1st anniversary for "Bleedin' Brown and Gold"

Today, March 6, calls for a little celebration.

It was on this day last year that I first put fingers to the keyboard to type my first blog entry, "God help me, I'm a life-long Padres fan." That first little ditty earned me 20 pageviews and a total of two comments. I thought to myself, "Hey, at least, someone read this."

Since then, I have written 101 Posts, with 119 comments and 8,872 pageviews (all time history). I have also developed a total of 14 followers.

To quote Homer Simpson, "Whoo-hoo!"

The post with the most page views? it was the "Topps MLB ATTAX Showdown" (Oct. 25, 2013), with 319 pageviews, The next closest was "October Sports Card Forum Baseball Card Traders (Oct. 10, 2013), with 240 pageviews. The post eliciting the most comments was "Come and get your 1989 Topps Baseball Card Books," (Sept. 19, 2013) with seven comments, followed by "Local bid board boxes o'cards" (Jan. 26, 2014) with six comments. Even though baseball swims within a sea of statistics, let me quote Homer Simpson once again, "Oh, people can come up statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that." To be absolutely truthful, I wasn't sure I'd still be writing this blog one year later. I had more than a few worst-case scenarios plotted out -- No one would read it, I'd get bored with it and quit, work would get too busy to keep it up, or I'd get deployed again. And then there was the biggest question of them all -- Since I'm a single-team, San Diego Padres collector and blogger, how soon would it be before I run out of things to write. Thankfully, none of that has come in to play. In the meantime, I've met some great bloggers and made some great trades. With three local brick and mortar card shops, as well as a monthly card show, I have plenty of opportunities to help out my blogging brethren. Now, how can I make "Bleedin' Brown and Gold" an even better blog? 1) Post more often -- If I've posted 102 entries, then that's roughly one every three days. I can do better than that, I just need to be more consistent. 2) Find more traders -- I have a basic group of bloggers that I have no problem finding cards to sate their collecting desires. I have tons of cards of Marlins, Royals and O's, so I need to find others who are interested in those cards so I can unload them (thus making my wife happy). 3) Perhaps host a contest or two -- They're always fun, plus it couldn't help but boost my readership, right? 4) Reach out and touch other bloggers -- Who knows, maybe we can offer up an occasional group discussion about upcoming trends or facts about collecting and our personal collections. 5) Spoiler alert -- I'm looking to host a "Dirty Dozen Trading Challenge." Think you've got the stuff to complete this challenge? We'll see. In the meantime, keep tuning in. All in all, I've been very pleased with my blogging efforts, despite the fact there's always room for improvement. And, of course, I'm always open to suggestions. Until then, here's to a great year of blogging and, hopefully, many more to come.