I Will Not Die

That was pretty damned fantastic. Over 30,000 pageviews in four days. The number of feed subscribers jumped by 70% too.

I’ve never seen traffic of that magnitude. For four days in a row, the record for the number of pageviews in a day was shattered again and again. The vast majority of the traffic came from StumbleUpon, but within hours several articles of mine showed up in three forums, on Facebook, Myspace and even other blogs.

Hello to all the new visitors.

Here’s what it looked like from my end:

For those who are still here as the tide washes back out to sea, I’d like to introduce you to some things that I’m in the midst of. If you can help in any way, I would be grateful, as would many people who are supporting me in this venture.

If you have time, I encourage you spend some time on this page. You will learn that I decided to make an attempt to leave my cubicle, ride a bike across the country, and do what positive things I could for people I’ve never met along the way. I planned to blog about the entire journey here. You will also learn that my initial attempt to leave was a failure because I was unable to raise enough money, privately, to go.

To overcome that failure, I decided to hold an Internet fundraiser. As of my writing this post, we’re just two dollars away from 10% of the goal. My goal is to try to leave before winter arrives. I still have some time. My first leg (hopefully) will be due south. Within a week I should be able to cover enough ground to enter the warmth of the Southern states.

What all this means is that if this is going to work, it’s going to have to become a bit exponential.

That’s why I need you.

You can, by doing a very small act, help me achieve something much bigger than I am. Quite frankly, I just can’t do this successfully alone. And besides just me, there are dozens of blogger-friends of mine who would love to have your support too.

Here are some things I’d love for you to consider:

• If you are a blogger, consider writing something that will share this dream with your audience. I will be glad to mention you in follow up posts, and will also include a link to your article on the C.U.B.E. page. If you blog about it, and bloggers you know in turn blog about it, this could definitely take off. Already, there have been many bloggers who have stepped in to help. You can see them all on the C.U.B.E. page toward the bottom.
• Also, consider donating a sum that you’re comfortable with, if you are able to; and tell your friends who might be interested in helping.
• I also encourage you to make suggestions to me about other ways I can continue to promote this. I’ve got several ideas in the works, most that came from other people, but I would love to have new ones right after them.

My hope is to share with you the greatest thing of my life. And by doing so, I hope that it can be a great thing in your life as well.

Dereck :: Oct.06.2008 :: Blogosphere, Site Related :: 22 Comments »

First, the reinforcements:

As promised, here’s the update on Justin’s post. He wrote a fantastic article about the trip and included a lot about the background of my dream, from beginning to end. Thank you Justin, your help is appreciated deeply. Your article introduced me to several other bloggers who are supportive, at least one of whom has written about the event too (see below).

Adam from adampieniazek.com devoted a generous portion of his weekly web quotes to my dream. Thank you Adam for sharing my efforts with your audience. I encourage my readers to go check out Adam’s excellent blog.

Also, Tara, from My Life Coach Tara, mentioned me in her article Asking For Help. Thank you Tara, I appreciate it tremendously.

JJ, Hayden, Sean Asrai, and Ari have all mentioned me recently on their sites. You guys are the dry land I can always come back to, the something firm I can always count on. I thank you throughout every moment of my days.

I’m always afraid of missing someone who has helped. I may not see everyone’s mention, because I count on trackbacks, pings, and google’s blogsearch to find them. If you’ve mentioned me, and I haven’t mentioned you, don’t hesitate to tell me. I would like to thank you publicly.

Bizarre Traffic

More than 20% of all lifetime traffic for this blog has come in the last three days. Unbelievable. Playgrounds in the Night got utterly flattened, which is completely cool because hell, I liked it.

Nice to see it do so well on StumbleUpon, even if almost a month after I wrote it.

Then there was this secondary StumbleUpon impact. To My Unknown Friends got hammered from Stumblers already on the site for Playgrounds.

Then out of nowhere Why Smart People are Unhappy got completely lit up. And I mean completely. One day traffic on that article alone surpassed all the traffic in all of June. Inexplicable. Already, October has had the highest traffic of any month, by over 50%. And it’s just the fifth. Thanks to the Stumblers!

Through that surge, I’ve already met some very interesting people.

The Best Conversation I’ve Ever Had That I’ve Never Had

This deserves a place all its own. I thought it was utterly fantastic. Sure, it’s partly because I’m in it, but mostly because there was so much damned accuracy in it. For those who don’t know Matthew yet, read the background on the kind of posts he’s doing here, then read what he made of it here.

Great work Matthew.

Dereck :: Oct.05.2008 :: Blogosphere, Site Related :: 14 Comments »

There have been more visitors to this blog since Saturday than there were in the entire month of July. Over 11,000 people poured in through mostly StumbleUpon and a few other sites. The number of subscribed readers almost doubled. I’d like to start by thanking everyone for their interest. This weekend has quite possibly been the most encouraging time for me yet.

I wanted to take a brief moment to say hello to all the newcomers, and to let everyone know that I’m in the middle of writing something particularly meaningful. I’m pouring my heart and soul into an article, and I hope it shows when I am done. You’ll be the best judge of that.

I want to make the most of this uplifting time, and I want to give you everything I’ve got. That said, it might take me a few days to get it just where I want to get it, and I don’t want anyone to wander off just yet, after hoping for new content that they won’t find right away.

In the meantime, I’d like to suggest the forum to anyone who’s interested. There is only a handful of users right now, so I’d love to meet some more of you. It’s been a terrific place to have more involved conversations about human growth and human winning. I’d love to hear about your life. I’d love to meet you in more ways than I can through comments restricted to individual article commentary.

Thank you all…

Dereck :: Aug.20.2008 :: Site Related :: 5 Comments »