Thursday, July 5, 2007

The Green Miles Turns One

The Green Miles is celebrating its first birthday! As you can see by this picture, Miles (Green or otherwise) has always known how to enjoy a first birthday, preferably by demolishing a chocolate cake.

OK, so it's a belated birthday party. June 15, 2006 was actually my first post. But I've been so busy in my new job with the National Wildlife Federation, I didn't realize it had come and gone.

There were only eight posts in the blog's first two months, but I was unemployed for August 2006 and had some time to think about where I wanted The Green Miles to go. I did seven posts in August 2006, and kept that pace for the rest of the year, writing eight in September, six in October, six in November, and ten in December.

Then in January, I started getting serious about updating the blog every weekday. My friend Eric from What's Up Arlington and I started trading tips about how to improve our blogging and serve our readers better. Looking back, the blog's quality slowly started improving, and readership went up as a result, from about 700 readers in January to about 2,000 a month since then, with a spike of 3,700 in April thanks to links from Wonkette and AMERICAblog.

Want to get The Green Miles a birthday present? Here's the wish list:

- Donate now to Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment through the SixDegrees.org link on the right side of the page. Just a $20 donation will get you a one year ACE membership!

- Bookmark this blog right now and read it whenever you're looking to kill time at work. I try to have it updated by 9am every day. You'll be entertained, I'll be happy someone's reading -- everyone's a winner.

- Leave a comment on any blog post you agree with. Most of my readers are a silent majority -- they like what I have to say, but don't vocalize it. The few who have a bone to pick comment, then comment on comments. So if you think there's a positive message here, say so.
Any ideas on how to improve the blog over the next year? Let me know!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday Green Miles! It seems like it was just yesterday (well maybe a little longer than that) that you were tossing out possible blog names. I thought sharing a name with a Stephen King novel was a little iffy but it definitely has grown on me. Here's to many more years of blogging and chocolate cake smashing!

Anonymous said...

happy b-lated birthday! a sweet pic, now go buy your momma a nice gift. (she deserves one after cleaning up that mess you made;)