Blaugust in Review

Here we are on Day 30 of Blaugust and I am already rushing to the exit, ready to review the whole thing.

Now seems like an appropriate time to flash the even logo

I’m not really in a rush (and somebody else has been down this path already), but I had a post slated for yesterday, I have the traditional month in review post already queued up for tomorrow, and something already queued up for Tuesday, but nothing really planned for today.  So I figured it would fit nicely here.  Not that I need another post.  I hit the 31 post mark nearly a week ago, but I guess we actually have to do one EVERY day.  Can’t just stop at 31.

What I Did Do

I posted at least once a day, every day, for the whole month.  Last year I wrote 39 posts for Blaugust, this year I will manage 42.  So three better, for specific definitions of “better.”

I linked up my post over in the Blaugust section at Anook.com, both as a blog post and as a forum post.  At about Day 22 I had finally refined my method so I could link my blog, embed a picture, assign a related game, and have it all publish correctly on the first try.

By the way, the craziest thing on Anook has to be this:

The bar has been set very, very low…

Bhagpuss could easily topple me from that #1 spot if he joined and linked up his posts.

I visited other bloggers, left comments much further afield than I usually do, added a couple blogs to the blog roll and even more to the blog feed in the side bar, and became Blaugust buddies with Ysharros.   I think that should be a Blaugust feature going forward, a random pairing of participants or some such.  Maybe?

What I Did Not Do

I did not write much in the way of special Blaugust posts.  I didn’t use any of the writing prompts and I was even able to dodge the AMA thread in the Blaugust forum when I pointed out I already wrote a post on the requested topic for the NBI 2015 event, so there wasn’t much left to say.

Basically, I don’t seem to have much problem coming up with a topic to write about on a daily basis.  I didn’t even use any of my emergency backup topics.  That is, in part, one of the joys of having a somewhat generalist gaming blog.  If I were single game focused things might be different.  Also, it was a pretty big news month for August.  There was a lot to write about, plus a week long war in EVE Online, which always helps.  I think I have more half finished posts in my drafts folder at the end of Blaugust than I did at the beginning.

I did not inject the word “Blaugust” into post titles, use it as a hash tag, link to the rules page, or any of that except when posting explicitly about the event.  That was partly me just being finicky about style and partly a matter of being “in” the event but not “of” the event, to get a little philosophical.  My blog was here before Blaugust, it will be after Blaugust, so it doesn’t need to be tied directly to Blaugust even during Blaugust.

Also, I managed to use the word Blaugust four times in a single sentence there

And, to be honest, going into Feedly during the event and seeing post title after post title starting with the word Blaugust looked kind of icky, to use the technical term, and a bit confusing.  I didn’t want any part of that.  Such is life.

I also didn’t see much in the way of traffic from the event.

Not that this month wasn’t a banner month for traffic, so there appears, on the surface, to be some correlation between that and Blaugust.

But digging into the traffic sources that brought people to the blog over the last 30 days, Anook is way down in 14th place.  Search engines were the top source, with Anook bringing in just 0.6% of the traffic Google sent here.  And individual blogs of participants in Blaugust fell further down the list than Anook, with In An Age being the top there.

The top 20 sources of referral traffic for August, for those who are curious.

1. Google
2. lowseclifestyle.com
3. evebloggers.com
4. totaleve.com
5. greedygoblin.blogspot.com
6. bhagpuss.blogspot.com
7. blessingofkings.blogspot.com
8. syncaine.com
9. Twitter
10. keenandgraev.com
11. feedly.com
12. Reddit
13. theoldreader.com
14. anook.com
15. Facebook
16. inanage.com
17. WordPress.com Reader
18. popehat.com
19. weritsblog.com
20. mmoquests.com

Search engine traffic was up significantly this month, and it was largely directing people to posts about World of Warcraft. The first week of August saw two big WoW announcements, first the subscription number drop and then the big WoW Legion reveal.  That also got people talking and linking back and forth and what not.

Basically, if you want more traffic, write about WoW drama.

Though, in a surprise move, my post about Lord of the Rings Online server merges topped the chart here for August.  That was mostly by virtue of few people posting about it, so my post made it to the first page of the results on Google.  Go me.

Also, Gevlon linked here more than anybody else this month.  What does that say about August? And me?

But the traffic thing is really beside the point.  I didn’t come here to make friends.

Wait, no!  I totally came here to make friends.

This was a community event and a chance to mingle a little more closely with my fellow gaming bloggers and all that.  So much better with people and all that.  So I am going to declare op success on that front, though now I am confused as to how this all fits under the heading of things I didn’t do.  Well, not making a lick of sense never stopped me from clicking the publish button before, so why stop now?  Maybe I should inject a new heading.

Summary

Never too late for that.

All in all it was a good event.  As noted above, I found some new blogs to follow.  It got some people back to blogging, including Brian “Psychochild” Green who somehow found the time write a significant post every day while on the very busy Camelot Unchained team.

A great big thanks to Belghast for setting it up and a shout out to all of the blogs that joined in.  I think I have the list below.  We had even more people to part than last year.  There some prizes to hand out, an accounting of who made it the whole way, and some further summaries to write, but things should be mostly arriving at the finish line.

Blaugust 2015 survivor blogs:

1. A Green Mushroom
2. A Technical Rejoinder
3. Adamantly Complacent
4. Aeternus Gaming
5. Ald Shot First
6. Alexandria Mack
7. Ash’s Adventures
8. Aywren Sojourner
9. Battle Priestess
10. Beyond Tannhauser Gate
11. Bio Break
12. Blue Kae
13. Cannot Be Tamed
14. Comics and Cookies
15. Contains Moderate Peril
16. Couture Gaming
17. Diary of a Mom Gamer
18. Endgame Viable
19. Fickle Fangirl
20. Floor Tank Gaming
21. Game Introspection
22. Gamer Girl Confessions
23. Gaming Identity
24. Goobbue Crossing
25. Hello Kitsune
26. Herding Cats
27. I Have Touched the Sky
28. In An Age
29. Intermittent Daily Posts from Howard
30. Jamie’s Blog – Daily Vlogs
31. JVT Workshop
32. Kateri Morton
33. Knifesedge
34. Lair of the Wolf Dragon
35. Leaflocker
36. LFGryph
37. Light Falls Gracefully
38. Lock and Bolt
39. Me Vs Myself and I
40. Memoirs of a Lady
41. MMO Gypsy
42. Moonshine Mansion
43. Murf Versus
44. My Epic Fail
45. My Life in Azeroth
46. Nerdy Bookahs
47. No Market Collective
48. Nomadic Gamers
49. Pizza Maid
50. Pleasant Gamer
51. Psyche Plays
52. Psychochild’s Blog
53. Pumping Irony
54. Sagacyte’s Digital Adventures
55. She Rides Dragons
56. Soul of the Forest
57. Soulbound Life
58. Soultamer Gaming
59. Sparks in the Horizon
60. Star-Fired Beef
61. Starshadow
62. Stars of the Spiral
63. Static Refresh
64. Stropp’s World
65. Stylish Corpse
66. Tales of the Aggronaut
67. Thalen Speaks
68. The Adventures of Xinrae
69. The Ancient Gaming Noob
70. The Driveling Dwarf
71. The Friendly Necromancer
72. The Mystical Mesmer
73. The Tankquisition
74. Through Wolfy’s Eyes
75. Trail-food for Thought
76. Tyrannodorkus
77. Why I Game