MADness—the Blog

Is it already the 3rd of January?  Where has the time gone?  (The years do go by faster and faster, don’t they?)

I’d say it’s still not too late to say:  Welcome to the new year!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday, and all the best to you in 2011!

The new year marks the one-year blogiversary of MAD About Movies.  Thanks for remembering.  I do appreciate all the fireworks.

I began last January 1 with a post about the birth of movies and by year’s end had caught up with “the current cinema”, as they say in some parts.  We covered a fair amount of ground, with a total of 204 features (along with 25 other posts) on the “front page” of the site, where you find the MAD Movie Minutes.  Not to mention, there’s MADness–the Blog, the “back page,” if you will, with a variety of posts on movies, puzzle news, etc.

Looking back, I’m very pleased to have launched the site and to have gotten to this point.  It’s been gratifying to see traffic build steadily (Jan. ’11 visits have already exceeded the total for Jan. ’10).  Yet, I’m not sure what I was thinking when I committed to posting new features five days a week.  I maintained that schedule for most of the year but at times it was a challenge.  If I were doing nothing but seeing movies and writing about them, I’d be posting even more.  But I do have a full-time job, and I’m also a full-time husband and a full-time dad, and last I looked there are still but 24 hours in a day.  Life gets busy long before I even sit down to write the next post.

Looking ahead, I plan to continue with the same general format, but at a more sustainable pace.  With flexibility the key, here’s the schedule I’ll be looking to follow for the year ahead:

MAD About Movies

• Movie Minutes — two weeks per month, I’ll feature a new theme, with usually three featured posts per theme (note:  some weeks may have three posts; other weeks, more or less, depending on the topic and my availability)
• Final Friday Five — once each month, on (yes!) the final Friday, I’ll include the FFF movie mini-quiz with the Movie Minute post
• MAD Puzzles — once each month, on the first Monday, I’ll post a new pair of Gram Cracker crossword puzzles

MADness–the Blog

• Movie Info & Other News — no set schedule, but I’ll be posting here on the blog on a variety of mostly movie-related topics whenever I have something to add

Thanks for visiting the site.  Spread the word.  Happy New Year, and I look forward to seeing you in the year to come.

Here’s the answer to that question, in case you wanted to know.

Text analysis

minaday.com-movies is probably written by a male somewhere between 36-50 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

65% male is 65% right.  Here’s the kicker:

Ranking

minaday.com-movies is the 166th most happy of 602 ranked blogs.

72% happy.  I’ll take it.

Where do you find this crack analysis?  At UrlAi.com.

Today’s New York Times:

The nation is once again transfixed by “Mad Men”…

Indeed, the season four premiere of “Mad Mad” had record ratings:

The episode received 2.92 million viewers, a healthy amount. It’s still nowhere near the circa seven million viewers that shows like USA’s Royal Pains and TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles get…

I just checked the stats for the site, and July set new records for number of visits and unique visitors.  The numbers may not compare with something like Rizzoli & Isles, but I think it’s safe to say:

The nation is once again transfixed by “MAD About Movies.”

I was on the road this week and am now getting to a few items I had meant to post about earlier, one being some reflections about the site.

When minaday.com launched five weeks ago, it was an experiment.  I had no experience managing a daily website.  I didn’t know if I would run out of time, or ideas, after three weeks.  I didn’t know if there were three people in the world who’d be interested in reading anything I had to say. 

If you’re reading this I don’t need to tell you:  I’m still here.  I’ve survived some busy times at work, squeezed in a weekend getaway, a few birthday parties—and of course, several trips to the movie theater—yet still managed to keep to the schedule at Minute A Day, with at least one new post daily (either at the front page or the blog).  (On the other hand, I have not kept up my training schedule for a marathon in April.  Ten weeks to go.  Better get moving.)  Anyway, I’m still working on the routine, but so far, so good.

The numbers on the site, if you’re interested, for January:  50 posts total (21 Movie Minute posts on the front page, 29 blog posts at MADness).  Readership info (growing from 0, since the first content went up 1/1):

I suppose the Pages/Visit number above accounts for this: 

Number of visits: 2673 - Average: 613 s

Perhaps I should rename the site to Ten Minutes A Day About Movies.

Almost all the traffic comes from the U.S., but visitors from dozens of countries have stopped by. 

A couple of oddities:  The only search engine I had to submit the site URL to was Bing, yet it’s still the only search engine that seems not to have sent a spider or bot (Google and Yahoo lead the way).  The favicon.ico hits at about 57%; I still don’t see it on IE8, but Firefox, Chrome, and the Mac all are fine.

Feedback:  It’s been fun hearing from readers.  For whatever reason, people tend to send me email (I’ve gotten my share of phone calls too), but few commenters are using the comment box at the end of each post.  I don’t know why that is.  Please don’t be shy.