It’s a year today since I launched Homepaddock with a post on Doc Cutting Staff.
Blogging started slowly with just 10 posts from April 22 until the end of the month, climbed to a peak of 390 in October when I was in serious danger of having an unhealthy attachment to my computer. I calmed down after the election and a holiday in Argentina in December when I spent several days at a time without internet access put things back in perspective.
The first comment was made on a post about the farmers’ slice of food prices on May 15. The first link was made, by The Hive on a post about Phil Goff admitting Labour might lose, five days later. Even though The Hive is no longer live, it’s not unusual to get several visitors a day from there.
Homepaddock entered the Tumeke! rankings at 115 for May and leapt to 21 in June. It was at 16 the following month and has stayed in the top 20 since then.
Open Parachute’s view isn’t quite so flattering and the Halfdone stats are usually a little more generous.
However, it doesn’t matter which of those you look at, the gap between Kiwiblog ,which is always number one, and the rest of the New Zealand blogs is huge and one indication of his popularity is the way visitor numbers soar if he links to one of my posts. If blogging was education, he’d be a university professor, those which come next would be close to graduating and I’m still at kindy 🙂
While Kiwiblog links generally result in a surge in visitors, the blog which consistently refers most visitors is No Minister. Most visitors, most days come from there.
Other visitors get directed here after doing searches and some of the terms they use suggest they’ll be disappointed when they find that anything blue is of the political rather than the pornographic kind.
Every now and then I’m asked why I call the blog Homepaddock. The home paddock is the one closest to the house where the pet lambs live and in the days before motor bikes it was the where the farm horses were usually kept. It’s supposed to show I’m on a farm though don’t claim to be a farmer.
Part of the fun of blogging is the feedback, thank you for popping in and thank you especially to those of you who link and leave comments.
Homepaddock 
Happy birthday Homepaddock and Ele – you’ver certainly challeneged Keeping Stock in terms of the quality of your posts, and hopefully we’ve been up to that challenge. Anyway, well done, and may there be many more anniversaries to celebrate!
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Only a year? Seems like longer (and I mean this in a complimentary way).
Congrats…heard you on the radio a few weeks back about rural people being happier.
I have a totally unscientific hunch it is because people usually sleep better in rural areas. Country air etc. I usually sleep better when I visit the family farm. Can’t beat a good night’s sleep for making you feel all is right with the world.
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Cogratulations, Ele! You’re an every day, every post read for me (the joys of feedreaders).
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Congratulations to one of my favourite bloggers. I too read every post (though usually via Bloglines so won’t be recorded in your stats) and look forward to your second year.
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Happy blog-birthday, Ele.
I’ve become a regular visitor via various channels.
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You must be pleased with things seeing it”s only been 1 year!
If you look at my rankings (Open Parachute) I actually had you at No 7 for ranking stats (Alexa, Technorati, Google Page Rank and Alexa NZ Rank) so that’s not too hard. It’s just that the ranking for linking and RSS feed stats weren’t so good.
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Happy happy 1 year
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It’s a great blog Ele. And a good read.
I’m not always in agreement with your views, but if I wanted to agree with someone I’d have to talk to myself.
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I’ll add my congratulations. Best wishes for the second year.
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Congrats, well done you! Looking forward to your next year too 🙂
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Ele
When engaging in my daily read of the blogs, I start with No Minister because I enjoy most of the blogs linked to in their sidebar. I suspect many others do the same because Kiwiblog does not have such a sidebar and those two blogs have a common readership. I think this is why you probably get so many visitors from that site.
Congratulations anyway on your first anniversary and an excellent blog.
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Thank you all for the encouraging remarks.
I2 – Keeping Stock is more than up to the challenge.
Rob – not sure if it’s the country or being somewhere different which helps sleep.
Deborah & Stephen I keep up with your blogs via feed readers too, though also pop over to the sites to check the comments.
Bill – if we all agreed with each other all the time we’d get bored.
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Well done on your first year of many.
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