and my United States ranking is 385,915.

I will get this blog into the top 100,000 by the end of 2012, and into the top 10,000 by the end of 2015, I predict, just working on it as a side hobby. I feel I could crack the top 1,000 if I made this my full time job, but I don’t plan to.

Here’s  a screen capture of my Alexa Rank as of today, October 14, 2011, the day the Apple iPhone 4s was first made available for retail purchase.

If you like or dislike this blog and have suggestions for me, please leave a comment or send me a private message. Thanks!

Alexa Rank for http://kevinwarnock.com as of October 14, 2011

I was a contestant in the first UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, which happened in 1999. My company didn’t win anything, but it was still a remarkable experience that changed my life. Because I am so grateful, I have sponsored the competition yearly for the dozen years since. Usually the competition just lists the sponsors, but doesn’t link to them. This year all the sponsors got links! And, to make it even better, all the sponsors are listed on the front page of the bplan.berkeley.edu website. I’m getting daily traffic to this blog from that link… not enough to get me in hot water with Google like what recently happened to Overstock.

I’m happy to be recognized, and I’m happy to help the competition help others move their ideas forward. This year over 200 teams applied, a record. I encourage you to attend the public awards ceremony at 6pm on April 28, 2011 at the Haas School of Business in the Anderson Auditorium.

UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition website, Feb 27, 2011

Kevin Warnock, December 25, 2009

I want lots of people to read this blog this year. This blog is moving up in the http://Alexa.com rankings. It was at 12,000,000 or so last year. Yesterday it was at 4,700,000. I’d like to crack the top million this year, but still be able to write about my interests as I do now. I am here  to better myself and better the lives of my readers. I want to make new friends, have bigger parties at my house, talk on the phone with more friends more often and generally have a richer and more rewarding life.

This is already starting to happen, and I haven’t even written 100 posts yet, so I am incredible enthusiastic about the future of this blog.

I am not a blogging expert, and I read almost nothing about how to blog to get to where I am today, with about 100 visitors per day on average, without spending any money on advertising.

What should I be doing to increase my readership and increase the number of sites that link to mine?

I only have 2 inbound links, per WordPress, the software I use to host this blog. My work site gOffice has hundreds of inbound links, so I know that I can get that many eventually.

I admire the personal blog by Rick Segal, a former VC and current entrepreneur. He doesn’t post that frequently, but his posts are worth reading. He’s got an Alexa rank of about 1,300,000, which I consider good considering his posting frequency. I’ve met Rick in person about five years back, and he’s a good guy. I wish him great success with his current startup.

For now I am just going to keep writing about my life and my interests, with the aim to write something at least five days a week. I am not going to put out filler though to keep to a schedule. If I really can’t think of something to say, I’ll just be silent that day.

If you have a website and like my blog, please consider linking to it. Introduce yourself and if I like your site or blog, I’ll consider linking back. I’m not going to just do unthinking link swaps, as that’s not helpful to either of us. If I link to you it’s because I think it’s the right thing to do, and I only ask you to link to my blog if you similarly think it’s the right thing to do.

Thanks for reading!